Sarah Palin's Ahead of Where Obama Was 30 Months Before Nomination

Leave it to Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times to have a little fun stirring things up:

A recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll found that 30 months out from the 2012 party presidential nominations, only 71% of Americans believe that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president.

This compares with someone named Barack Obama. At the same point in his then unannounced campaign, 0% thought he was qualified for the Oval Office. That's because he wasn't even on the polling lists' radar then.

The Illinois senator didn't show up on the polling charts until 24 months before the 2008 elections, just two months before his official announcement in Springfield, Ill. And even then he trailed the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, 29-22, as the choice for the Democratic presidential nomination.

To illustrate how accurate such polls were in those medieval days of this century, someone named Al Gore was the third choice among Democrats then, followed closely by -- don't laugh now -- John Edwards.

The same predictive accuracy may well apply to Tuesday's CNN/Public Opinion Poll showing....

...that on only his 392d day in office, a majority of Americans (52%) have already decided to deny Obama a second term in office about 980 days or so from now.

All of which is vivid proof of how quickly the modern American presidential selection process and landscape is changing, making traditional patterns of political prediction as reliable as Prius brakes.

I still don't see Palin as a likely 2012 nominee. I think she'd be better served by spending some more time helping candidates in the next couple of election cycles, speaking to Americans about the issues of the day, and developing a solid set of positions and priorities that can be the foundation of a future campaign if that's what she wants.