We were talking amongst ourselves here yesterday afternoon about how difficult it will be to explain the Sarah Palin phenomenon in, say, 30 years to someone who didn't experience it.

It's a task made more difficult by the poor quality of the contemporaneous accounts, like this one from today's lead story in the Post:

Sarah Palin, the Republican Alaska governor who captivated the nation with a combative brand of folksy politics, announced her resignation yesterday in characteristic fashion: She stood on her back lawn in Wasilla, speaking into a single microphone, accompanied by friends and neighbors in baseball hats and polo shirts.

From that description, you'd think she were a latter-day Huey Long.