Let us pen a note of sympathy to Sarah Palin. It is surely no fun to be anonymously trashed by former comrades in the McCain campaign, the leakers who have been calling her a wacko and a hillbilly and a diva and a dunce who flunks grade-school geography.

She basically has three choices: slink back to Alaska and turn the other cheek; respond selectively, only to the worst provocations; or launch a 24/7 rebuttal campaign on virtually every broadcast media outlet. Given her national ambitions, the latter choice was a slam dunk.

Which is why she was fielding softballs last night from Greta on Fox News; and appearing on the Today show this morning and tomorrow, with CNN to follow. And it's why she's slated to meet the press at the Republican Governors Association confab in Miami. All told, she's getting as much face time this week as Barack Obama. The 2012 race has begun.

After getting waxed with John McCain in last week's election, and demonstrating her unpopularity with independent swing voters, is it possible that Operation Northern Exposure could backfire? Probably not in the short run, because her aim right now is to show the GOP conservative base that she has the spunk to stand up for herself.

Step one is to fight back against the "jerks" (her word) who have been dissing her on the sly. For instance, she told Fox News last night that, contrary to what the McCain leakers have claimed, she can name the countries that comprise NAFTA: "I remember that discussion (with her briefers), but there was never a question about, well, 'who are the participants in NAFTA?' So for my discussion there to be spun into something that it was not, and then broadcast on national television, again, based on anonymous sources, that's been another puzzling thing to me."

She also told Fox that she does know there are different countries in Africa: "So we discussed what was going on in Africa. And never, ever did I talk about, 'well, gee, is it a country or is it a continent. I just don't know about this issue.' So I don't know how they took our one discussion on Africa and turned that into what they turned it into."

Basically, because she is "out of the box" and "not part of that elite group" of Washingtonians, she said that she's puzzled by how the Washington leak game is played: "I don't know the inside baseball stuff at that top echelon of the way campaigns are run - how, why anyone would do that." Or, as she put it this morning on NBC, she feels victimized by "this beast called politics in America."

Seriously, this post is intended as a note of sympathy for Sarah. She is being trashed now by the same campaign that chose her in the first place. Their disparaging remarks tell us more about their character and judgment than about the veep candidate. If it's really true that Palin is as dense as they now portray her to be, they were nevertheless prepared to hide that crucial information from the voters if the polls had looked good for McCain. Pre-spinning his defeat by shifting the blame to Palin was classic Beltway loser behavior, by which the insiders scramble to cover their exposed derrieres.

Indeed, it's the McCain people who gave her a taste for the big time. And looking ahead four years, she is already taking advice from her top political strategist. That would be God.

She told Fox News last night: "I'm putting my life in my creator's hands - this is what I always do. I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is. Even if it's cracked up a little bit, maybe I'll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don't let me miss an open door."

Somehow it feels like the hinges have already been blown across the room.

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Last Friday, I mentioned conservative commentator Bill Kristol's longstanding penchant for making predictions that turn out to be grievously wrong. (My personal favorite, during the prelude to the Iraq war, was his observation that there would be no strife between Sunnis and Shiites.) In that vein, I remarked that if Kristol now uses his New York Times column to predict a ruinous Obama presidency, the Obama forces should rejoice about the future.

Well, the returns are now in. In print yesterday, Kristol unveiled his prediction: "It could be a tough four or eight years for conservatives...Obama has the furthert advantage of inheriting a recession that will give him a very tough first year or two (for which he won't be blamed), but that should be followed by a recovery well timed for his re-election bid. So Obama will be formidable."

Formidable?

Either Kristol might finally be right, in the tradition of a stopped clock twice a day, or it's time for the Obama forces to break out the worry beads.