McCain, Palin at the forefront one year after defeat

A year on, John McCain has turned out to be an honest opponent of the man who beat him to the presidency in 2008, while running mate Sarah Palin seems intent on exacting Republican revenge in 2012.

McCain stood out as one of the few Republicans to celebrate Barack Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but fought the Democratic president hard on health care reform and as a strong critic of his massive economic stimulus package.

"He is feisty, outspoken, as if rallying and then losing the election gave him a new energy," veteran White House analyst Stephen Hess said of McCain, who has continued to cultivate his reputation as a maverick who knows his own mind.

The Arizona senator still has the ear of policymakers in Washington and the former Vietnam prisoner-of-war is regularly consulted by the White House on important policy matters such as the war strategy in Afghanistan.

"On issues of national security, he is holding Obama's feet to the fire, making it more difficult for the president to back off from his expected Afghan policy," said Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"He's been a pretty loyal opponent to Obama," said Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

In a US Congress unsettled every two years by elections, McCain "has always been one of the most serious legislators," said Zelizer. "It is hard to think of many other senators who could hold that role."

At 73, McCain is not expected to run again for president in 2012 but is a shoe-in for re-election next year to the Senate, where he has sat for 23 years. Palin, however, appears to have higher ambitions and the next race for the White House begins in earnest in 2010.

The woman who sewed up the conservative base for the Republican ticket in 2008 portraying herself as a pit-bull with lipstick has since relished her role as a remorseless attack dog against President Obama's administration.

In July she warned in an op-ed that Obama's energy plan represented an "enormous threat" to the American economy.

In August she said Obama planned to install "death panels" with his health overhaul, accusing the president of seeking to leave bureaucrats to decide who should receive care.

"She wants to be the voice of the Republican party," said Zelizer.

The 45-year-old mother of five was little known nationally until she burst onto the political scene when McCain chose her as his shock running mate in late August last year.

She surprised again when she announced in July that she was resigning as Alaska governor 18 months prior to the completion of her first term, providing a puzzling explanation that it was due to frivolous ethics complaints against her.

It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that the potent figure in the burgeoning anti-Obama opposition movement simply wanted to dedicate herself completely to a 2012 presidential run.

"Palin essentially dropped out of formal office in order to expand her name and recognition in media circles and in her party's organization," said Hess, while asking, "If you don't even want to be governor of Alaska, how come you want to be President of the United States?"

After installing herself on the social networking site Facebook, she wrote a memoir "Going Rogue: An American Life," which shot to the top of Amazon's bestseller list several weeks ahead of its publication on November 17.

Official records showed Tuesday that she had received a 1.25 million dollar advance payment for the book.

"She is going to be a very rich woman," said Hess, admitting, "she will have to be dealt with in the equation of Republican politics.

For the moment, Palin flatters to deceive. She only has 18 percent of the Republican vote, well short of McCain adversaries from the 2008 primaries Mike Huckabee (29 percent) and Mitt Romney (24 percent), a recent poll showed.

"It will be very hard for her to win" the 2012 Republican primary let alone the presidency, said Zelizer, pointing to her inexperience on foreign policy and her positioning "too far on the right" of her party.

"That said, the Republicans have a problem of leadership," he noted. "There is no logical candidate."