At the end of a weekend filled with as much Sarah Palin speculation as BBQ and fireworks, two theories. The first is that she is in real trouble, the kind that will outshine all the ethics charges against her when it comes to light. The second is that Palin will flirt with a potential presidential run to the best of her considerable ability, however outlandish the idea of her in the White House may be. She'll figure that either it could actually happen-see people in Alaska who've watched her checking off the diagnostic boxes for narcissistic personality disorder in Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair piece-or that she'll sure sell a lot of copies of her upcoming memoir. Not to mention position herself to be the next Oprah, or design her own line of running clothes or hair products or Bibles. Hanna, I love your divorce metaphor for Palin's antics in abandoning her governorship and her state. In classic Becky Sharp fashion, she is trading up. If she weighed her decision in terms of scoring celebrity points instead of political ones, it's hard to see how she can lose.

Photograph of Sarah Palin by Mark Hirsch/Getty Images.