A post at Fox News

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I can't imagine what Sarah Palin thinks she's doing. If she is running for President, which I thought was certainly the case thus far, then I cannot see this as anything but a step backward; and not only because Fox News is a highly divisive outlet, but above all because I cannot remember a single case of a political commentator or journalist ever having a serious career as a politician. That is, I can think of one case, who was a professional journalist for many years, and that is not a good precedent. He was called Benito Mussolini.

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Mussolini was a journalist for decades, and his fondness for the job was such that he insisted on remaining editor and chief editorials writer of the newspaper he had founded, Il Popolo d'Italia, until long after he had become dictator. Journalism, especially punditry, was his "real life" outside politics, and he was widely regarded as being quite good at it. As for Salazar, he taught Economics at Portugal's top university, Coimbra, which is hardly schoolmastering, and entered the dictatorial government which he eventually mastered as what we would call a technocrat, minister of finance. Like Mussolini with journalism, he kept this post until long after he had become dictator, and clearly found more interest in it than in most of the rest of government. Neither of them is particularly concerned with schoolmastering.