Where now for Sarah Palin?

Election Day was barely over, and the debate over Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s political future had already begun.

People on the McCain campaign began telling stories of how Governor Palin lacked basic knowledge: Among other things, they said she believed Africa was a country. In a string of press availabilities, Palin denied what McCain staffers suggested, said comments were taken out of context, and called the McCain aides who made the allegations “jerks.”

On Thursday, the Palin 2008 (2012?) tour continues in Miami, where she will give remarks at a Republican Governors Association meeting session called “Looking Toward the Future.” The governor, who spent little time with the press in her brief run with the McCain campaign, is still trying to define – and now redefine – herself to the American people.

A look through the prism of Patchwork Nation indicates that Palin’s political future is complicated.

Often during a heated campaign, voters who favor one candidate or another find themselves making polarized comments and taking more extreme positions than normal. After the vote, attitudes may be more forgiving. Thus far anyway, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Palin.

The election is still fresh, of course, but what we are hearing from our 11 communities about Palin seems fairly strong. Her detractors see her as ill-informed and out of her league in national politics. Her supporters see her as the future of the GOP.

“I couldn’t believe she, or the McCain campaign, would place her at that high level. I thought it said a lot about how that party views women especially, and competency in office in general,” e-mailed Beth Gurl, who works at the front desk at the Liberty Inn in Lincoln City, Ore. (our small-town “Service Worker Center”).

In Ann Arbor, Mich. (our collegiate “Campus and Careers” community), Patchwork Nation correspondent Cynthia Wilbanks said she was very conflicted about her vote last Tuesday and Palin pushed her away from Sen. John McCain. “I was disappointed in McCain’s choice in Sarah Palin. I simply did not see or buy the value added,” Ms. Wilbanks wrote in e-mail. “[A]nd I, like many, did not feel she had anywhere near the qualifications to become the president.”

Palin apparently had a similar impact in Eagle, Colo. (our growing and diversifying “Boom Town”), according to Katha Hartley, a Patchwork Nation correspondent there. “We can’t tell you the number of people we met who had, at one time, considered McCain but were influenced to vote [Barack] Obama after the Palin selection,” she wrote in an e-mail.

As we saw with our reporting during the campaign, Palin has a high mountain to climb in some of these locales. The concern is not so much about her positions – though we heard some of that as well. Rather, it is about her competence.

Four years is a long time in politics, and Palin will probably spend time trying to assuage those concerns if she holds hopes for 2012. But overcoming an image of being out of one’s depth is difficult. Look at the fate of former Vice President Dan Quayle, who wasn’t able to shake similar characterizations.