There's one very simple reason why Sarah Palin will never be president: She has made her reputation by posing as a victim.

She resigned as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004 because she felt that corrupt members of the board kept her from doing the job the way she wanted to do it. In this case, she had a point. Corruption on an energy commission? Um, duh. Sut she didn't stop there. The victim train has kept a rollin'.

Not long after getting the Veep nod in 2008, Palin did an interview with Katie Couric. After a poor performance, Palin whined that she had been "ambushed." Then, not a year later, she resigned from the governorship in Alaska because, once again, she said wasn't being allowed to do what she wanted. Last week, she claimed that the attacks on her "crosshairs" web pages in the wake of the Tucson shootings were "blood libel."

In other words, it's our patriotic duty to feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She's being victimized by bad people.

You can't get elected president when you act this way. In the last 100 years, only four presidents have failed to win a second election when they actually ran (Coolidge and Johnson stepped aside). I'm not real familiar with Woodrow Wilson's strategy in 1912, though I do know that all he had to do was hold the Democrats together as Roosevelt and Taft blew up the Republican vote.

The other three usurpers were Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. All three came along in difficult economic times, and all three ran optimistic, "we can do it" campaigns. Sure, they were hard on their opponents, but optimism is what drove their success.

In fact, the biggest reason Barack Obama won in 2008 was that he had the sunnier message. Hope isn't a governing strategy, but it works wonders in a campaign, especially when you're running against a grumpy old man.

As many pundits have opined in the past couple weeks, America is running a deficit on that whole "we can do it" spirit. "Yes we can" was a start, but as soon as the polls closed people went back to their more familiar postures: standing still with their hands out.

Rich folks wanted tax breaks. Businesses wanted grants (known as "free money" in many circles). States wanted big wads of cash. And most of the rest of us simply stood around and wondered when the jobs would return.

Well, all the important palms were greased in a magnificently bipartisan manner. Businesses are making more money, as are rich folks. But the jobs still aren't coming.

Tough times call for sacrifice. If you run a business, the best way to help out is to add a position--even a part-time one, and even if it takes away from your personal bottom line. If you have a job, find ways of helping those who don't--even if you recommend a friend for a job that you really want. If you don't have a job, do what you can to help others with the time that you have.

These aren't trivial sacrifices, and it's almost impossible to live up to them on a daily basis. I'm currently looking for work, and I've done some volunteering. But not as much as I should. And, of course, much of that volunteering is self-serving--networking opportunities abound whenever you meet new people.

Given the bipartisan absence of leadership when it comes to sacrifice, it's time for the people to do something to help the nation. Hey, if enough regular folks make these sacrifices from time to time, the nation will absolutely get better. And as a side benefit, we'll be less angry at all those "others."

We can do it--with without or even in spite of the folks who whine and wheeze under the dome. We're not victims, and we don't race around looking for people to blame. We're Americans, goddamnit! That used to mean something. Maybe someday it will mean something again. But right now we have to dig deep, do some hard work and earn back that name.

It's really the least we can do.

Jon Worley figures politics aren't nearly as important as people.