It's been way too long since we've seen a politician so brazenly masquerade failure as success.

About six years, to be exact.

When President Bush stood upon the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 in an expertly crafted photo-op and declared that the mission was accomplished in Iraq, he engaged in a gravity-defying feat. He turned the world on its head, inverting all sense of logic as he boasted that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

When Bush declared that victory, some 176 Americans has already lost their lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Another 4,145 have perished since then, validating now what was awkwardly apparent to all of those listening to the president then -- the premature jubilation about victory was nothing more than a refusal to acknowledge the current failure of the mission at hand.

Flash forward six years and there is Governor Sarah Palin, in a hastily called press conference, bizarrely and inexplicably quitting her post midway through her term.

Palin's resignation speech strikes the same themes as Bush's Mission Accomplished speech. Like Bush, Palin presented a litany of "accomplishments" that purportedly validated the disengagement of the moment. She similarly promised that the announcement meant entering a new phase in a larger battle (hers, ideological, and no doubt consisting of a parade of paid appearances and candidate fundraising).

I cannot count how many times Palin declared during her speech that that she was "unconventional," that her decision was untraditional, and that she was, well, any other "mavericky" synonym you can imagine. But in emphasizing--repeatedly--that she was not "built for 'politics as usual'", one could not help but feel as if the lady doth protest too much. Perhaps she learned from Bush that "you gotta catapult the propaganda." Whatever the reason, the fierce recasting of her failure as victory reeks of Bush-like hubris.

For in abandoning her duties halfway through her elected term, in reacting to the needs of Alaskans with a "meh" and a shrug, in her palpable contempt for the press and in her stumbling tango around the truth, Palin proved that she is, indeed, a typical political creature...and very unoriginal.

Mission accomplished, soon to be former Governor Palin! You have proven yourself an able contortionist, twisting circumstances to your convenience and naively believing that your self-serving yelps of success will drown out the shocking volume of your ineptitude.

It's political spin that would make George W. Bush proud.