Even easier than working with floundering national Republicans was working with a desperate John McCain, whose survival instincts are those of a sewer rat, honed as they were in the worst of places, John McCain, whose attacks on Alaskan benefits are legendary (Disclosure: I took on McCain on Reindeer herding at a DC consumer meeting).

Apparently John McCain, is the only one in America who knows he will outlive his critics because he has his mother’s genes. (Americans who wait for their enemies to die, usually die waiting. Ask Fidel Castro.) Easy, if you know Palin is a typically ambitious Alaskan political animal who will grab a brass ring when handed her. Don Young did it when Nick Begich disappeared in 1972. So did Frank the Bank and so did his daughter.So did former U.S. Solicitor, Ted Stevens.

Big Oil’s solution?

You Peter Principle Palin out of Juneau. “Peter Principle” is a tried and true strategy for getting talented people out of the way. University people know this is why talented teachers become incompetent administrators. If McCain wins, she is transformed from an oil company troublemaker into a likeable advocate for domestic petroleum production on a national stage.

And if she loses, the state’s working relationship between Dems and the Guv is shattered. Who will benefit more than Big Oil? Exxon is nothing, if not smart.

But of course, it gets worse. The National Campaigns discover and define Alaska for America. Sarah Palin is transformed by the Dems and their allies into a monster by people who don’t know her. Attacks on Palin morph into attacks on Alaska, heightening local paranoia. Alaskans attack one another in the street and in the blogs.

The National Republicans ignore her work as governor, good and bad, and turn her into something she wasn’t in Juneau, a small town ideologue. Sarah Palin gets with the national program and plays her part. Dems counterattack. Nobody wants to talk about the alliance against Big Oil.

Famous scribes fill the Captain Cook (our Palestine Hotel) to stand shivering in Anchorage streets, forced to come to Alaska in the off-season to pretend they can instantly read the place and the character of its people. Lyda Green , Tony Knowles, Andrew Halcro, Les Gara, John Harris –all with pure consciences no axes to grind and no dirty laundry- offer wise local, counsel to the Outside Experts.. Local experts get with the national media program and get famous in “Northern Exposure Two- the Sarah Palin Story.”

Alaskans like to say they don’t care how they do it on the outside. But once the spotlight shines, they quickly become extras in a movie produced by a truly Bipartisan Political Slime Machine, as managed from afar by the ace partisan team, James Carville for the Dems and his wife, Mary Matalin (who just published a scurrilous book on Obama).

Alaskans play along and tear into each other to the private delight of Big Oil and the national media. Their checks already in the bank, they either attack or applaud Palin in the street, forgetting that a few months before Exxon was the one they attacked together. The fight over “values,” conceals entirely Exxon’s agenda.

But not to worry, the worst of times will only get worse. In fifty days, the movie will be over. With a deepening national depression and word spreading of free money and a moose in every freezer, thanks to the nomination, thousands of Alaskan wannabes will hit the Al-Can for Alaska, an RV Grapes of Wrath. Alaska’s population will double and then triple.

Palin will either be in DC in a one-term Vice Presidency or back as a lame duck Guv, abandoned by her Party and despised by the Dems who worked with her. Democratic challengers to Congressman Young and Senator Stevens will be drowned under an Alaska tsunami in defense of Palin and attacks on Alaskans, as defined by the guests in the Captain Cook. An Obama vote in Alaska becomes a protest vote.

His campaign staff, the lost patrol. And independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader whose focus on oil politics in Alaska has been unwavering, stands in the eye of Exxon’s perfect storm. Villified for eight years by the same bipartisan slimers, this longtime Alaskan observer can say when he visits the state, “Alaska, I warned you.”

A Post script:Alaska’s Senator Ted Stevens is the lucky one. Out of town and forgotten, ready to take his sacrifice fly for Ben Stevens and Treavor McCabe, his office or his lumps and get his Presidential pardon. Uncle Ted, who drew down a billion in Federal dollars for unmet Alaska needs that only Calista’s Mat Nicolai remembered, will not comment on John McCabe, while Alaska debates its “favorite daughter”.

But that wiley old fox must marvel at Exxon’s master counter-strategy for Alaska. The same Exxon who convinced America that the oil spill had been cleaned up and everyone was paid off found a way to stop Sarah Palin, her mini-revolt and its ripple effect, by giving her exactly what she wanted.