Gov. Sarah Palin is “on a speed date with history,” writes the New York Times’s Alessandra Stanley today, guessing at the agenda behind Palin’s recent dinner engagements with television anchors (and similar upcoming get-togethers). She’s on a (go ahead, indulge yourself, Stanley) “redemption tour” in which she’s “the headliner and her former running mate is a historical footnote” (and the reporters interviewing her are, I guess, stage hands? Roadies? Groupies?) Palin is sounding, says Stanley, “highly ‘Sarah-centric’” of late (the term Palin herself used “to describe her campaign rallies, arguing that fans were responding to her more as a symbol than as a person.”) Writes Stanley:

Palin could be turning to television to restore her tarnished image, jump-start a 2012 presidential bid, or both. But so far, viewers have mostly witnessed some of the very traits - disarming candor and staggering presumption - that drove some McCain campaign aides to leak damaging accusations about her.

Which isn’t a very “Sarah-centric” way to explain those leaks, given it ignores entirely the possibility that a desire to divert blame for the loss (don’t look at me!) might have been something, too, that “drove some McCain aides to leak damaging accusations about her.”