If you thought you'd get a reprieve from Sarah Palin -- the woman no one had ever heard of prior to August 25th, 2008 -- think again. The Alaska governor is looking more and more certain to challenge Barack Obama in 2012.

She was a close runner-up to Barack Obama for Time Magazine's "Person of the Year," along with Hank Paulson, Nicolas Sarkozy and the Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. More than 60,000 people have signed up on TeamSarah.org, an umbrella website that unites pro-Palin fan clubs such as Catholics for Sarah, Texans for Palin and Small Business-Owners for Sarah.

Caroline Kennedy's ploy for Hillary Clinton's senate seat seems to have bolstered Palin's career more than Kennedy's. Ever since Kennedy announced her intentions, comparisons to Palin have exploded, focusing largely on Palin's relative charisma. Even Palin's resume is comparatively robust.

It's incredible how quickly a public persona can change. Even though Palin "energized the party," she was also perceived as a divider and a hard-Right zealot. Even Colin Powell said she'd driven the wedge between Republicans and Democrats even deeper, which in his view was the dead-wrong approach.

But it seems the past two months have provided just enough time to establish Sarah Palin as one of this country's most powerful, if unwitting, politicians.

The real question, now, is whether or not Obama will actually have something to worry about come 2012.

[Image: Tricia Ward for Wikimedia Commons]

According to Vice President Cheney, the conquest of Baghdad and the whole beginning of the war in Iraq was "masterfully done." What he underestimated, he admits, was the damage done to the Iraqi people during Sadam Hussein's rule. Therefore, the masterful campaign, which freed the Iraqis from tyranny, also left them bereft.

This begs the question: If the campaign left carnage and destitution in its wake, how was it masterful? As the saying goes: It's not the bullet that kills you, it's the hole.

What do you think is going to happen in 2009? Will President Obama put his political capital behind a Middle East peace agreement at the outset? Will the recession turn into a depression? Will Caroline Kennedy get nominated to the United States Senate from the state of New York? Will America go green with gusto? Will Mike Tyson go into porn to pay the bills? Will The New York Times go under? Will Rwanda become sub-Saharan Africa's success story? Will Paris Hilton and Jeremy Piven just go away? Will Showtime's "The Brotherhood" ever get the attention it so richly deserves? Will this year finally be the end of network news? Will politics and celebrity become forever entwined with Obama a mainstay on the cover of supermarket tabloids? Will Howard Stern consider returning to terrestrial radio?

What are your predictions for 2009?

If 2008 was the year of promising change, what will 2009 be? Either a year of realizing change, or not. It's up to us. But as the Times reported on New Year's day, no doubt killing whatever buzz might have lingered on from the night before, change is one tough nut. Human beings find it extremely difficult to alter their lifestyles, no matter how earnest their resolutions might be. Case in point: Oprah Winfrey's return to the 200lb+ club. (This is the Times's example, not mine. I'm not one to dwell on Oprah's waistline.)

The article seems to have struck a national nerve: By 4pm, it was the paper's 14th most emailed story of the day.

Could it be that dissatisfaction isn't really the best motivator after all? Could it be that wanting your life to be better doesn't make it any easier to make it so? Is it possible that bad habits are really, really hard to break?

Yes, yes, and yes. Yes.

I propose that instead of resolving some kind of overhaul to your lifestyle -- whether it's quitting smoking, going to the gym more often, or spending less at restaurants -- how about just trying something new that's also healthy? Just once.

Here's why: If you break the ice with something that's outside your routine, you might want to keep it going. What starts as a novelty -- an experiment -- could turn into a new routine, one that becomes part of a new lifestyle.

Thanks to Facebook, I'm in touch with a number of friends I haven't seen in more than 10 years. One of them, Phil, recently remarked that he was "shocked" to learn that I'm running marathons. His mind jumped immediately to an image of me in high school, circa 1992, wearing an oversized sweater and smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. (I was artsy.)

Phil and I went to college together, too. There, we both smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and drank a lot of beer and wine. We wore thrift store sweaters until they were hanging off us like tattered rags. We rarely shaved. We were bohemian, or at least that's how we fancied ourselves.

By 22, I'd smoked a lot of cigarettes and put away a lot of cheap wine and even cheaper beer. I'd spent college immersed in books and smoky dens of ascetic debauchery. I was ready for something new, something intense.

Running seemed suitable. The first time I went, on my 23rd birthday in August of 1998, I stopped after half a mile, wheezing. But I liked how hard my heart was pumping, how I could feel every ounce of blood coursing through my veins. I liked how alive I felt, in between the gasps for air.

So I ran again the next day, with a little more success. I had no intention of ever running more than a few miles. I only did it because I liked the way it made me feel. Which, incidentally, was the exact same reason I started smoking cigarettes in high school.

After a few months, I was running daily and with more ease. Ten years later, I'm logging 45 miles a week. The photo to the right shows me racing head-to-head against Lance Armstrong in a 10K last March. (We're behind the two guys in black -- I'm on the left, Lance is on the right.) After 6.2 miles at a blistering 5:38 pace, I beat him by less than a second, a feat I never imagined possible when I smoked. So when I look back on my school days, I can easily see why Phil would be surprised that I'm no longer the college hippy with a shaggy beard, old corduroys and a filterless, hand-rolled shag between his fingers. It's a study in opposites.

But the moral is clear: I wasn't trying to quit smoking or to become healthier. I just wanted to try something new. Once I realized how much I enjoyed running, I started smoking less. Before long, I saw that smoking only got in the way of running. Since I preferred the latter, I just stopped smoking. Period. End of story.

It wasn't a resolution; it was a natural evolution. I'd been a smoker, now I was a runner. And unlike the dozens of people I know who've earnestly tried to quit many, many times, I haven't had the slightest urge to smoke since.

I don't know if others will benefit from this story, but I hope they will. For me, running wasn't about getting into shape or quitting a bad habit or even wanting to become a runner. To an extent, It was about taking advantage of having a body that wasn't disabled or already so damaged that I couldn't run. But most of all, it was about trying something new. And it stuck. I can't say the same for any new year's resolution I've ever made.

[Image: Patrick Cowden]

Today is New Year's Eve, and unless you live in a city full of recovering alcoholics, teetotalers or Mormons, you're probably finalizing your plans for where, exactly, you'll settle in for a night of hard drinking.

Or maybe not. Perhaps you're past that, having realized long ago that getting smashed isn't worth the entire day you lose as a result. Perhaps you'll have a glass of Champagne at midnight and turn in, or do what I did a few years ago and turn in hours before midnight even strikes. (I have to admit it was pretty cool going to sleep and then waking up to a new year.)

Regardless of what you're doing tonight, most people will fit the first description. But here's a fact, albeit a tautological one: Being out and drunk on New Year's is only fun if you're drunk.

The reality is far less festive. Last year, I took a subway home at 1am and felt like I was in the worst nightclub on Earth. It was packed, it reeked of alcohol, and it was very well-lit. Drunk people were straddling their dates and making out on the seats. Vomit -- or something like it -- made its migratory way across the filthy floor of the train car, to which most people paid no mind at all. Remember, they were drunk.

Incidentally, a 13-year study by Columbia University found that nearly half of all subway deaths occur because of booze. It seems that liquid courage does not translate to real invincibility.

But back to last year's horrific trip home. I was sober, and I decided then that I hope to never again be in Midtown Manhattan on New Year's Eve. Tonight I will stay home, in Brooklyn, and plan to go for a 10-mile run first-thing tomorrow morning -- before 8am.

So, here's my question: Am I just an old, doddering man at 33, or does the tradition of drinking oneself stupid with millions of other people on a cold, January morning strike anyone else as just a little silly?

Or better yet, how about we work on a list of alternatives for ringing in the New Year.

I'll start it off: A 4-mile race in Central Park, the annual Emerald Nuts Midnight Run.

I realize I'm one of the few people this would appeal to, so if anyone else has some ideas, I'm all ears.

[Image: Fabolu for Wikimedia Commons]