The bombshell that's still sending aftershocks rippling through the American political class had its epicenter near Lake Lucille on the quiet morning of July 3.

On that day last year, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin summoned reporters to her lakeside home for what was billed as a surprise announcement. Some of the scribes took it as less than monumental and arrived late. They faced trouble getting to a scene carefully staged in front of TV cameras on the lake shore.

There -- with babies crying in the background, planes sometimes buzzing overhead, and the ducks behind Palin squawking -- the governor of Alaska and former candidate for vice president began a rambling speech that praised American servicemen on the eve of Independence Day, slapped the media and "political operatives'' for challenging her behavior as governor, and finally, announced that she was resigning her post to ensure there would be no more "politics as usual.''

No more prescient pronouncement has ever been made by an Alaska politician.

"She outsmarted everybody," said veteran Alaska pollster Dave Dittman. "She simply removed herself from the line of fire.''

In that moment, Palin -- the rhetorical flame thrower of the 2008 presidential campaign -- put herself back in the game in a way that fundamentally changed political discourse throughout the country. Even in Alaska, where her departure was hardly felt, there would be no more politics as usual -- in fact, there would not be much of anything as usual.

Battered but not broken

In November 2008, pushed off the national stage after a staggering election defeat (Republican presidential contender John McCain wouldn't even let her give a concession speech), Palin had retreated north little more than six months earlier to her lair in the Matanuska Valley, an old socialist colony, to lick her wounds and contemplate her next move.

Political combat still boiled in her blood. She'd relished the chanting, cheering crowds welcoming her a year earlier as she traveled the country charging Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama was not fit for office because of a history of "palling around with terrorists.''

A dubious charge, it resonated nonetheless with a certain group of Americans, and Palin in turn connected to them. By the time Election Day rolled around, both Palin and her backers seemed to be starting to think the Republican presidential ticket was backwards -- that maybe instead of McCain/Palin, it should have been Palin/McCain. And then came the election defeat and the road back to the governor's mansion.

It was a journey from Broadway back to Podunk. Palin clearly missed what had come to be, said state legislators who found her distracted and disinterested in state affairs. She obviously wanted the national stage, said Rep. Les Gara, and she eventually found a way to get back to it.

Her sudden, unexpected and unprecedented resignation as Alaska governor for no apparent reason halfway through her first term was enough to bump the death of international rock star Michael Jackson from the top of the news cycle. Confusion over why she resigned fueled a mystery. Skeptical reporters found it hard to believe a governor would quit simply because pesky ethics investigations were costing the state money.

A search began to find the impending scandal that had to be forcing the resignation. But there was no scandal, and Palin painted the investigations as part and parcel of an orchestrated witch hunt on the part of the liberal media, or what she came to call the lamestream media. The charge gained traction. A segment of America already angry with the country's ruling elite rushed to embrace her.

The soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska was off and running, and she never looked back. Within months, she had a posse of East Coast advisers, a best-selling book aptly titled "Going Rogue,'' a contract with Fox News as a TV pundit, more money than she could ever have imagined as governor, and a celebrity that was part Paris Hilton good looks, part Hilary Clinton feminism, and part Ronald Reagan conservatism.

"Common sense conservatism,'' Palin called her incarnation.