What Does This Mean?

If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, Sarah Steelman is going to run for something within the next four years.

What tea leaves? Sarah Steelman will be teaching a poli-sci night course once a week at Missouri State University.

It's the perfect job for someone planing a run at public office. Teaching a political science course keeps her involved to some degree in public policy. Not teaching full time means she's still free to network, make appearances, fund raise, give speeches and so forth.

It's not like she is joining the private sector in a key vital position. The exit strategy with this gig is easy - the semester ends. It's possible that she could re-up for another semester, but if she doesn't it's no big deal; the university just moves on to its next guest professor. She has the flexibility to launch a new campaign on her own timetable.

Sarah has held statewide office (State Treasurer) and ran statewide in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Kit Bond's term is up in 2010, so if he retires, she might go for that (she might run anyway). And if I'm reading my maps right, she lives in Jo Ann Emerson's Congressional District (not that it matters where in the state you live when you run for the U.S. House) so if Jo Ann runs to replace a retiring Kit Bond in the Senate, maybe Sarah could run for Congress. And that's just 2010.

Claire McCaskill's Senate seat is up in 2012. Jay Nixon will be up for re-election. Maybe she runs again for Treasurer (she would kill Clint Zweifel in a beauty contest). Or if Kinder runs for Governor and she doesn't want to challenge him, she could run for Lt. Gov.

Anybody wanna take bets?