.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;}
Sarah Palin walks away from her job as governor of Alaska, leaving behind a salary of $125,000 but taking the nation’s rapt attention with her as she heads into the unknown.

Meanwhile, Robert Lane is about to end his tenure as the CEO of Deere & Co., a job that provided about $22 million in compensation last year, and quietly head into a predictable world of comfort.

Which one of them is living the American dream?

One has fame; the other, fortune. We tend to assume that the two go together, and sometimes they do. But you can achieve fame in many ways, sometimes just by squeezing a trigger. There’s good fame and bad fame.

Fortune can be more elusive, but once you have it, nobody much cares how you got it. Sell combines, sell insurance, sell tickets, whatever. We just like to watch you count the money.

If you had to choose, which would you take?

The Business Record’s focus is on executive compensation this week. When you look at the money America’s top corporate winners are pulling in, it can seem that being the top boss at a big company must be the best of all possible worlds.

If you don’t get to bask in the kind of adulation that hovers around a movie star, at least you don’t have to see yourself on the cover of the National Enquirer.

Running meetings might not match the thrill of running an NFL offense, but your career is longer, and you get flattened by 300-pounders far less often.

You have to keep the board of directors happy, but you don’t have to go around begging the fickle public for votes every few years just to stay employed.

And if a guy like Bob Lane can’t buy everything he wants, he must be waiting for the moon to go on sale.

But it takes work and patience to reach that level. Many, many people would prefer a quick, warm burst of recognition. Sarah Palin might seem like a bad example of fame, because moments after she became a nationally known figure, she became a political lightning rod. Criticism usually follows praise, though, either immediately or eventually. Not many celebrities manage to cruise through life on a rising line of approval, or even a flat one; for every Oscar or Grammy, there’s a messy divorce or an OWI.

As far as we can tell from the outside, the only downside to being Robert Lane is that his career is ending in the middle of a worldwide global recession. No doubt he would have preferred to end up on top of a green-and-yellow world.

We don’t know how Sarah Palin’s story ends, and she certainly offered an interesting theory for the latest chapter: I’ll resign a year and a half before my term runs out so I don’t bog down Alaska’s government by being a “lame duck.” If this catches on, quitting will come to be seen as a mark of character. Eventually, every political winner will conclude his or her inauguration speech by saying “God bless America” and then giving two weeks’ notice.

The odds are against her turning this gambit into a successful presidential bid. Besides, after all of that travel and speechifying and all of the TV jokes and editorial cartoons, the job only pays $400,000 anyway. In the highest reaches of American business, that’s not enough for a decent boat.

But she’s not in it for the money. If you become famous, ride the fame train. If you’re good at the corporate world, stick with that. Ask Ross Perot.

Fame is the bigger thrill but the greater risk. Fame calls for public appearances, and sometimes the public gets bored. Sometimes it wanders off to the concession stand and never returns.

Even in a recession, however, CEO compensation keeps rolling in. The assumption being that the public will always come back for more tractors.