September 2008

The proof that Sarah Palin was a bad pick is in the steady stream of negative commentary about her.  Over the last couple of days, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times all dedicated large portions of their Op-Ed pages to criticism of McCain and Palin.

The Washington Post points out the problem at the heart of the Palin selection:

It’s hard to recall a time when either major party asked voters to accept a nominee with a thinner record.

The New York Times is even more blunt:

If John McCain wants voters to conclude, as he argues, that he has more independence and experience and better judgment than Barack Obama, he made a bad start by choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

To address those many problems, this country needs a leader with sound judgment and strong leadership skills. Choosing Ms. Palin raises serious questions about Mr. McCain’s qualifications.

A Democratic member of the Alaska House of Representatives, Mike Doogan, explains in the Washington Post why Palin is not qualified to be Vice President:

But I do know that, on all these fronts, she is a big, big risk if her ticket wins and something bad happens to John McCain. And that the risk isn’t just McCain’s. Or the Republican Party’s. It’s all of ours now.

And that tells me all I need to know about John McCain’s judgment.

Both Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman used their columns to point out problems with McCain’s pick.  Dowd notes that:

Since John McCain played craps first and sent the vetters to Alaska afterward, Republicans have been defending Governor Palin by saying that, while she has no foreign policy experience — except, as Cindy McCain pointed out, that “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia” — she has a lot of domestic policy experience as a supercharged P.T.A. and hockey mom.

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.

And Friedman writes about Palin’s attachments to the oil industry:

Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”

So, college students, don’t let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white.

Garry Willis compares Palin to Thomas Eagleton, and suggests that McCain should have heeded this lesson of history:

The lesson for succeeding races was that a vice presidential candidate should be thoroughly vetted — a lesson apparently neglected by Senator John McCain.

Sam Harris explains the probability of Palin becoming President if McCain wins the election:

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper’s scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain’s medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.

Tim Rutten finds hypocrisy in how Sarah Palin has managed her personal life and her political positions:

The point is that the Palins were able to make all these decisions [regarding her daughter's pregnancy and her own decision to not abort Trig, her new baby with Down Syndrome] according to the dictates of their own consciences, formed by their own religious convictions, within the privacy of their own family and according to its values and traditions. What they decided is nobody’s business but theirs; the fact that they were free to arrive at their own decision is everybody’s business. 

The particular brand of social conservatism in which Sarah Palin quite evidently believes deeply would deny other American families and other American women the freedom to make these same intimate decisions according to the dictates of their own consciences, religious convictions and traditions.

I guess the John McCain did accomplish one thing with Palin: the focus of this election has shifted almost entirely to the McCain campaign.

Looks like the Alaska Independence Party might be a bigger issue than we first thought.  Although the McCain campaign has proven that Sarah Palin was never a member of the AIP, she did attend the convention in 2000 (and in 1994 according to the AIP) and also recorded the message to the AIP convention that I posted about yesterday.  Also, her husband, Todd Palin, definitely was a member of the AIP from 1995-2002 (note that 2002 is the year that Sarah Palin first ran for statewide office).

Greg Sargent over at Talking Points Memo has once again done some great investigative work.  Turns out the AIP is crazier than I realized.

The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that’s now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

“The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government,” Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.

“And I won’t be buried under their damn flag,” Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. “I’ll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.”

At another point, Volger advocated renouncing allegiance to the United States. In the course of denouncing Federal regulation over land, he said:

“And then you get mad. And you say, the hell with them. And you renounce allegiance, and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life to Alaska.”

I think it’s critical we get to the bottom of this.  How deep are Palin’s ties to the AIP and to Joe Vogler?  Does she actually support Alaskan seccession?  How can she be Vice President of the United States if she advocates seccession for her state?

So, how is the Palin pick playing out on TV?  Sit back and enjoy:

Carville:

Campbell Brown makes a fool of a McCain spokesman:

John McCain cancels a CNN interview because of the Brown interview:

John McCain is a dirty old man:

Olbermann weighs in:

Bill Maher mocks the pick:

The cover of US Weekly doesn’t do the McCain campaign any favors:

Sarah Palin keeps getting better and better, for Democrats that is.  As if the list of problems wasn’t already big enough, Time reports that Palin wanted to ban books from the library as Mayor of Wasilla.

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

She wanted to ban books.  I’m sorry but that is just disgusting, frightening, and incredibly un-American.  We have a little something called the 1st Amendment in this country; you can’t ban books.  Maybe Palin should keep trying to get Alaska to secede from the nation so she won’t have to worry about pesky little problems like the Constitution.

Poor John McCain really didn’t think this through very well.  Or maybe he did.  I can’t decide which would be worse.  Either way, the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate got him a weekend of nonstop press coverage, and made the right wing nuts in his party very happy.  But things appear to be turning around now as the media and the blogosphere have begun digging into who Sarah Palin really is.

Today Palin confirmed that her 17 year-old unwed daughter is five months pregnant.  I personally don’t give a crap.  But I’m sure the Christian crazies do, and this pick was supposed to make them happy.  Maybe she should have taught her daughter about contraceptives?

Then there is the very interesting information about Palin’s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party.  The AIP wants Alaska to secede from the United States.  And the McCain campaign will have a hell of a time denying this one, since Palin recorded a message to the 2008 AIP Convention.

OOPS!  One might wonder if someone who doesn’t want her state to be part of this country should really be Vice President.  This might be a problem.

And don’t forget “Troopergate,” Palin’s ongoing problem concerning her firing of Alaska’s chief public safety officer for refusing to fire the ex-husband of Palin’s sister.

There was the fun Ted Stevens endorsement of her that I posted this weekend.  And it turns out she also ran a 527 for Stevens.  Just how closely is she tied to the disgraced Senator?

And as if all of this wasn’t enough, Palin has even been lying about winning Miss Congeniality in that 1984 Beauty Pagent.

And this is the woman that would be Vice President, and a heartbeat away from the Presidency?  Give me a break.

Perhaps McCain should have checked with Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan about whether this was a good idea: