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I'm beginning to wonder now whether Palin was as good a choice for McCain as I originally thought. The LA Times has an interesting article on the subject, which is worth reading. I noticed that the McCain campaign trotted out several interesting revelations on a day that was both a holiday and the day that a hurricane was slamming into the coast near New Orleans -- a day when those revelations are less likely to make headlines and will hopefully be buried before they can grow legs.
First, we learned that Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant. I agree with Obama that, frankly, the candidate's family should be off-limits. Palin's daughter's pregnancy is her own issue, and certainly anyone with a teenage child faces the possibility that their daughter may turn up pregnant or their son might father a child. There are sometimes consequences to the sex act. It's her daughter's choice to keep the child and to wed the father. All that's a total non-issue.
Except... what is at issue is that Palin, like many religious conservatives, is a staunch supporter of abstinence-only education, which studies have shown doesn't particularly work and is actually less effective at cutting teen pregnancy rates than more comprehensive sexual education programs. The question that is pertinent to Palin's qualifications for the highest office in the nation is whether she can make hard decisions based on hard facts. That she continues to support abstinence-only education in the face of numerous studies indicating its ineffectiveness and the single data point in her own family is potentially telling.
The second implication in this is that the daughter's pregnancy was kept secret. Allow me a momentary jog to the left: I was utterly boggled by the arrogance and stupidity of John Edwards in thinking that his affair would go undiscovered while he was running for president. I thought it showed terrifically poor judgment on his part, a lack of judgment I would not want in the White House. I don't really much care that Edwards had an affair; yeah, that was stupid too and also a bit of poor judgment, but occasionally we make mistakes. By trying to keep it secret, he compounded his poor judgment. What Edwards should have done, in my opinion, was admit back in 2006 -- after he spoke to his wife -- that he'd had the affair, that he and Elizabeth were dealing with it, and that beyond that, it was nobody else's business. If he'd done that, as a voter I would have been content -- just as I would have been content if Bill Clinton, way back when, had said that yes, he and Monica had had an affair but it's over and he and Hillary are the two that have to deal with it, so everyone else just shut up.
Same thing here. If Palin isn't running for national office, she can keep her daughter's pregnancy a secret or not as she wishes. But when she enters the national stage, that becomes a Significant Fact and it should have been part of the press release of facts everyone was given about her and her family. The daughter's pregnancy should have been noted, as well as the fact that it's no one else's business except the family's. Attempting to keep it secret again reveals arrogance and poor judgment on Palin's and McCain's part.
And that's enough on the subject. The rest is family business, not ours.
We also learned on Labor Day that all that bit about opposing the famous "Bridge to Nowhere" was a bit of a 'flip flop' -- Palin originally supported the legislation for her state, since it would bring in millions of dollars. Along with this, it seems that this "champion of curbing abuses" requested 31 earmarks worth $197 million for Alaska in next year's federal budget.
We also learned that Palin has engaged a lawyer in the investigation over her firing of public safety commissioner Walt Monegan, allegedly for his failure to fire her brother-in-law Mike Wooten. It appears this may be more serious than the Republicans thought.
We also learned that in the 1990s, Palin was evidently a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, "a group that has pushed for more than 30 years to give Alaskans a vote on whether to secede from the union." This would seem to be a strange affiliation for the potential vice president.
All this makes me wonder two things: has McCain actually vetted Palin as he should have, and what else don't we know about her? What this makes me wonder about is not Palin herself, but John McCain's judgment. His choice of Palin as running mate is looking more and more like a hasty and impulsive decision -- the kind of decision-making that would be very dangerous to have in the White House.
First, we learned that Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant. I agree with Obama that, frankly, the candidate's family should be off-limits. Palin's daughter's pregnancy is her own issue, and certainly anyone with a teenage child faces the possibility that their daughter may turn up pregnant or their son might father a child. There are sometimes consequences to the sex act. It's her daughter's choice to keep the child and to wed the father. All that's a total non-issue.
Except... what is at issue is that Palin, like many religious conservatives, is a staunch supporter of abstinence-only education, which studies have shown doesn't particularly work and is actually less effective at cutting teen pregnancy rates than more comprehensive sexual education programs. The question that is pertinent to Palin's qualifications for the highest office in the nation is whether she can make hard decisions based on hard facts. That she continues to support abstinence-only education in the face of numerous studies indicating its ineffectiveness and the single data point in her own family is potentially telling.
The second implication in this is that the daughter's pregnancy was kept secret. Allow me a momentary jog to the left: I was utterly boggled by the arrogance and stupidity of John Edwards in thinking that his affair would go undiscovered while he was running for president. I thought it showed terrifically poor judgment on his part, a lack of judgment I would not want in the White House. I don't really much care that Edwards had an affair; yeah, that was stupid too and also a bit of poor judgment, but occasionally we make mistakes. By trying to keep it secret, he compounded his poor judgment. What Edwards should have done, in my opinion, was admit back in 2006 -- after he spoke to his wife -- that he'd had the affair, that he and Elizabeth were dealing with it, and that beyond that, it was nobody else's business. If he'd done that, as a voter I would have been content -- just as I would have been content if Bill Clinton, way back when, had said that yes, he and Monica had had an affair but it's over and he and Hillary are the two that have to deal with it, so everyone else just shut up.
Same thing here. If Palin isn't running for national office, she can keep her daughter's pregnancy a secret or not as she wishes. But when she enters the national stage, that becomes a Significant Fact and it should have been part of the press release of facts everyone was given about her and her family. The daughter's pregnancy should have been noted, as well as the fact that it's no one else's business except the family's. Attempting to keep it secret again reveals arrogance and poor judgment on Palin's and McCain's part.
And that's enough on the subject. The rest is family business, not ours.
We also learned on Labor Day that all that bit about opposing the famous "Bridge to Nowhere" was a bit of a 'flip flop' -- Palin originally supported the legislation for her state, since it would bring in millions of dollars. Along with this, it seems that this "champion of curbing abuses" requested 31 earmarks worth $197 million for Alaska in next year's federal budget.
We also learned that Palin has engaged a lawyer in the investigation over her firing of public safety commissioner Walt Monegan, allegedly for his failure to fire her brother-in-law Mike Wooten. It appears this may be more serious than the Republicans thought.
We also learned that in the 1990s, Palin was evidently a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, "a group that has pushed for more than 30 years to give Alaskans a vote on whether to secede from the union." This would seem to be a strange affiliation for the potential vice president.
All this makes me wonder two things: has McCain actually vetted Palin as he should have, and what else don't we know about her? What this makes me wonder about is not Palin herself, but John McCain's judgment. His choice of Palin as running mate is looking more and more like a hasty and impulsive decision -- the kind of decision-making that would be very dangerous to have in the White House.
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I can understand being righteously pissed about that, and with the power to do something about it, the temptation to do so would be overwhelming. But getting the brother-in-law charged, suspended, away from her sister ... that should have been enough. Having an investigation started into why it hadn't already happened would have been the next logical step, not arbitrarily firing the person who hadn't done those things. There are proper ways to do things, and Palin just threw them out the window.
That does not impress me.
And as for the Alaskan Independence Party ... people who don't live in Alaska probably don't realize how popular the notion is, at least as social small talk. I can't count the number of times my friends and I said (only half jokingly) that what we should do was take Siberia and the Yukon with us. That was also in the '90s. There were a number of issues people had with the federal government (there were some problems with returning lands to state control that had been promised to Alaska upon statehood, for instance, among other things).
My friends and I never went any farther than talking about, joking about it, and thinking how cool it would be. We were young.
It does make McCain's choice even stranger, though.
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I don't recall what the AIP's official platform was under Vogler, or what it was right after he disappeared, but these days secession isn't actually part of the party platform. They're extreme and a little crazy-sounding, but mostly they want to be able to make all their own rules for Alaska and not have to listen to the federal government if they don't want to. Very much into states rights. I suppose if they found that the only way to get what they wanted was secession ... and it's probably that they would ... Well, who knows. It could end up being a mess.
Perhaps they just prefer not to have it as part of the official platform in order to keep from sounding too insane. ;D
(which is here, btw: http://www.akip.org/platform.html )
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Palin and her family made their complaints to the state cops in Alaska (http://media.adn.com/smedia/2008/07/25/20/Complaint_memo_against_Wooten_4-1-05.source.prod_affiliate.7.pdf) (PDF) before she was elected Governor. The cops reviewed them, tossed out a lot of it, and issued a letter of reprimand and a ten-day suspension without pay (http://media.adn.com/smedia/2008/07/21/16/Wooten_suspend_letter.source.prod_affiliate.7.pdf). The union talked them down to a five-day suspension without pay (http://www.adn.com/politics/story/476430.html). The family was horrified and wanted him fired and majorly penalized, but the cops said that the decision was final and there would be no double jeopardy on this.
When Palin was elected governor, she re-opened the struggle. She finally started pushing the top state cop to fire Wooten anyway for his past misbehavior, and the cop said he couldn't do that without violating civil service laws. So she fired the top cop (http://www.adn.com/monegan/) for not breaking the civil service rules and firing Wooten anyway.
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Yeah, more complicated. And more of a problem for her. I understand her feelings. But it's a misuse of power, and I've had quite enough of that in the White House for one lifetime.