ThinkProgress
A new Department of Justice inspector general report released today found that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales improperly handled secret information regarding the government’s most sensitive national security programs. DOJ officials have reportedly looked at the report “but did not find a case to prosecute.”
But Gonzales may have done more than just “improperly handle” classified national security documents. CQ’s Spy Talk blog reports that there is “strong evidence” in the report “that the former attorney general lied to federal investigators probing his careless handling of highly classified documents.”
According to the IG the report, Gonzales told investigators that he did not know that documents he handled relating to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program were classified:
Gonzales said that he was unaware of the classification level and compartmented nature of the NSA program he referenced in the notes. Gonzales also stated he did not recall thinking that the notes themselves were classified.
Yet the report also says that an envelope containing the documents were marked “top secret” by Alberto Gonzales himself:
The envelope containing documents related to the NSA surveillance program bore the handwritten markings, “TOP SECRET - EYES ONLY - ARG” [the attorney general’s initials] followed by an abbreviation for the SCI codeword for the program.
House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said it is “shocking” that Gonzales mishandled the documents, adding that the “department ought to explain clearly why it declined to pursue charges against Mr. Gonzales and what actions it intends to take in response to the report.”
by John R Moffett - OpEdNews
Current common wisdom suggests that John McCain will be the next president of the United States, in part because he is supposedly experienced, and in part because he has “earned” the privilege through his years in the Senate. However, the parallels to the Mondale campaign of 1984 seem inevitable, and do not bode well for Mr. McCain and his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin.
In the 1984 presidential campaign, Democrats were hopeful that Walter Mondale had the experience and temperament to beat Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. for the White House. Senator Mondale then chose the inexperienced and wholly unknown congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro from NY as his vice presidential pick, a choice which in retrospect did not improve the chances of winning the election. Reagan and Bush won in a landslide, with Mondale and Ferraro only taking Minnesota and the District of Columbia. This was one of the worst defeats in modern presidential campaign history.
If we take a quick look back at the politics of the mid 1980s, the so-called Reagan revolution was underway, and the Democratic-controlled Congress was increasingly unpopular. The liberal politics of the 1960’s and 1970’s were coming to an end, and “trickle down economics” and pro-business policies were on the rise. The political pendulum was swinging fast. This era then led to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 during Bill Clinton’s first term, and the rest is history.
If we examine the McCain campaign with respect to the Obama campaign, several striking similarities to the election of 1984 stand out. First is the political ascendancy of the Democrats as the Bush era comes to a close. The Bush era is marked by greater public disdain, distrust, and disgust than even the “stagflationary” Jimmy Carter era.
Second is the star power of Barack Obama as compared with McCain, who seems out of touch, grouchy and sour. Senator Obama draws huge enthusiastic crowds, while McCain has trouble even getting reporters to attend his speeches. This star-power effect was clearly the case with Ronald Reagan, who was B movie Hollywood star, but a grade-A political star in the mid 1980’s, at least as far as Republicans and many independents were concerned. Mondale couldn’t even begin to match Reagan’s popularity at the time. This is also true of Obama and McCain, except in reverse.
Then there is the cross-over vote potential. Reagan was known for drawing in many so-called Reagan Democrats, which helped usher in the landslide of the 1984 election. However, this time around it looks like a great deal of the cross-over voting will be independents and Republicans voting for change.
Problems with the economy helped Reagan win reelection in 1984, whereas the current economic problems are almost certain to help Obama rather than McCain. Of course, after winning re-election, Reagan’s economic policies led to the S&L crisis and massive tax-payer funded bailout, but that’s a another story.
The one similarity to the 1984 campaign that now seems inevitable is the choice of an unknown woman politician as the vice presidential candidate. Walter Mondale chose a New York congresswoman that virtually no one outside of New York had ever heard of. Similarly, John McCain chose Sarah Palin, a governor virtually unknown outside the state of Alaska. Palin’s current “trooper-gate”, and unwed pregnant daughter problems aside, it is clear to most people that McCain chose her as a running mate for purely political reasons in an attempt to lure Hillary Clinton supporters to the McCain camp. This was the charge leveled at Mondale back in 1984. The choice of Palin will certainly not help bolster McCain's maverick status, and will paint him instead as a faux maverick.
It will be very interesting to see if the election of 2008 plays out as a mirror image of the election of 1984. I doubt highly that Barack Obama will be able to manage the same type of landslide that Ronald Reagan did in the election of 84, but I am growing more hopeful every day that after the public has a chance to listen to McCain and Obama over the next two months, that they are going to opt for a reversal of politics, with the pendulum swinging rapidly away from the Bush era, and toward the Obama era.
by Paul Rogat Loeb - Common Dreams
What does it say about John McCain that he picked not only the least experienced Vice Presidential nominee in America's history, but someone he really doesn't know? Departing so far from any normal concept of appropriate background, he should at least have had a sense of why this individual is so special. Meeting Palin once at a Republican governors' conference and having a single phone conversation on the eve of her selection just doesn't pass muster-particularly for the oldest presidential candidate ever, who's had four malignant melanomas.
What makes Palin such a cynical choice is that McCain doesn't know her and doesn't know what drives her. Until she was selected by the Karl Rove types running his campaign (like campaign manager and Rove protégé Steve Schmidt), McCain might not even have recognized her on the street. Instead, she's a category selection, made for the crassest reasons by the same kinds of political operatives who brought us George W. Bush.
Their motives are obvious: Palin is an energetic and attractive woman who just might pick up some disgruntled Hillary supporters. She's a westerner and a hunter who might appeal to rural voters. She's likely to energize a previously tepid base of hard-shell religious conservatives through her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest: Hard-right king-maker James Dobson just said that because of her he'd vote for McCain.
These attributes may indeed prove Palin's worth as a vote-getter. But except for an abortion position that seems a stunning denial of reality (and a major affront to women), they have no relation to Palin's fitness for the job. McCain can't have any sense of what lies beneath the facile marketing categories-like who Palin actually is, what she could contribute to the Vice Presidential office, and what it would be like to work together. He doesn't know her and has had no chance to. But because she fits the Rovian categories, none of that matters. Echoing so much that the Republicans have done for eight years and more, it's a choice likely to produce grave consequences, yet based overwhelmingly on political expediency.
Leave aside all the other troubling questions about Palin: her extreme abortion position; her backing the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" while campaigning for governor, then later claiming to disavow it; her support for teaching creationism as science; her Cheney-style vendetta of firing the Alaska public safety director who refused to fire her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper; her laughing during an interview at the jokes of a radio shock jock who mocked one of her political opponents (a cancer survivor) for her weight, and called the woman a "bitch" and a "cancer" on the state.
You can even leave aside that in a week where Hurricane Gustav threatens another Katrina and the Arctic ice cap separates from the adjacent land for the first time in human history, Palin insists that the jury is still out on whether humans are changing the weather of the planet.
In fact, leave aside Palin's actual record, because John McCain barely knows it. His vetters didn't even bother to go through the archives of her local newspaper or talk with the former public safety director she fired. What choosing her shows most is a politics that once again subordinates any greater common good to a raw pursuit of power. It echoes McCain praising Jerry Falwell after once calling him an "agent of intolerance." Or embracing Bush's campaign and administration after Bush's political hitmen defeated him in South Carolina with Swift Boat-type lies. Or when instead of challenging Obama's ideas, the McCain campaign tried to caricature him as one step up from Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Karl Rove's minions may be smiling at the brazen gamesmanship of this pick; but if Americans fall for it, we should know all too well what to expect.
By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown - Alternet
McCain has already assembled his clique of advisors, and they don't have our best interests in mind.
The political media establishment is enraptured by John McCain. Mainline media sparklies, as well as the blatherers on the Fox channel, routinely buff up his image as a straight-talking, maverick foe of Washington's special interests. "The press loves McCain. We're his base," gushes MSNBC's Chris Matthews. But if the senator really is the feared reformer of business-as-usual government, why does his presidential campaign look like the back alley of K Street?
Many a president has had certain supporters behind him whom he should have moved out in front in order to keep an eye on them. McCain, however, isn't even bothering to keep his self-interested backers in the shadows--he has literally put them in charge of his campaign. "Tell me with whom you walk," goes the old adage, "and I'll tell you who you are." Candidate McCain is walking cozily with a coterie of corporate lobbyists, executives, and fund-raisers who are shaping his policies... and expecting to walk right into the White House with him.
There was a hilarious dustup in May when two of the campaign's key operatives were publicly fingered as lobbyists for the totalitarian military thugs who rule Burma. Bad image. To patch over this embarrassing exposure, the campaign dumped the duo and loudly proclaimed a new internal ethics rule barring lobbyists from paid positions on the "Straight Talk Express." Bold! Decisive! Laudable!
Except that it was a crock. Here's the hilarious part: the announcement was made by the top campaign staffer, Rick Davis. Guess what he is. A lobbyist! His clients range from such telecom giants as Verizon to undies-maker Fruit of the Loom, and most have had business before McCain's Senate committees.
The trick is that the new rule bars "active" lobbyists from being "paid" to work "full time" on the staff. These highlighted terms are carefully contrived loopholes. Lobbyists can simply go on leave from their active influence peddling for a few months to work on the campaign (as Davis is doing); they can work part-time for McCain's election while still lobbying up a storm; or they can take no pay from the campaign, working pro bono while being retained by their corporate clients. No matter their guise, they are lobbyists, and SourceWatch counts more than 100 of them working in McCain's camp (only five had to step aside under the ballyhooed new rule).
So many lobbyists swarmed McCain's presidential team that he felt compelled to defend them earlier this year. "They're honorable people," he vouched, adding that "the right to represent interests or groups of Americans is a constitutional right. There are people that represent firemen, civil servants, retirees, and those people are legitimate representatives of a variety of interests in America."
Sure they are, Straight Talker, but, as you know, none of the lobbyists on your team are being paid to serve the interests of firefighters and retirees. Let's meet a few of them:
Charlie Black. Known as "the Republican party's quintessential company man," Black has been McCain's top strategist for more than a year while also heading a powerhouse lobbying outfit that represents a menagerie of special (and sometimes shady) interests. Until forced by the "clean house" rule to step aside from his firm in May, Black's corporate clients included Blackwater, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, GM, GE, Rupert Murdoch, and Philip Morris. While working for McCain and representing AT&T last year, Black was the principle mover in a then-secretive lobbying campaign to win retroactive immunity for telecom corporations that helped Bush spy illegally on millions of us Americans. Charlie conceded that he has done a lot of his lobbying chores by phone from McCain's campaign bus, which is named the Straight Talk Express. He's also been a hired gun for the heads of repressive regimes in Angola, Somalia, and Zaire. Most infamously, Black was the chief Washington escort for Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi huckster who worked with Cheney, Rummy, and the neocon ideologues to drum up false information that led to the disastrous occupation of Iraq. Charlie became a multimillionaire lobbyist through his tight political connections with the Republican right wing. He was a crony of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove in developing the GOP's style of slime politics, and he began his electioneering career in 1972 as political director of Jesse Helms' first Senate race.
Rick Davis. A former White House aide to Ronald Reagan, deputy manager of Bob Dole's 1996 presidential run, and longtime McCain operative who now chairs his presidential campaign, Davis built a lucrative lobbying business through his political ties, maintaining an especially close relationship with the Arizona senator. How close? After being the manager of McCain's 2000 loss to Bush in the presidential primary, Davis became the go-to guy for telecommunications corporations, raking in a fortune in lobbying fees, in large part because of his access to his buddy, John, who had become chairman of the Senate committee overseeing the industry. Davis has literally brought the phone industry inside McCain's operation. Of course, these corporations have been money backers ($365,000 in donations through May), but the campaign is also teeming with their employees--AT&T, for example, has 21 of its lobbyists working as McCain advisors, staffers, or fundraisers, and Verizon has 18 of its lobbyists on board.
In 2001, to hype McCain's image as a maverick on campaign-finance issues, Davis helped establish the Reform Institute, ensconcing the senator as chairman. It lacked credibility as a reform agent, however, since Davis--a registered lobbyist--served as the institute's president, housed the group in his lobbying offices, and shook down his corporate clients to help fund it. The institute was a sham, and in 2005, after a flare-up of negative publicity about some of the donations Davis had solicited from corporations that benefited from McCain's official actions, the senator resigned from the board. In 2006, McCain also withdrew from the reform issue itself, declaring that he no longer supports public financing of elections. In this year's GOP primaries, under guidance from Davis and Black (who were raising bundles from their corporate connections), McCain chose to opt out of the public system, though his cash-short campaign has opted back in for the general election.
Randy Scheunemann. McCain's top national-security advisor, Scheunemann is a noted neocon foreign-policy hawk. He built his career inside the Republican Party, serving as chief national-security staffer for both Trent Lott and Bob Dole when they were Senate majority leaders. His most glowing credential is that he was part of the warmongering clique of ideologues who pushed throughout the 1990s for the pre-emptive war policy later embraced so enthusiastically by the Bush-Cheney regime. He helped draft the 1998 law that made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein a national policy goal (and put $98 million from our taxes into the front group headed by Iraqi con man Ahmed Chalabi), and he helped Pentagon chief Don Rumsfeld develop his deceitful Iraq policy during the run-up to Bush's war.
Scheunemann is another one who has converted his political contacts into cash. In 2001, he founded a lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, which specializes in representing foreign governments, including Taiwan, Macedonia, and the Republic of Georgia. Last year, while he was on McCain's payroll as campaign advisor, Scheunemann was also pulling down more than half a million bucks representing these foreign clients, and even lobbying McCain's Senate staff on behalf of Georgia's government. Scheunemann has now suspended his active influence peddling, but it appears that he still gets income from Orion, and his partner there continues to represent these same three nations.
Wayne Berman. Co-chair of McCain's campaign-fundraising arm, Berman's own bio at the website of his lobbying firm touts him as an "almost unmatched" talent for working "at the crossroads of policy, politics, and campaign finance." A former assistant secretary of commerce, he held top political and policy roles with Reagan, Bush I, and Dole, and he was a leading fundraiser for George W in both 2000 and 2004 (attaining "Ranger" status for bundling at least $200,000). This year, he has already topped $500,000 as a McCain bundler. A trusted GOP insider, Berman was senior advisor to the Bush/Cheney transition team in 2001, and he since has milked his Rolodex to become one of corporate America's favorite lobbyists. Berman's client list has included such government favor-seekers as the Carlyle Group, Chevron, Shell, various drug companies, Verizon, and, recently, Ameriquest (the notorious mortgage giant that was described by a consumer advocate as "the most blatant and aggressive predatory lender out of everybody").
The executive suite
When McCain is not getting his advice from lobbyists, he's getting it straight from the executive suites, for several current and former CEOs are constantly at his elbow. Among the corporate heavies in his stable of informal advisors are such practitioners of middle-class downsizing as FedEx's Fred Smith, Cisco's John Chambers, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, and Wall Street's Henry Kravis (the corporate-takeover specialist who paid himself $51,400 an hour in 2006, while offing tens of thousands of workers).
Especially important to the campaign, however, are three denizens of the corporate world who are shaping McCain's positions on economic issues,and often speaking publicly on his behalf. All would likely get top positions in a McCain presidency:
Carly Fiorina. As CEO of computer-maker Hewlett-Packard, she attained success and corporate celebrityhood. But then H-P began suffering financial hiccups, leading to accusations of mismanagement, a nasty board fight, and her highly public firing in 2005. Now, however, she's bobbed back into the public eye as a feisty, high-profile surrogate for McCain, constantly appearing on TV and in person to push everything from the senator's pro-NAFTA stand to his support of letting cable and phone corporations control who gets the fastest and best access to the internet's structure. The campaign thinks Fiorina, who is chair of the GOP's "Victory '08" committee, can boost McCain's creds as an economic leader. Not all agree--as one critic of Fiorina's hard-charging corporate style put it, "You couldn't pick a worse, non-imprisoned CEO to be your standard-bearer."
Meg Whitman. Just retired as CEO of eBay Inc., Whitman is a 51-year-old billionaire and political novice, though she has her eye on a future in politics (possibly a run for California governor in 2010--ironically, the same race that Fiorina is eyeing). Whitman started this presidential season doing fundraising for Mitt Romney, but she is now on McCain's team as national co-chair of the campaign. Not only is she working her Silicon Valley connections for money, she is also said to be playing a lead policy role for the candidate. Her stated positions are conventionally corporate--scale back government, make Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and reduce the corporate tax rate--but her other views seem vague. For example, asked what to do about the problems caused by $4 gasoline and the ongoing financial collapse, she offered this: "I feel quite strongly that it's important to elect a Republican."
Phil Gramm. The sour old former senator from Texas was renowned for his laissez-faire ideological extremism and for being an unabashed corporate whore during his 23-year career in Congress, where he regularly used his legislative power to rig the rules for the profiteers who funded his campaigns. As Senate banking chairman, Gramm recklessly rammed through major bills deregulating Wall Street scammers so they could develop the exotic financial schemes that have led to America's current mortgage collapse and the failure of major banks. Not for nothing has he been nicknamed "Foreclosure Phil."
In 2002, he left the Senate to go where the money is: Wall Street. Becoming vice-chairman of UBS, a Swiss-based investment bank that caters to the world's super-wealthy, Gramm has been enjoying a seven-figure annual income and lolling in the sweet executive life. His duties at the bank include overseeing "government-relations"--i.e.,lobbying.
Last year, Gramm took on a second job when his old Senate buddy McCain installed him as his campaign co-chair and top economics advisor. Of course, Gramm still drew his UBS paycheck and even continued lobbying for the bank while going down the road with McCain.
As of last month, however, the banker-lobbyist no longer travels with the candidate, because Phil put his foot in his mouth and had to resign from his public role as co-chair. But resigning is not the same as being removed, and I believe that Gramm remains the top economic advisor behind the scenes. McCain, who admits that he really doesn't understand how the economy works, relied on Gramm so much that they talked every day. "I respect no one more in America on issue[s] of economics than I do Phil Gramm," a bedazzled McCain once gushed.
Fortune magazine dubs Gramm "McCain's econ brain," and he has indeed shaped both the philosophy and specifics of the candidate's economic policies, including: (1) his meek, blame-the-victims response to Wall Street's unregulated schemers who crashed America's housing market; (2) his proposal to raise America's retirement age and partially privatize Social Security; (3) his embrace of Bush's tax cuts and his call to further slash corporate taxes; and (4) his energy "policy" of drill-drill-drill, a position he used to scorn and mock.
Then came July 9, when Gramm apparently had a political brain freeze.
He blurted out in an interview that he has no patience with all these stories in the news about people facing hard times. America has become "a nation of whiners," pronounced the economic doctor, adding that the hoi polloi are wallowing in "a mental recession."
Bad politics. McCain quickly disavowed this unauthorized eruption, but he really could not have been surprised, for it came right out of the inner Gramm that we Texans (and McCain) have long known. He simply has no empathy for the real-life problems of the great unwashed, routinely dismissing folks who are beneath him on the economic ladder. Consider this golden gem from Gramm on the matter of poverty in America: "We're the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat." As I said of him some years ago, anyone needing a heart transplant should try to get Phil's it's never been used.
Gramm's whiner comment was too crass, so he had to be jettisoned. Ironically, he left whining. "Democrats want to attack me," he sniffed.
He's gone from public view, but don't think that McCain's econ brain has truly departed--and don't be surprised to see him resurface as secretary of the treasury if McCain wins.
There are others, of course, who have McCain's ear on policy matters (Sen. Joe Lieberman, for example, the one-time Democrat who keeps popping up with McCain on his foreign jaunts, including his recent trip to the Mideast and his "free trade" road show in Latin America). But the overall cast of his foreign-policy team is rigidly corporate. Policy proponents for workers, consumers, the environment, small farmers, and other broad segments of America (the vast majority of us) are noticeably absent from his inner circle. If he is elected president, no doubt he would consider the needs of the larger public, but it appears that those needs would be submitted from us outsiders to an insider group that now resembles McCain Inc.
Stephen Pizzo - News for Real
It’s a question bothering at least as many Republicans as Democrats this morning. Why did John McCain pick an untested, first-term governor of Alaska for the second highest office in the land?
The answer is in the numbers. McCain’s handlers had hoped they could sidestep the Republican Party’s narrow-minded evangelical base by trying to attract independent voters and disaffected moderates in both parties. If successful, they thought, they could once and for all free the GOP from the grip of the mercurial, easily offended, mean-spirited, anti-choice forces of the evangelical right.
But they figured wrong. Dead wrong.
By last week polls showed that moderates were not moving their way. In fact many were either moving toward Obama or remaining on the sidelines waiting for lightening to strike.
Obama’s selection of elder statesman, Joe Biden, as his running mate moved more of those undecided voters into the Obama camp.
That left McCain with his three short-listers; Romney, Louisiana Gov. Jindal and Lieberman.
By last week it was clear that Romney would not do. Sure he was strong on Republican economic issues, anti-choice, tax cuts and cutting the size of government. But he was a Mormon, and (though it’s ever-so politically incorrect to say it out loud) almost no one likes Mormons, except of course other Mormons. And that’s never more true than among the GOP’s mainstream Christian and Christian evangelical base, who tend to consider Mormons in the same “going to Hell” category as Scientologists. So choosing Romney would not do.
Jindal’s problem was he was simply the wrong color. He wasn’t white, but then again he wasn’t an African-American either. He was “something else.” Conservative voters don’t cotton much to “furiners” of any stripe, even if they were born here. It wasn’t so much color, because they don’t like the French either, and few in the world can out-Caucasian the French, except maybe the Germans.
So choosing Jindal would not garner McCain any brownie points (pun intended) from black voters, and certainly very few from the Republican base. So Jindal was out.
Joe Lieberman was a horse of an entirely different color. Lieberman and McCain had done a man-bonding thing during the months they worked together on campaign finance reforms. The two had one thing in common — but it was a big thing to them; few in their own parties liked or trusted either of them. So, like two high school nerd outcasts, they formed their own club in which they were the only members.
But GOP higher ups and lower downs were unanimous — if McCain chose Lieberman as his running mate the floor of the GOP convention would look less like Woodstock and more like Chicago 1968. So lonesome Joe was lonesome, once again.
With just a week to go McCain had not found a running mate capable of attracting the moderates and independents he required to displace the GOP’s narrow, almost Talibanish, Christian evangelicals.
The self-described “maverick”of his party was in a real pickle. And when John McCain finds himself in a pickle, he shoots from hip. McCain and his closest handlers determined that, since there was virtually no chance he could win enough moderates back to the party to swing the deal, he had to go put out fresh bait for the GOP’s good old reliable evangelical sheep.
But to do that he had to find the right shepherd for them to follow. He also hoped to capitalize on disaffection within Democratic ranks over what some liberal women voters saw as Hillary’s mistreatment during the primaries.
Those two points, when triangulated, led straight to Sarah Palin, an evangelical Christian who wants to outlaw all abortions, has five kids of her own, a manly-man husband who shoots large animals and burns gasoline in pursuit of snowmobile glory and on top of all that she was a 40-something woman — the Hillary voter’s demographic.
Those were pretty much all her qualifications, but they were enough for John McCain.
His calculation that Palin would energize biblically lobotomized evangelical Christians was a no-brainer for the no-brainers:
“Fortunately, Bristol is following her mother and father’s example of choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation,” (evangelical leader) Tony Perkins said. “We are committed to praying for Bristol and her husband-to-be and the entire Palin family as they walk through a very private matter in the eyes of the public.” (Full)
But on the other front — attracting disaffected female Hillary voters — not so good.
“(Palin and Hillary) are ideological opposites,” said Kim Spotts, a 52-year-old nurse, explaining why she supported Clinton but would not be swayed by Palin. She said she would vote instead for Obama…”I would not vote for her (Palin) under any circumstance. … I really dislike her strong, conservative religious views,” said Clinton-turned-Obama supporter Barbara Patchen, a 47-year-old homemaker, as she walked her dog in a park. (Full)
Then there’s all the gestational craziness that followed McCain’s announcement by about 2 nanoseconds.
* - Palin had a baby with Downs Syndrome four months earlier…or did she?
* - Was the baby really that of her unmarried 15-year old daughter?
* - A day later: No the baby was not Bristol’s baby.
* - A day later: But yes, Bristol herself is pregnant. (A flesh and blood threat to evangelicals who have staked their entire solution for changing millions of years of young human sexual activity with one word: abstinence.)
With the GOP convention looming just hours away, McCain supporters tried to turn Palin’s lemons into evangelical lemonade.
* - Palin did not end her pregnancy when she learned she was carrying a Downs Syndrome fetus. In other words, she “chose life.”
* - Palin’s unmarried, child-daughter, was also going to go through with her pregnancy. They (the family) again, chose life.
But what did all this say about the Palin family’s commitment to the holy cause of promoting abstinence if they couldn’t even succeed with their own daughter?
Those in favor of comprehensive sex education were also quick to note that Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy was the logical outcome of years of disinformation pumped into their kid’s heads by the religious right about methods of birth control, particularly their teachings that “condoms really don’t work.”
So, kids pumped full of such nonsense have been left with a clear choice; if,. despite their best efforts to resist, their hormones suddenly send them hurtling towards coitus, don’t bother stopping to ask their partner use protect, because it doesn’t work anyway. Because those who say they know what God wants, says so.”
Old timers and clear-thinkers in the GOP were, and remain, stunned by McCain’s choice. At a time when the economy is heading for the kind of trouble not seen in nearly a century, and the world order is coming apart at the seams, McCain picked a No. 2 whose only serious executive experience is her one year as governor of Alaska.
I almost feel sorry for Sarah Palin. I say almost because she could have said “no.” but instead leap at the opportunity. Can you imagine what this poor woman is going to go through in the next 60 days.
- She has an infant, special needs child, plus four more kids at home. Make your own judgments about that, and I admit, if it were Palin’s husband instead of her, no one would be asking this question. But I don’t know any mothers who would return to work three days after giving birth to a severely handicapped baby. The fact that Palin did exactly that will speak volumes to all those home-schooling evangelical moms McCain figured would applaud this choice. The right’s “family values”theme seems at odds with such behavior. Fair? Unfair? Doesn’t matter when it comes to the religious right.
- The office of vice president is more than a full-time job. It’s more like two and half full-time jobs, which again puts in question Palin’s pro-family bone fides. One handicapped infant, and four other minors at home, including an unmarried pregnant child in crisis. … hmmmm. Instead of tending to these twin family crisis’ Sarah has decided dive head first into the maelstrom of presidential politics. Hmmm. where can we find that in Family Values Handbook?
- Then comes the two months of hand to hand combat facing ahead of her. Can you imagine how many hours of each day Sahara Palin will spend being pumped full of all data she lacks for this task; which nations hate other nations, which nations are currently at one another’s throats and why, and which ones are likely to be at each other’s throats and why. Then come her courses on national and international finance, at a time when even seasoned economists admit they have few clues to what’s wrong or how to fix what’s wrong.
She’s going to need all that schooling, because she will have to debate Joe Biden on national television. One misstep, one dumb answer or clueless moment and McCain is toast. Imagine the pressure on the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population around 6000.
I guess we could look at all that and have admiration for a woman who would be willing to run such a thankless and merciless gauntlet. And, under different circumstances, I would too. But John McCain is 72 years old. He’s had several bouts with cancer and, while he’s dodged those bullets, there’s no guarantee his run of luck will last four more years.
If the worst happens that former mayor of tiny Wasilla (Sicily Alaska by another name) would find herself running the most powerful nation on earth, but at a time when our power has been squandered on the wrong wars in the wrong places at the wrong times. And our economy has been gutted by fiscal policies only Charles Keating could love.
Republicans claim that Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama, which is true, but only if you narrow the definition of “executive experience” down to Palin’s time running her local PTA and school board, her tenure of mayor of a tiny rural hamlet and her one year — tumultuous — year as governor of a state awash in oil money. Then you have to discount entirely Obama’s stellar academic record, his years in the trenches of depressed South Chicago, his remarkable rise to US Senator and his breathtaking rise as his party’s nominee for president of the United States.
Republicans have done their best to beef up Palin’s foreign policy resume, noting that “she’s governor of the state virtually next door to Russia.” Well, I live about 8 miles as the crow flies form Francis Ford Coppola’s Sonoma County estate. So, if that’s the new qualification standard, I ought to head straight to Hollywood, Google map in hand, and demand a movie deal.
Then there’s the little matter of whether McCain’s choice for VP of the United States of America even wants to be part of the United States of America:
Palin Member of Alaskan Separatist Group
Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence party (AIP) before becoming an elected Republican official, and recorded a video message for the AIP convention this year. The party’s chief goal is securing Alaska a vote on seceding from the US, a goal that AIP leaders believe the state was denied before it became part of the US almost 50 years ago.
Yet it is the AIP’s motto, “Alaska First, Alaska Always”, that may cause the most trouble for McCain. The Republican’s campaign slogan this year is “Country First”.
At the convention where Palin’s video was played, the AIP vice-chairman, George Clark, told the audience that she was an AIP member before getting her first political post as mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska.
“But you get along to go along — she eventually joined the Republican party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that,” Clark said. “She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.”
Palin suggested in a July interview with CNBC news that she would insist on making Alaskan issues a high priority before agreeing to serve as a vice-presidential candidate. “We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans, and for the things we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the US, before I can even start addressing that question,” she said. (Full)
Now, having said all that, I am not about to predict that McCain is going to lose in November because of his choice of a laughably unqualified running mate. After all, in a similar attempt to appear “with it” George H. Bush picked Dan Quayle — a man who makes sonny boy, George W. Bush, look and sound like a Rhodes Scholar — and he still won the presidency.
Because we are still a nation of halves; half of us are interested in being at the point of the spear, pushing the social envelope into the 21st century, continuing mankind’s always difficult march towards an more and more inclusive, humane and caring social order.
And the other half — who want to circle the wagons against change, just like their religious counterparts in the Muslim world. Despite all the obvious reasons she’s not in the least bit qualified to be America’s co-pilot (or, god forbid, pilot,) Sarah Palin is precisely their kind of candidate.
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