UPDATE NOTE: Thanks to all of you who soldiered on through the earlier version of this post with its really strange moments in typing. I was posting from my Blackberry and the flight attendant was very, very insistant about me shutting the cell phone down for takeoff (as well she should have been). However, in trying to get the post up before she grabbed the Blackberry and smashed it against the overhead bin, a few unfortunate things happened.
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I’m on a plane waiting to take off for Montana for a much needed head-clearing week along the Flathead River, so I’ll make this quick: In most of this morning’s papers there are articles that are questioning exactly how much vetting McCain and company actually did on Palin before she was offered the nomination. And the more questions are asked, the more it appears that the answer is: Not A Hell of a Lot.
Leaving aside, for the moment, what it suggests about McCain’s judgment if the vetting of Sarah Palin was as minimal as some are suggesting, below are some clips from some of this morning’s pieces:
From the LA Times.
On Monday, the McCain campaign dispatched lawyers to Alaska in a move described as an attempt to manage a growing crowd of journalists who have traveled there to inspect Palin’s background. But the move raises the impression that the McCain campaign didn’t know everything about his No. 2 and is now racing to learn what it can while trying to avoid tough questions about the Arizona senator’s decision-making process.
“I really hope McCain did his homework,” said David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. “I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn’t.”
[SNIP]Most dangerous of all, McCain’s team does not seem to know what new development, if any, might grab the public’s attention.
One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate’s closest supporters as “keeping their fingers crossed” in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin’s potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain’s short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.
[SNIP]
Palin could face questions in on other facets of her past, such as her 1990s membership in 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.
Another potentially troublesome story line is Palin’s past support for federally funded projects that she now claims to have opposed — a key piece of her reformist image to which McCain was most attracted.
As mayor of Wasilla, Palin made regular trips to Washington seeking federal aid. The city received $26.9 million in earmarks during her tenure from fiscal year 2000 to 2003, according to the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks pork barrel spending.
As The Times reported Monday, Palin has requested 31 earmarks in next year’s federal budget worth about $197 million. On Friday, she portrayed herself as a champion of curbing the “abuses” of earmark spending.
AND some clips from the New York Times
…With time running out — and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable — he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.
“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”
[SNIP]
In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.
Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.
“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”
The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.
State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.
Maybe there was some rigorous vetting process that has yet to be uncovered. But right now, this suggests impulsivity. Not deliberative judgment.
Gotta almost feel sorry for the old geezer McCain, he has to get someone in charge who will take control of the escalating clown show now going on because I think that the American voter is fast losing confidence in McCain’s own competence and decision making capabilities. He must stop the bleeding immediately because his mouthpieces crying foul, wailing about the awful rumors on the liberal blogs, and spinning the never ending soap opera from Alaska just isn’t enough IMHO.
Mccain’s seeming lack of interest in the vetting process and what now seems his weakness in the face of pressure from the extreme right wing and evangelical advisor’s(he wanted Lieberman but was pressured into going with Palin?), is fueling suspicion that maybe his age is an issue and that he is not strong enough or interested enough to make a serious run at the White House.
In contrast to the tight, together, inspiring, well organized and entertaining Democratic National Convention the poor GOP show in the twin cities ( yes unfortunately delayed by Hurricane Gustav, but was this a sign from above?), has been a disaster of PR and inspiration.
Now the GOP Burgermeisters have changed their minds and are saying Dubya will address the convention, Oh Yeah that’ll go over big in River City USA.
More from Maureen Dowd in the NY Times, and maybe this is what is becoming apparent to the US voter now.
“”Enthusiastic Republicans don’t see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge, because they expect Republicans to put an underqualified “babe,†as Rush Limbaugh calls her, on the ticket. They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West, like the previous Miss Congeniality types Dan Quayle and W., and then letting them learn on the job. So they crash into the globe a few times while they’re learning to drive, what’s the big deal?””
Ouch!
Good morning Celeste, you write… “link lator” and “MORE LATOR,AT NEXT STOP.” I too am a bad spell”o”r before I’ve had my coffee, perhaps you were thinking of percolator. (-;
You could drain Starbucks and still spell like an Eighth Grader, don quixote. Oops that was santiago who said that about spelling. Oh yeah that’s right, they’re the same person.
What are you saying betcher bippy? No way Don Quixote could be Santiago, just ask them. They could not be the same person because they talk to each other.
http://chanfles.com/blog/?p=888#comments
‘
it’s called schizoid behaviour and no stranger to either of him….. lol…Keep it down the teacher’s coming back.
ABC 7 reporting that the boyfriend’s My Space page (recently pulled) had said he was in a committed relationship but didn’t want kids in the near future — oops! Only way this situation IS relevant to Sarah Palin’s candidacy is, she’s been an advocate for abstinence only sex “education,” which clearly didn’t work for her daughter. Conservatives have reason to object to the other extreme, parents who throw up their hands and say, “if you’re going to have sex anyway, then…” but the Palin/Nancy Reagan “just say no” isn’t enough. This should open up a conversation about helping students find a more cautious middle ground. Also, she’s promised to be there for Bristol in helping start her family but if elected, would have to leave her behind in Alaska — legitimate questions about a conservative mother’s role.
Sarah (graduate of U of Idaho in journalism) does make for good sound bites even without the scandals (the “someone would have to explain to me, just what does a V. P. do, every day?” YouTube video is precious), but has some good ones, too: “In Alaska we don’t want bigger government. We want a government which does a few big things well.”
But I have to be in awe of a woman who insists on giving a prepared luncheon speech and then taking a long flight home to give birth after her water’s broken, and who jumps right back into the fray three days after birth. Must be all that training, getting up pre-dawn to hunt moose with her dad before going to school. Like the old hunter-gatherer archetypes. I’m just enjoying the spectacle of the talking heads and politicos in total melt-down over this.
ABC News reports:
Is the McCain campaign afraid of an ‘October surprise’ involving vice-presidential pick Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska?
The Alaska state senator running an investigation of Gov. Palin says the McCain campaign is using stall tactics to prevent him from releasing his final report by Oct. 31, four days before the November election.
“It’s likely to be damaging to the Governor,” said Senator Hollis French, a Democrat, appointed the project manager for a bi-partisan State Senate Legislative Counsel Committee investigation of claims that Palin abused her office to get the Alaska public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, fired.
An Anchorage Daily News story suggests that Palin’s lawyer is helping stall the investigation.
WBC reference: Palin/Nancy Reagan “just say no” isn’t enough.
Not trying to start a fight or be snarky, but wasn’t Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” about drugs and not abstinence education. I actually am raising this because I believe in fairness for Nancy Reagan, who always struck me as a fairly typical wealthy LA-type (i.e. kind of a mix of liberal and conservative, depending on the particular issue.) I don’t think she was a crazy anti-choice or anti-contraception absolutist, but more like someone who was pro-at least some degree of choice and for birth control information being available to teens – but kept her mouth shut about it out of discretion and respect for Ronnie’s “delicate condition” with some GOP base folks who were more mean-spirited and fanatical on hot-button social issues than the Reagans happened to be. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Wikipidia has a while entry devoted just to the Just Say No Campaign, says that while it was indeed initially a tv ad campaign to shore up the “US War on Drugs” in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s…”Eventually, this also expanded the realm of ‘Just Say No’ to violence, premarital sex and other vices that young people might try.” (Odd wording, to include violence as a “vice that young people might try,” but there it is.)
Didn’t know about the expansion – I think the drug thing got the biggest play – but I’m still not convinced that because she campaigned to “Just Say No” to premarital sex, Nancy Reagan also held what I – and I think you – would consider extremist views on the issues of choice or teen-education re: contraceptives. No biggie, but I still think Nancy might be getting a bad rap if she’s equated with Palin. Probably no way of proving that since part of my point was her discretion on some of these issues.
I also sounds like that expansioin of the “Just Say No” campaign might have taken place (“…and early 1990’s”) after Nancy’s tenure – like maybe it was a Bill Bennett thing.
I can’t believe I’m writing serial posts defending Nancy Reagan’s honor…
I don’t mean to generally equate Nancy with Sarah Palin — she was a moderate conservative, did seem more of a fiscal conservative than a social/moralistic one, and while she may have believed in abstinence before marriage (it’s not such an absurd idea even to mainstream kids today, look at the Jonas Brothers with their chastity rings, and there are large groups of kids from UCLA and USC going to megachurches like Bel Air Presbyterian to hang with other like-minded students — though they definitely seem a small minority), I can’t imagine she’d have ever tried to prevent women from exercising their choice.
As a parent, I feel for the boy if he’s being railroaded into marriage to “save face” for the Palins’ candidacy. Last thing I’d ever want for my kids, boy or girl, as a mother. If Sarah and Bristol want to raise the baby on their own, that’s one thing, but forcing a boy to give us his dreams because they were both naive, is another.
Then again, this kid’s My Space entry sounded like he was just having fun before settling down and didn’t seem to have college in his future anyway, so maybe it’s fine for them. And that IS a reasonable choice for the average working-class family, but unfortunately, adding in the sister and abusive cop ex-husband, they’re sounding more Britney Spears/the Clampetts than anyone we’ve ever had in the White House. Maybe that’s an “elitist” view, but when you consider the Pres and Veep have to hold their own with world leaders, who tend to be more “sophisticated” for better or worse, and appalled by our evangelicals, we don’t want someone reinforcing the image of the American bumpkin. I’m not saying that would be the case — she MIGHT have a fast learning curve, but she sure is looking that way now.
LAST on this: I stand corrected that the Palins are more like Britney Spears’ family/the Clampetts than anyone we’ve had in the White House before: Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer, with his gas station attendant brother who hosted Saudi potentates at his gas station peddling alleged influence, was the worst.
Jimmy was just as religious and untraveled, and look how that turned out: besides the Iranian hostage debacle and his bungling with the Russians, his mantra, my enemy’s enemy is my friend made him befriend dictators like Ceaucescu and enabled him to continue his ethnic cleansing of the Hungarians and other groups lost in the post-Versailles redrawing of national boundaries. He also misread Tito and ignored those ethnic tensions, the Chinese, Latin Americans — about as xenophobic as Bush, it’s just that his bungles weren’t as huge in cost and lives as Iraq.
That’s where I fear most for a McCain/Palin leadership, utter inability to understand the mindset of others who aren’t conservative Christian capitalists intent on replicating our ideas of “freedom.” Biden brings the most to the table in that regard.
Here’s an “Atrios” post quoted in full, because I think it makes a totally valid “WTF?” point…
They Are Family
According to MSNBC, the Palin kids were told their Ohio trip was to celebrate an anniversary. In the dark about the Veep announcement.
I try not to tell people how to parent their kids, but last night I said to Mrs. Atrios something along the lines of, “I don’t know what goes on in their family, but at the very least if I had a pregnant teen daughter and I was asked to be a VP candidate I’d sit down with her and make sure that was ok.”
-Atrios 16:01
GALLUP DAILY: OBAMA HITS 50% FOR FIRST TIME — UP BY 8 PTS…
After mentioning Jimmy Carter’s disastrous foreign policy, I skimmed again some highlights on this issue in “The Real Jimmy Carter,” by Steven F Hayward — a well-argued book whose view reflects that of Henry Kissinger in 1980. Talking about Jimmu’s trifecta of disaster, Kissinger said, “The Carter Administration has managed the extraordinary fear of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our enemies, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of WWII.”
Carter started off well-meaning, declaring “our commitment to Human Rights must be absolute,” repudiating Kissinger- style detente with the Soviet Bloc. He meant partly to reputatiate Ford’s refusal in 75 to meet with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and chose Polish hardliner Brezeziski as national security advisor.
“Before long, however, it became apparent that Carter’s foreign policy was sentimental rather than hardheaded or principled, and laced with a heavy dose of liberal guilt.” Quotes Jeane Kirkpatrick, who called him “the kind of liberal most likely to confound revolution with idealism, change with progress, optimism with resolve.” (SOUND LIKE ANYONE ELSE RUNNING FOR OFFICE?)
Easing up on the Soviets and turning to the sins of America and the west, he “began using human rights as a cudgel against traditional American allies…Implicit was…the conviction that the U.S. had itself been the cause of mny problems of the recent past. And there was more than a hint that America should — and would — do a sort of penance for its presumed sins in Vietnam, Cuba and other areas,” very McGovern-like, summed up in phrases like “No More Pinochets”…”so he began to single out Chile, Argentina and Guatemala while giving a pass to Marxist regimes” like Russia, China and others in Central America.
Hayward makes a powerful point here: “He even turned his greatest criticism on our allies until, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, Carter ‘was unable to distinguish between our friends and enemies, (and) he has adopted our enemies’ views of the world.'”
Particularly relevant to what seems to concern many about the extreme “progressive left”: Part of this meant excusing the totalitarian aspects of Marxist regimes “by accepting their arguments that social and economic ‘justice,’ real “human rights,” including such ‘rights’ as universally provided government jobs, housing and healthcare,” were more important. (The Michael Moore view today.)
Plenty of food for thought as we evaluate both Obama and McCain/Palin.
Uh…what’s the subtitle on that Hayward book ?
Florida suddenly comes into focus on the Obama electoral map, thanks to Sarah:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13098.html
This could spell the difference at the margin of “maybe Obama – not sure” to “definitely anti-McCain/Palin” in a close Florida race by erasing the “crazy preacher” gap with an older demographic.
uh, what? How much are the Obots paying you amyway? It not, how much are you standing to gain, or are you just stupic?
While your posting drivel, do me a favor and tell us what was the subtitle on that book you recommended.
Quoting Jeane Kirkpatrick – a woman who literally embraced the likes of Videla from Argentina who is in jail for trafficking in the children of the citizens who his regime tortured to death and who embraced Augusto Pinochet, a man whose secret police committed an act of state-sponsored terrorism in Washington, DC resulting in the death of a US citizen, while refusing to meet with human rights workers in Chile – to criticize Jimmy Carter maybe one of the most thoroughly asinine things I have ever read on a blog.
Wait til you get a load of the subtitle on the Hayward book, Randy. It’ll all come into focus. Since I can’t seem to shake all vestiges of ad hominem, I’ll note for the record, the book’s publisher was Henry Regnery. Ring a bell ?
I saw it. It’s risible.
Predictable response from the usual chorus.
Still waiting for you to type that subtitle by your own hand…
What was predictable about it? That’s it accurate?
What was factually wrong in my response? Jeane Kirkpatrick never met a right-wing dictator she didn’t like. Reagan was the same way.
I’m sure some of the Soviet dissidents such as Alexander Ginzburg have a much more sensible view of Carter then you do.
via Atros, NatIonal Review conservative writer Byron York makes a very sensible observation from Ground Zero:
“I don’t usually engage in these scenarios, but I’ll do it here. If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.
I should say Ginzburg had a much more sensible view of Carter as he passed away in 2002.
Something interesting is happening with the Palin thing: Social conservatives are using Palin and her family as pawns in political talking points to sell one of their most closely held hot-button issues, denying pregnant women (and especially teenage girls) the choice of abortion, yet any discussion of Palin’s family or personal choices are “off-limits.” There can’t be a double standard here – if GOP delegates and surrogates start putting Palin and her daughter forward as wonderful examples of why it’s God’s will that we ban abortion, they have opened up a discussion that centers on what, frankly, I’d agree should be private. They can’t have it both ways, or start doing Checker’s-speech level whining once that door is opened.
And Jimmy’s still at it with that biased “Apartheid State” book about Israel. He should have left diplomacy to his gas station attendant brother — but clearly he has his fans.
What did I say that was factually wrong? You got nothing.
I’m sure among his fans are those people who face a much-lessened risk of exposure to Guinea Worm from 3.5 million cases in 20 countries to under 10,000 in two countries through the efforts of the Carter Center. The people who have received the 100 million doses of mectizan are fans of Carter as they won’t have to face blindness from onchocerciasis. I’m also sure that the thousands of rural Ethiopians who have received health care for the first time as a result of training by the Carter Center as well as those who don’t have to face trachoma due to the latrines built by the Carter Center and those who have the anti-malarial bed nets donated by the Carter Center are fans of Carter.
WTF did Reagan or Bush the father do after they left office? WTF did Jeane Kirkpatrick do other than bloviate and seek to be an apologist for right-wing torturers?
Keep your knee jerking.
Jimmy Carter bashing is the key to America’s future.
Hayward and Kirkpatrick (and Kissinger and Moynihan) all nailed Carter, and since his views are YOURS (reg/Randy), of course all you can do is deflect the substance by making snotty personal attacks on the commenters and me, as usual. Nastiness is just your kneejerk nature. Read the post. Again. Slowly. Recognize yourselves.
Nothing nasty, WBC. I just brought up facts, none of which you have refuted. N-O-N-E.
You’ve totted up the opinions of a few ideologues.
You have nothing.
Still waiting for a refutation of the facts that I brought up, WBC.
[crickets chirping]
No guts, no glory, no truth. Just chickenshit smears from WBC that are just more of the right’s opinion masquerading as fact.