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Of All the Reasons McCain’s Palin Pick is Awful, Evidence of Her Abuse of Power is the Worst
By Dave Lindorff
There are many reasons why most Americans should be turned off by
Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s last-minute choice of
Sarah Palin as his running mate.
She’s an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism and
thinks this fantasy belongs in the school science curriculum alongside
evolution. She’s opposed to the right to abortion. She thinks global
warming is not a proven phenomenon. She favors drilling for oil in the
Arctic Refuge and damn the environmental consequences. This supposedly
family-centered “hockey mom “is happy about sending her 18-year-old son
off to war in Iraq, even as Iraq is trying to shoo us out of the
country and even as the president is tacitly admitting that the whole
thing is a bust by agreeing to a timetable for withdrawal.
But the real reason Palin, the former mayor of little Wasilla,
Alaska (pop. 5000 when she was there) and two-year governor of Alaska,
is a disastrous pick for the vice presidency on a ticket headed by an
ailing 72-year-old presidential candidate who has suffered two bouts of
melanoma and who is showing early signs of dementia, is the evidence
that she has abused power as governor.
We’ve had eight years of a president and vice president who have
abused their executive power, using the awesome capabilities of the
state to spy on Americans, inserting fake news in the media, pressuring
news organizations not to run important stories, silencing protests by
penning in all critics in remote “free speech” zones, attacking
individual critics with White House-directed campaigns that border on
treason, as in the case of the outing of CIA undercover operative
Valerie Plame, whose husband had criticized a Bush argument for
invading Iraq, and threatening government scientists who wanted to
report their legitimate findings on climate change.
We have seen over these past eight years just what abuse of power can do to destroy democratic government and a free society.
So now we have Gov. Palin, whom evidence suggests may have abused
her power as governor of Alaska to fire the state’s public security
director after he blocked her efforts to destroy the career of a
low-level state trooper who happened to be her former brother-in-law,
because she wanted to avenge a sister engaged in an ugly post-divorce
custody dispute.
Published allegations would show that both Gov. Palin’s husband
Todd Palin, and members of her staff, repeatedly called and harangued
state Public Safety Director Walt Monegan, who says he was “pressured”
to fire the brother-in-law, Officer Mike Wooten. The Palins have
charged that Wooten drank beer in his patrol car, hunted moose
illegally and that he once fired his taser at his 11-year-old step
son—charges that Wooten has denied. They have also claimed that Wooten
threatened Sarah Palin’s father—also denied by Wooten.
Also interesting—the charges that were made against Wooten were for
things that he allegedly did years before, and for which, where
appropriate, he had already been disciplined or exonerated by his
employer. That taser incident, if it happened, was when the stepson was
11. The boy, now 17, reportedly lives these days with the allegedly
trigger-happy step dad. The alleged beer and hunting incidents also
predate the divorce, which raises questions of why, if those charges
warranted Wooten’s firing from the police force, the supposedly
ethics-obsessed Palin would not have raised them back at the time with
his superiors.
Palin has improbably denied that she had “anything to do with” her
husband’s calls to Monegan. She subsequently fired Monegan and got his
successor to fire her sister’s ex from the police force. (Her pick to
replace Monegan is being accused of sexual harassment!).
The Republican state legislature has voted $100,000 to fund an
independent investigation into the abuse of power charges against
Palin, and there is talk of a possible impeachment proceeding, too.
Palin has denied that she did anything wrong. The investigation, which
is expected to take three months to complete, will drag on through the
entire presidential election campaign.
One thing is clear: Whatever Palin’s troglodyte social and
political views, Americans don’t need another vice president who views
public office as an opportunity to abuse his or her power for personal
or political vendettas.
The other thing that is clear in all this is that McCain, who is
running for president in part on a claim of competence, has certainly
demonstrated a lack of same in his naming of Palin, whom he reportedly
only decided on this past week and after only speaking with her last
Sunday by phone. (His campaign says he also met her once briefly last
February at a state governors’ convention in Washington.)
The Alaskan “troopergate” abuse of power scandal, which will now
play out through the coming weeks, clearly was not vetted by McCain and
his staff, and no doubt will turn off a lot of one natural Republican
constituency: law enforcement officers, who expect to have any charges
leveled against them handled by due process.
If even some of the charges against Palin are true, her actions
should make her unfit for the office of vice president, particularly on
the ticket with a man who is pushing the actuarial envelope in running
for president.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
- dlindorff's blog
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"executive experience" ?????
Just what does "executive experience" mean? The word appears to be the new buzz word to soften the blow that Palin brings to the republican party. To my way of thinking, "executive experience" means that one has the experience to make hard decisions in times of economic health and adversity. Here, it is clear that Palin has NO experience in making any kind of decision during times of economic adversity. For the last several years, while the price of oil has sent many of us in the lower 48 states into bankruptcy, Alaska has experienced an economic surplus due to the price of oil. She may claim that she fights with the big oil companies but I believe a closer look at that relationship will yeild a relationship that is quit different than the one she'd like us all to believe exits. I believe that she's as tightly tied to big oil as Bush and Chaney are. That's how Alaska has prospered at the expense of the lower 48. MORE and MORE of the same.
As far as her struggle with ethics legislations goes, it's all do as I say not as I do. The legislation is for others to follow, not for her to follow. The Commissionor fired by Palin, stated on the air that he had personally spoken to Palin several times regarding the firing of her ex-briother-in-law. He explained that Palin's allegations were investigated and no evidence of any wrong doing by the trooper were found. As a supporter of the U.S. and State constitutions, she should have let it drop right there. If I, as a public servant, used my office for personal gain I'd be fired.
I believe that if the Democrates have the guts to really look into her handling of her office as the gov', they may find that she is not the super women many claim her to be.
And speaking of super women, dare I even suggest how selfish her acceptance of the nomination will be? She has five children, one with very special needs. Yet she will entrust the raisng of her childen to others so that she can "beautify" the republican ticket. I think it was Rush, the war monger, that said something like..."it's the republican ticket that has the babe." I thik that says it all. There is one, and only one reason that McCain chose her for the ticket and that was to "beautify" it. Well, this isn't a beauty contest and I for one am insulted that McCain thinks that any women will change their vote simple because he put a pretty womern on his ticket. But then again, he's a Bush republican, so I showld have expected nothing less.
Republican pundents have suggested the Palin is a saint because, even after being told that she might have a Down's Syndrome baby, she elected to contiinue with the pregnancy. Well, first off, every doctors tells every pregnant women over 35 years fo age that she may have a Down's Syndrome baby. The real issue is whether the condition was confirmed and did she choose to continue the pregnancy after having that information. Secondly, she had no other choice. To do otherwise would have irreversibly demolished her career in public office as a republican. It's premature to nominate Palin for sainthood just yet.
Just a thought
McCain loves to Gamble . . .
This was brought up and confirmed when he chose Palin for VP. If this is what he wants to do with our country, how can we possibly even consider this man in his second childhood for President of our nation? He loves to play Craps. He just confirmed it by playing craps with his own candidacy! This is terrifying!
The Evil Empire vs The Future of America
I don't think Hillary Clinton campaign supporters will vote for Palin like some suggest. It seems like McCains choice has been an insult to women who supported Clinton. I saw Cindy McCain talk to George S. on his show and she doesn't sound like too much of a thinking person. Not to mention, ever since I can remember, for the past eight years, she is with him in every news clip. Of course women should support their husband, but it seems so ridiculous when I watch this. She is always two feet by his side in EVERY clip! She watches him like a puppy. It's just crazy. Laura Bush has more individualism than Cindy!Laura at least thinks for herself.
McCain is not a "maverick" as some suggest, but he sounds like he is too much a risk taker to be President.
The Republican convention has a sign posted all over that says "country first". They must have decided people don't come first, before country. The preamble of the Constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,...
I hear that Palin's husband works in the oil industry there in Alaska (Bush/Cheney again).
neo conservatism 101
The nomination of Sarah Palin reminds me of nothing more than the selection of Clarence Thomas for the US Supreme Court back in George H.W. Bush's administration. The appropriateness of Justice Thomas to fill the vacuum left by Thurgood Marshall's passing is analogous to the nomination of Sarah Palin as a bait and switch VP candidate (and likely eventual President) for the frustrated supporters of Hillary Clinton. But wait a minute. Wasn't the Supreme Court controversy a little before Carl Rove's time? Yes, Carl Rove's time was and is George W's and potentially McCain's administration, but the amoral Republican neo con realpolitik goes back to the days of Jean Kirkpatrick and the Reagan administration when allegations of treason and high crimes were successfully blown off in the Iran Contra hearings. While candidate Obama is now excoriated for daring to suggest doing what our current president is belatedly doing: negotiating with Iran, the Reagan administration was then successfully evading the fact that it traded arms with Iran to secure the release of American hostages, scheduling that to occur approximately on the first day of a new regime in America. I agree that George W Bush deserves impeachment but I do not advocate civil war in our country.
Without civil war the only way to dismantle the unholy alliance of neo conservatives, neo Christians, and neo Nationalists is to turn these factions against each other. But so long as neo conservatism provides the intellectual muscle to spin any inconvenient truth to serve its purpose, we might remember the words of J Edgar Hoover " trust a communist to be a communist." I'm glad the paranoid and corrupt days of McCarthy and Hoover are passed, but certainly not as glad of it as the founders of the neo-conservative movement who, sometime in the mid 1960's, seem to have defected enmasse from their YPSL and Trotskyite roots. (Craig Unger: "American Armageddon") I believe that many people flirted briefly with Communism and suffered for it, but not so the American intellectuals who morphed into movement conservatives who still dominate American politics. They never outgrew their lust to surpass Karl Marx as mavens of a hermetically pure alternate universe.. In my lifetime socialists and preachers of the social gospel have been equated with Communists; then the word liberal became a perjorative equated with secular humanism and ergo with godless communism. Why not expose the roots of neo-conservatism to be in an affinity group of intellectuals who despise the religious base and nativist patriots they court every election time to guarantee the entrenched interests of the greatest economic winners among us and serve a patriotic aim greater than the earthly interests of our nation? Because I admire Al Gore in his second career, after hearing Joe Lieberman address the Republcan loyal in St Paul I am almost glad for Albert that he escaped the martyrdom of a fatal presidency. The atmosphere was certainly lethal for him in Y2K, and Lieberman waiting in the wings ultimately may have served neither the aims of Gore nor McCain. The only thing I'd nominate Joe for is candidate for the Norman Podhoretz look-alike contest.