LFTC: "As Palin Turns"

Begin with this gem: It HAD to happen.  An LFTC reader tells me that a caller on Al Sharpton's radio show said that Michael Jackson was--yep, she said it--murdered by--yep, she said this too--SARAH PALIN.  Think of the advance Sarah will get for THAT book.  Weekly Standard reporter Matthew Continetti has a long piece on why Palin resigned.  MC's stuff is always good, so check it out.

In the spirit of giving the other side a fair chance, here is Peggy Noonan's evisceration of Palin today.  My problem with PN's piece, besides its dripping elitist contempt--not normally PN's style--is that much of what she says about Palin apples to President Obama, in, as bridge players say, spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs & no-trump.  Rich Lowry offers as an example of what 44--whom by implication PN prefers in the White House--is doing, e.g., the "rosy apocalypse" economic program--something that Palin would never have signed onto.

Time reports on the real book deal Palin signed--she will write it, too, having majored in journalism.  Time Magazine's in-depth online (and print) cover story styles Palin as a renegade outsider.  It notes the influence of her Alaskan roots, and the cultural divide between Palin and Washington's elite:

...Palin's unconventional step speaks to an ingrained frontier skepticism of authority — even one's own. Given the plunging credibility of institutions and élites, that's a mood that fits the Palin brand. Résumés ain't what they used to be; they count only with people who trust credentials — a dwindling breed. The mathematics Ph.D.s who dreamed up economy-killing derivatives have pretty impressive résumés. The leaders of congressional committees and executive agencies have decades of experience — at wallowing in red ink, mismanaging economic bubbles and botching covert intelligence.

If ever there has been a time to gamble on a flimsy résumé, ever a time for the ultimate outsider, this might be it. "We have so little trust in the character of the people we elected that most of us wouldn't invite them into our homes for dinner, let alone leave our children alone in their care," writes talk-show host Glenn Beck in his book Glenn Beck's Common Sense, a pox-on-all-their-houses fusillade at Washington. Dashed off in a fever of disillusionment with those in power, Beck's book is selling like vampire lit, with more than 1 million copies in print.

Palin monitored the online and other media assaults on her, despite getting advice to ignore it.  She detected the hand of Obama chieftain Rahm Emanuel and an Alaskan surrogate in targeting her.  An added factor in her decision, the article suggests, was sheer boredom, of the "Once you've been to Paris, it is hard to go back to the farm" variety:

Something else might have been eating at Palin too. Call it boredom or impatience: Juneau must seem awfully small compared with the national stage. A state representative from Anchorage, Democrat Mike Doogan, recalls the traditional opening of the legislature on a January day — the same day Obama was sworn in as President. Doogan was chosen to pay a ceremonial visit to the governor to announce that the session had begun. Dressed in his best suit, with a plastic iris in his lapel, he waited in Palin's office as she finished a meeting. "She wasn't particularly happy to see us or interested in anything other than getting the ceremony over as quickly as possible," he says. "And this from a woman who had served cupcakes for my birthday at the mansion just six months earlier." That was the last he saw of the governor in Juneau.

Confined by governance, besieged by targeting, she cast them off, without a clear plan for the future, the authors conclude:

Whatever else we take away from Palin's abrupt announcement that she is quitting, she has proved that her low opinion of government includes even her own powers and prerogatives. As she put it in her farewell speech — the one that began "Hi, Alaska!" — the governor's office is no longer a place for "productive, fulfilled people ... choosing to wisely utilize precious time." A lot of conservative politicians stop wanting smaller government the minute the government is them. Then they discover that they like the trappings, earmarks and junkets, the plums for friends. For Palin, the job offered little more than "lame-duck status — hit the road, draw the paycheck and milk it."

So, bye, Alaska! She made her declaration on Independence Day weekend as a symbol, she says, of her new and exhilarating freedom. She's headed to a bookstore, a television set, a convention hall near you, armed with an anti-résumé. Cut loose from her obligations to her huge and awesome homeland, her message remains quintessentially Alaskan. Where she comes from — the last American frontier — the past is irrelevant, the rules are suspended, and limitations are for losers.

Time reporter Jay Newton-Small iinterviewed Palin this week.  It is well worth a read, but here are some notable excerpts:

Is [Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell now better] because you feel you don't have a mandate anymore?
It's not that. It's that our administration is so stymied and paralyzed because of a political game that has been chosen to be played by critics who have discovered loopholes in the ethics reform that I championed that allows them to continually, continually bombard the state with frivolous ethics-violation charges, with lawsuits, with these fishing expeditions. We win the lawsuits, we win the ethics charges, we win all that — but it comes at such great cost. The distraction, the waste of time and money, the public's time and money — it's insane to continue down this road. And Alaskans who have paid attention to what's going on, they understand that.

Palin added, as part of an answer to a later question on moving forward:

Other governors probably could travel around and campaign for others and speak candidly, using their First Amendment rights to express what they feel about a person, a candidate, a position. I get hit with ethics-violation charges if I do that. I mean, literally, I do. The first day back from the campaign trail, I met with reporters in my office who kind of bombarded me there in the lobby of the office. I answered their questions and I got hit with an ethics complaint, and it cost a lot of money to fight things like that, and that's ridiculous.

At one point during the campaign you said Hillary Clinton whines a little bit too much about being in the public eye. Do you now sort of sympathize with her?
What I said was, it doesn't do her or anybody else any good to whine about the criticism. And that's why I'm trying to make it clear that the criticism, I invite that. But freedom of speech and that invitation to constructively criticize a public servant is a lot different than the allowance to lie, to continually falsely accuse a public servant when they have proven over and over again that they have not done what the accuser is saying they did. It doesn't cost them a dime to continue to accuse. That's a whole different situation. But that's why when I talk about the political potshots that I take or my family takes, we can handle that. I can handle that. I expect it. But there has to be opportunity provided for truth to get out there, and truth isn't getting out there when the political game that's being played right now is going to continue, and it is. When you realize that it doesn't cost them a dime and it's a fun sport for some, you know it's going to continue. I love Alaska too much to put her through this in a lame-duck session.

Two of [President Obama's] big platform issues now are universal health care and your favorite issue, energy, his global-warming plan. What do you think of his positions on both?
His cap-and-trade agenda is a cap-and-tax agenda, and it's going to drive the cost of consumer goods and the cost of energy so extremely high that our nation is going to start exporting even more jobs to China and to other countries that do not have the corporate tax or the equivalent of the corporate tax that the cap-and-trade — I call it cap-and-tax — agenda is going to usher in. What he needs to be understanding is, we have the domestic supplies of energy in America. It's conventional sources — oil, gas, coal, it's nuclear — and we have the renewable sources here in America. But if we're not allowed to drill and develop those conventional sources in this transition period between now and when we can rely more on alternative sources, we're going to become more and more reliant on foreign sources of energy and importing more and more goods because they're going to be cheaper over there to produce, and our country is going to be in a world of hurt. And that, of course, has so much to do with his economic policy in thinking that it's O.K. to borrow money from other countries to fund this government largesse that he's believing in. It doesn't make any sense. We need to develop responsibly our natural resources of energy here. This will provide the jobs here, the true economic stimulus is developing our domestic, safe supplies of energy here, and Alaska is the place to look to contribute.

And health care?
And health care too. I remember certainly on the campaign trail, John McCain and his ideas — basically, bottom line, allowing businesses to afford to pay for health care, to provide health care and to give employees options, and Obama scoffed at that. His campaign thought that that was ridiculous. It's funny now to hear him kind of go to some of John McCain's ideas. John McCain had some good ideas about bolstering the economy through businesses so that families could afford to pay for health care and making sure that no one was falling through the cracks and not receiving health care. One way you do that is to reduce the corporate tax on our small businesses especially in America. You're going to see Obama increase those taxes on small businesses — whether he admits it today or not, he's going to. One thing reporters aren't asking the Administration is — it's such a simple question and people around here in the real world, outside of Washington, D.C., want reporters to ask — President Obama, how are you going to pay for this $1 [trillion] or $2 [trillion] or $3 trillion health-care plan? How are you going to pay off the stimulus package, those borrowed dollars? How are you going to pay for so many things that you are proposing and you are implementing? Americans deserve to know what the plan is to fund these things, health care included.

Palin's Choice: Inside or Outside?  Palin's choice will likely center upon how she judges she can best advance her issues and cultural agenda.  For now, a government position seems unlikely.  Getting elected to the House of Representatives would make her a junior member in an institution run by the opposition party, dictatorially, in which the minority has no power.  Getting into the Senate would make her a junior member in a club, part of a minority (albeit with some power, unlike in the House), and probably, as happened with Hillary, confined by seniority to junior status, not in the top leadership.

Serving in a GOP administration as Energy Secretary would fit her issue knowledge and experience, but a Democratic Congress could target her using the many weapons Congress has, such as investigations, hearings, etc., to cut her down to size and frustrate her tenure.  The Department of Energy, in the event, has been mostly a backwater during its 33 years of existence.  Better is her being appointed to run an energy independence commission, either by a GOP president, or by a think tank to head a high-profile private effort.

More likely, she will try to use her star power to influence issues from outside: raising funds for favored candidates, speaking out, perhaps hosting a radio or, better yet, with her telegenic looks, a TV show.  From outside, she can control the agenda in ways that an inside position rarely enables holders to do.

Bottom Line. Sarah Palin has a future, to be sure.  Speeches and at least one book are already teed up.  It seems to me inconceivable that she will run in 2012, and probably not even in 2016.  In 2020 she will turn 56.  Meanwhile she will, I think, let most of her children grow into young adulthood, hoping they will be less in the gun-sights of those suffering from Palin Derangement Syndrome.

What has been a ten month soap opera, As Palin Turns, comes now to the silver screen.