Palin: Good bye, and thanks for the nice "title"...

Sarah Palin's July 4 Facebook statement justifying her decision to resign lets slip a narcissist's view of what it means to hold a position of authority:

For months now, I have consulted with friends and family, and with the Lieutenant Governor, about what is best for our wonderful state. I even made a few administrative changes over that course in time in preparation for yesterday. We have accomplished so much and there’s much more to do, but my family and I determined after prayerful consideration that sacrificing my title helps Alaska most....

I shared with you yesterday my heartfelt and candid reasons for this change; I’ve never thought I needed a title before one’s name to forge progress in America.

Sacrificing my title...you'd think that the governor's office was a nominal honor, like an honorary degree or a baronetcy. No whisper of awareness that a chief executive might owe her constituents her best efforts to steer the state through difficult times to the end of the term for which she was elected. Assuming, that is, that her ability to perform her duties is not fatally impaired, of which she's so far given no indication.

And speaking of that four-year term, note one more casual misrepresentation in this self-serving, delusional communique:

We have accomplished more during this one term than most governors do in two.

Wouldn't that be "during this 5/8 of a term"?

Hopeful developments in Iran

As Khamenei and Ahmadinejad continue to arrest and torture protesters and ramp up threats against Mousavi, Karroubi and their supporters, two more hopeful signs arise of resistance within Iran's ruling elite:

1) A group of top-tier religious leaders has ramped up its opposition to the official election results and the crackdown, the NYT reports:

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible...

The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.

It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.

“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.

Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”

2) Rafsanji, still cryptic, appears to point toward some solution other than acquiescence to the official election results. CNN:

"People from across the country participated in the elections, with excitement," ILNA quoted Rafsanjani as saying in Saturday's story. "But unfortunately the events that occurred after that and the difficulties created for some left a bitter taste, and I don't think that any wakened consciousness would be satisfied with the resulting situation."

He referred to the recent expressions of opinions across the country regarding the election crisis as a reflection of a power struggle "at the highest levels of the system."

"I hope that with proper management and fortitude, in the next few days, we can be witnesses to the betterment of the situation, resolution of the difficulties and the decrease in the number of the families waiting for their loved ones," Rafsanjani said. "We must think about safeguarding the long term interests and benefits of the system."

Everything Rafsanjani has said publicly since the election can be read two ways, e.g., his call on Mousavi et al to work through legal channels (June 27) and his dubbing the election aftermath “a tangled mess, perpetrated by suspicious sources whose objectives are to create differences and separations between the people and the system and eroding the trust of the people in the Islamic system" (June 29).

Why she did it

P.S. This is amusing, but I agree with Andrew Sullivan that Palin is most likely staring at a scandal she can't face down.

What's best for Alaska...

My God...after all those abrupt firings of perceived enemies and formerly loyal associates, Sarah Palin just fired herself.

The quest to finish off Palin

Post-resignation update: why she did it.

Is Sarah Palin worth the media circus she generates? The argument against: she's a clown; she never says anything that adds substantively to public discussion of any issue of import; she's a congenital liar; and she thrives on media attention. The argument for: political clowns are dangerous; in times of intense stress they can fool enough of the people long enough to get into office and subvert existing institutions; everything she says, when scrutinized, turns out to be nonsensical or untrue -- and so constant vigilant debunking is in order until something or someone puts the final stake in her political heart.

David Frum, responding to Todd Purdum's long Palin exorcism in Vanity Fair, makes the case for relentless exposure (h/t Andrew Sullivan, for whom Palin is an inexhaustible source of angst and entertainment):

Palin evokes a devoted response from a large following. In the mysterious soup of motives that sustains her supporters, enthusiasm for effective governance does not seem a very major ingredient. But you'd think they would at least care whether she could campaign competently. Purdum argues intensely that she cannot - that a Palin candidacy would be the greatest self-inflicted disaster since George McGovern or Barry Goldwater...

The McCain campaign is over. The duty of confidentiality has expired. The next campaign has begun. If conservatives are to avoid catastrophe, they need to hear from those inside what exactly happened. If true, the leaks constitute an urgent warning and public service. I believe they are true. For sure they confirm what I have heard during the campaign and after. Instead of complaining about these leaks, conservatives should heed them - and fast.

I think Frum is right about the imperative to discredit Palin. But based on his presentation of what "Purdum argues," Frum seem more concerned that Palin would be an electoral disaster -- a Goldwater or a McGovern - than that she might by some malign chance win and be a governing disaster -- a right wing Chavez or Ahmadinejad. Goldwater and McGovern were honorable men - misguided both, perhaps, to varying degrees, but not dangerous delusional demagogues on the order of Palin.

If Palin is as ineffectual a campaigner as Frum (via Purdum) implies, there's nothing to worry about - except perhaps, from Frum's point of view, that she'd capture the lunatic rump of the Republican Party and then go down to crushing defeat in the general election. Some political partisans rub their hands with glee at the thought of the opposition nominating an extremist. But that's a chance I'd never be willing to take. As a Democrat, I want a competent Republican nominee (and haven't seen one since Dole). In times of severe stress, dangerous clowns have been democratically elected in more than one country.

Electing Palin would be a sure sign of rapid national decline, and judging from the '08 election it seems unlikely: Palin plainly dragged the McCain ticket down; a huge majority of Americans judged her unfit for office. But again, under pressure of disaster (say, renewed and accelerated financial meltdown) a kind of psychosis can overtake electorates. That's why Palin bears watching, and outing, and hopefully definitive discrediting. Though if her dozens of documented lies and idiocies and governing malpractices haven't done it yet, it's hard to fathom exactly what would knock her out.

P.S. the photo with which Frum chose to illustrate his "Palin Exposed" post illustrates the unsavory combination of titillation and indignation that Palin often inspires.

Ahmadi non grata?

Neil MacFarquhar and Gary Sick have both emphasized the extent to which Ahmadinejad has packed the organs of government with his loyalists over the past four years. Both sketch out a stealth militarist takeover of Iran's religious establishment -- with the extent of Khamenei's assent or leadership left somewhat ambiguous.

In today's New York Post, Amir Tahen shows the other side of the coin -- the pushback against Ahmadinejad and his power grab at all levels of Iranian society:

His legitimacy is challenged at all levels of Iranian society, including every segment of the Khomeinist establishment. He has to invoke Khamenei's authority in support of every move he makes. He is the first Islamic Republic president to have split the Khomeinist camp so deeply, and perhaps permanently.

Whenever I think, 'no government can long stand after such a loss of legitimacy,' I remember: the former Soviet Union. Cuba. Burma. North Korea. But still...Iranian society has been more free than any of those. Memory of its last revolution is still fresh. Powerful factions in its existing power structure dislike Ahmadinejad and resent the coup. There is reason to hope

On arguing from strength

Thinking about the Iranian government's reaction to the refusal of millions of citizens to believe the reported election results, I'm reminded of an encounter between two eight-ear-olds and an enlightened day camp counselor I overheard while working one summer as a janitor at my high school many years ago, mopping up in the locker room.

It started with an argument I didn't tune in to, followed by a smack of flesh on flesh.

"He hit me! He hit me!" one kid cried.
"Why did you hit him?" asked the counselor.
"Because he didn't believe me."
"Did he believe you after you hit him?"

Now there's a 'spiritual leader' I could follow.

Sofie's Choice, Tehran edition

We generally think of free speech as a guarantee of self-expression and the flow of information -- the right of all to input and output. Iran's theocratic geniuses have found a way to split this atom. Tehran Bureau reports:

Government officials are asking residents in north and northwest Tehran to choose: either keep their much prized — but illegal — satellite dishes, or continue chanting, “Allah o Akbar!” or “God is Great,” the revolutionary slogan piercing the capital every night, but not both...

In north and northwest Tehran some residents have been ordered to choose between keeping their satellite dishes or taking part in the “Allah o Akbar” chant that takes place every night from city rooftops and windows.

The message is simple: “We’ll let you watch your CNN, your BBC, and your favorite entertainment shows, as long as you do not join the 10 p.m. chorus!”

Sofie's choice: you can learn the truth, and stay silent, or you can speak the truth, and stay ignorant. You can pray or play, but not both. I am reminded, somehow, of Mousavi's rather fantastic vision of the founding of Khomeini's earthly paradise:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven. This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam’s fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam’s approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these.

Mousavi claims for "Imam's fantastic art" a balance that ever existed and never will. You can't rule as God's mouthpiece and respect the people's right to information and dissent. That is a miracle beyond God's power to deliver.

Islam and republicanism may be compatible. Theocracy and republicanism, never.

Palin prophets, revisited

Compare:

James Fallows on Sarah Palin, August 29, 2008:

Let's assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning he has behind him, and Joe Biden's even longer toughening-up process, she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed an international issue, there's no evidence of it in internet-land.

The smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues she will be forced to address...

And Barack Obama, according to Todd Purdum:

At least one savvy politician—Barack Obama—believed Palin would never have time to get up to speed. He told his aides that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate, and added, “I don’t care how talented she is, this is really a leap.”

This was good sense, but not exactly brain surgery. Paging John McCain...

See also: James Fallows, Palin Prophet, Oct. 25, 2008

Wings beating against a web?

As Roger Cohen movingly pointed out this past weekend, the uprising in Iran has doubtless humanized the country in many Americans' eyes: at the moment, "Iran" is likelier to evoke "Neda" than "mullah."

It's a sad irony that this humanization may be occurring at the precisely the moment that the current regime becomes most dangerous. The popular uprising, and the old-guard reformist movement to which it responded, may represent the beating of wings against a tightening web.

As Neil MacFarquhar and Gary Sick have both detailed, the advent of Ahmadinejad in the wake of the reformist Khatami was not just a swing of the political pendulum. Ahmadinejad has rather accelerated a militarist takeover, packing the bureacracy, state-run media, educational institutions, and state-controlled major economic enterprises with allies from the Revolutionary Guard; and pursuing an ultra hard-line foreign policy that includes full-throttle pursuit of nuclear fuel processing capability.

While it's generally been assumed that Khameini controls Ahmadinejad, both Sick and MacFarquhar suggest that the reverse may be closer to the truth. Sick:

Over the 20 years that Ayatollah Khamenei has been the rahbar, or leader, he has allied himself ever more closely with the Revolutionary Guards—to such an extent that it is no longer apparent to me who is leading and who is following. The Revolutionary Guards have been granted extraordinary influence over all functions of the Islamic republic—military, political, economic, and even Islamic. Technically, they take their orders from the leader, but has he ever dared to contradict them? On the contrary, he seems always to court them by granting them ever-greater influence and responsibilities.

If it's true, as Sick suggests, that Ahmadinejad's advent in 2005 marked the beginning of a quasi-fascist transformation of the Iranian theocracy, it's interesting to note that Ahmadinejad, like Hitler, led a coterie of extremist veterans of a long, brutal, ultimately losing war effort into positions of power approximately 15 years after the war's end.

After two years' overexposure to John McCain's fulminations, Americans should be skeptical of the propensity to compare every dictatorial regime that represses its own people and poses a security threat of some kind to the Nazis. Iranians have given the world reason to hope that the hardliners' days in power are numbered -- and no one should underestimate the staying power of the children of the people who ousted the Shah. The current system may also yet evolve from within, as faction within the power structure push to respond to public pressure. But the uprising has also thrown into sharp relief just what the Iranian people are up against.

Did Rafsanjani cave?

It's been generally assumed that the "special commission" of Iran's Khameini-controlled Guardian Council charged with investigating the vote will merely rubber-stamp the official results.

Now, according to the Iranian government-controlled Press TV, the Rafsanjani-led Expediency Council is calling on Mousavi and Karroubi to "resolve disputes through legal channels" -- that is, through the special commission, which would mean presenting their cases by Sunday. For what it's worth, the Expediency Council statement also promises a genuine investigation into the vote:

The body, led by the influential cleric and former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, asked the candidates, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei, to fully cooperate with the Guardian Council -- tasked with supervising the elections.

The statement called on the candidates to “use this appropriate opportunity to submit their documents and evidence for a comprehensive and precise investigation”...

The Expediency Council also called on the election watchdog to precisely follow the complaints, respond to suspicions, and to use an appropriate team of experts with the aim of building the necessary confidence in the society, ISNA reported.

From the beginning of the post-election struggle, there's been widespread rumors -- often tagged as wishful thinking on dissidents' part -- that Rafsanjani has been working through the Assembly of Experts the Expediency Council, both of which he chairs, to mount some kind of challenge to the official election results. Does this report indicate that he's given in? Is this statement not his doing? Or is there still some glimmer of a possibility that he's laid the grounds for an investigation result other than ratification?

A Freudian slip for Obama?

Much as I admire the overall tenor of Obama's statements about Iran, there's one remark that perhaps gives Iranian propaganda something to chew on:

Mr. Obama did not acquiesce, saying, “I don’t take Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran.”

How do you go out of your way not to interfere? What does that suggest about the normal course of U.S. policy?

Perhaps Obama meant that he has gone out of his way to communicate that the U.S. is not interfering?