The plane truth about Palin: budget cuts as political theater

Sarah Palin really is a kindred spirit with John McCain. Like McCain, she makes political theater out of cutting trivial expenses in counterproductive ways.

In written testimony provided to the Troopergate investigation, Todd Palin claims that Sarah's sale of the plane that her predecessor Frank Murkowski bought for the executive branch's use became a source of "bad blood" between the governor and Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner she fired. According to an account of Todd's testimony in the Anchorage Daily News, Sarah was rankled by "the unavailability of a state trooper airplane for the governor's use when traveling to the Bush":

"It seemed that whenever Sarah needed this plane, it was unavailable," Todd Palin said. "We were concerned that the Department of Public Safety was retaliating against Sarah for selling the Murkowski jet that Department of Public Safety officials enjoyed using." In 2007, the governor sold a jet her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, bought in a controversial defiance of the Legislature.

That sold jet, we've also learned from the ADN, was used mainly to transport prisoners to Arizona, where Alaska outsources much of its incarceration.

Todd's account of "two sources of bad blood" between his wife and Monegan (the other was a warning Monegan sent about a legislator's report that she'd failed to put Trig in an appropriate car seat) constitutes approximately the fifth reason for firing Monegan that the Palins have supplied - though to be fair, Todd cites these petty sources of conflict as just a secondary cause.

But petty's the word here. Palin's pique over a plane recalls Newt Gingrich's over being relegated to the back of Air Force One. If that bad blood really did feed the firing, it may prove as politically costly to her as Newt's government shutdown was to him.

Monegan outs Palin on ABC; Stonewall may be breached already

No matter how thoroughly Sarah Palin stonewalls the Alaskan legislature's investigation of Troopergate, it looks to me like Walt Monegan, the security chief Palin fired, has already handed over a smoking gun to investigators. This from Monegan's interview with ABC today:

Monegan, who gave sworn testimony behind closed doors for nearly eight hours last week, said he also provided the State's investigator with copies of e-mails he received from the Governor in which she referred in disparaging terms to her former brother-in-law.

"This is not a 'he said she said' situation. Others were contacted by Todd and Sarah as well," according to Monegan, who said he was confident the investigation would find adequate documentation to corroborate his testimony.

Palin has already admitted that her office made two dozen contacts with public safety officials about Michael Wooten, her estranged ex-brother-in-law. Looks to me like special counsel Stephen Branchflower has already got the goods he needs.

On ABC, Monegan also accused Palin of lying on multiple fronts. For example:

The former Public Safety Commissioner also strongly defended his job performance in response to Palin's complaints about his work to ABC's Gibson.

"After two years he wasn't meeting the goals I wanted met in that area of public service, there were a lot of things we were lacking and a lot of goals weren't being met." Palin said on 20/20.

"No goals were conveyed to me by the Governor at any time," said Monegan.

"All of the Commissioners who worked for the Governor would say the same. She was preoccupied with her pipeline proposal," Monegan said. "All of us were waiting to hear what goals she would set for our departments."

Monegan said the Governor never sat down to talk with him about public safety priorities. "She met with us perhaps four times," he said, "and half the time the Governor was busy on her Blackberry. In one meeting she took a phone call and left the room, directing us to talk to her aide."

Even if Monegan's emails show clear pressure to fire Wooten, the Palin camp is set to argue that they fired him for "insubordination"; they claim to have the evidence. If she did pressure Wooten but can claim other reasons for firing him, what does Alaska law say? How serious an infraction, in itself, is that interference?

Another abrupt Palin firing -- August 2002

Sarah Palin's penchant for abruptly firing subordinates is positively bizarre. Here's a particularly gratuitous one -- firing the Deputy Administrator of Wasilla John Cramer, a loyal ally (whose position she'd created in her rocky first year), seven weeks before her final term ended and days before his scheduled summer vacation. Her justification - that firing her "right-hand man" would ease the next mayor's transition -- makes no sense whatsoever. From Wasilla's Frontiersman:

Palin sends right-hand man home

By SCOTT CHRISTIANSEN-Frontiersman reporter
Published on Saturday, August 24, 2002 9:20 PM AKDT

WASILLA -- With seven weeks left before the end of her administration, Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin sent Deputy Administrator John Cramer home for good. The dismissal came on Aug. 9, just 18 days before Alaska's statewide primary election in which Palin is running for the Republican Party's nomination for lieutenant governor.

Cramer said he had a previously scheduled vacation the week of Aug. 12-16. Sometime during the week prior to his vacation he received a notice dismissing him as of 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 9. He sent a farewell e-mail to an unknown number of city employees on Saturday, Aug. 10. The "To:" field in a copy of the e-mail forwarded to the Frontiersman has hidden addresses and simply says "Everyone.".. [Snip]

"I wasn't anticipating coming off of vacation and then not being employed by the city of Wasilla," Cramer said. "But certainly, that's her prerogative as mayor, and I understand that." [snip]

A week after his dismissal, Cramer said he thought he would have been able to assist in the upcoming transition, that he had been dismissed sooner than he expected, and that he wasn't given an explicit reason for his dismissal.

"My departure was ahead of when I would have liked to have made that decision," Cramer said, but added that political appointees are hired with the expectation of being dismissed at any time. Still, Cramer thinks he would have been valuable during the transition.

"Based on my experience over the last six years with the city, I certainly felt that I would have been valuable to the next person, whoever that may be," Cramer said.

Palin's explanation:

Palin said Cramer was leaving specifically to make the transition to the next administration smoother.

"The last thing I want to do is have the next administration go through what I had to go through," Palin said, referring to the transition from the administration of former mayor John Stein to her own administration six years ago.

"We worked wonderfully together, but that doesn't mean the next mayor is going to have the same experience," Palin said....

Both Cramer and Palin mentioned the rough transition six years ago.

"I think there's a little chaos if everything was done on the same day. I don't want to see that for my community," Palin said.

Asked if there were any recent issues that might have brought about his dismissal, Cramer couldn't come up with any.

"Not that I'm aware of. No. Not that I can put my finger on. I honestly can't say what it would be," Cramer said.

Palin claims that she acted to spare the next administration having to "go through what I had to go through." But the situations are not comparable. When Palin first ran for mayor, the town's six department heads supported the incumbent. When she took office, she demanded that all of them resign and re-apply for their jobs “in order to test their loyalty to her administration” (one had already resigned upon her election). She also issued a gag order, requiring them to obtain her approval before talking to reporters (ADN 10/26/96). She then fired two of them - police chief Irl Stambaugh, who sued for wrongful termination, and librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, whom Palin was forced to rehire after a public outcry and a threatened recall vote. Palin's successor Dianne Keller, in contrast, was a political ally who took office with Palin's best wishes. How exactly would keeping on her deputy administrator until her term expired have caused Keller any difficulties?

There seems to be an element of sadism in Palin's firings. John Bitney, a childhood friend and close aide whom she fired after he confessed to an affair with the wife of her husband's business partner, found out that he was out of a job when his Blackberry stopped working. As for Walt Monegan, Alaska's director of public security who claims he was fired because he refused to fire Palin's estranged ex brother-in-law, he told the Anchorage Daily News (reported 7/13/08) that the news of his firing "out of the blue," adding,"If the governor was upset with me for one thing or another, it had never been communicated to me."

Sarah Palin: No Dan Quayle

I don't think that McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate was a screw-you pick, and I don't think it was particularly from the hip. McCain was trying to square a circle -- shore up the base and appeal to independents. Politically, he had no good choices - except maybe Palin.

Palin is far from qualified to be president (and therefore veep), but from a distance at least she does look like an impressive person and emerging executive. From her rather parochial Alaskan perspective, she's got some solidly held beliefs that she's acted on with conviction (expand U.S. energy producing capacity, keep the development process clear of corruption, keep taxes low and government spending accountable). She doesn't come off as a reflexive ideologue; her Christianity is nondenominational. She seems to have imbibed nondoctrinal feminism with her mother's milk, having grown up feeling there were no gender restrictions on what she can do. And it takes courage to give birth to a Down Syndrome baby with your eyes open.

Palin may be a neophyte on national and international issues, but she's no lightweight. In an August 14 2008 interview with Time, she projects intelligence and conviction. I take James Fallows' point that getting up to speed w/ national/international issues with zero prep time would tax the resources of Socrates, Machiavelli and Clausewitz rolled into one. But I suspect she'll prove a quick study. She'll have the expectations advantage in debate with Biden, who's notoriously gaffe-prone.

Note too what seems a kind of mutual recognition between Palin and Obama. Philip Gourevitch has this from Palin:

“The theme of our campaign was ‘new energy,’ ” she said recently. “It was no more status quo, no more politics as usual, it was all about change. So then to see that Obama—literally, part of his campaign uses those themes, even, new energy, change, all that, I think, O.K., well, we were a little bit ahead on that.” She also noted, “Something’s kind of changing here in Alaska, too, for being such a red state on the Presidential level. Obama’s doing just fine in polls up here, which is kind of wigging people out, because they’re saying, ‘This hasn’t happened for decades that in polls the D’ ”—the Democratic candidate—“ ‘is doing just fine.’ To me, that’s indicative, too. It’s the no-more-status-quo, it’s change.”

And Obama might have been talking about himself in his first public reaction to Palin:

"she seems like a compelling person"... with "a terrific personal story."

All this is not to say that Palin is not a problematic pick, or that her selection doesn't raise serious questions about McCain's judgment. Most troubling, she seems to have pressured Alaska's public safety commissioner to fire her ex brother-in-law, then fired him after he refused, then lied about her role. The pending investigation of that escapade may well cause serious --and deserved -- trouble for McCain.

As Mayor of Wasilla, she also may have fired city officials on questionable grounds. Her taking credit for cutting loose the "bridge to nowhere" when she originally supported its Federal funding while running for governor (as any prospective state official would) is another blemish (though perhaps no more so than Obama's taking credit for moving people in Illinois from welfare to work when he initially opposed the welfare reform bill signed by Bill Clinton).

Finally, while Andrew Sullivan has been over the top with his serial denunciations of the Palin pick, I agree with his core point -- that it's deeply irresponsible of McCain to potentially entrust U.S. national security in the hands of someone who not only has zero experience in international relations but seems to have thought very little about them.

But, unless Troopergate blows up big-time, I don't think that Palin will wound McCain's credibility to the extent that Dan Quayle did George Bush Sr.'s. I think she has more intelligence and substance than Quayle demonstrated.