E!!

John Fund at the WSJ says he talked to sources close to Palin and knows why she quit:  the tremendous political and personal cost of thousands of FOIA requests and related ethics investigations, and the stress on family caused by uncivil public discourse and a venomous media.

Too bad she didn’t articulate it quite as succinctly when she announced.  I listened to her speech and found myself wondering what the primary motivation really was.  (However many reasons are given when one is speechifying, there is nearly always a primary driver for these things).

It is a shame that we have become so accustomed to the casual defamation of political figures that we often focus more on the person’s inability or unwillingness to tolerate the abuse than on the scourging itself:

Karl Rove acknowledges the unusual battering Ms. Palin has endured in recent months, but told Fox News that GOP leaders are still puzzled by her decision. “If she wanted to escape the ethics investigations and save the taxpayers money, she’s now done that,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, her decision “sent a signal that if you do this kind of thing to a sitting governor like her, you can drive her out of office.”

I suppose.  But should we focus more on the “signal” Palin sent to her attackers – that making false accusations and being nasty can pay big political dividends – or should we drill down on the abusive behavior itself?

Regarding Rove’s comment, John got one takeaway quote that resonates:

But Palin friends say such commentary misses the real point. “The Beltway media can’t understand someone not consumed with presidential ambition,” one told me. “Maybe Sarah Palin won’t run for president and maybe her family situation made it tougher to handle the barrage of attacks that come with that territory. The real issue that should be asked is why a mean-spirited system has to treat people who run like that, instead of why someone may choose not to go through it.”

I say we have an obligation to call for an end to the vicious slandering of, and base and baseless litigation against, our public figures on both the left and the right.  It is one thing to investigate and ask questions; it is quite another to set your sights on the destruction of a person’s political life, which cannot help but bleed over into the personal.

Mickey Kaus is keeping track of them.

H/T:  Jonah @ NRO

I’m still deciding what I think about this.  My initial reaction – before I heard her speech (which was more of a meandering ramble, really) – was “what the heck is she doing?”  Not sure that question was answered even after sifting through her speech to find her stated reasons.

Her ”higher calling” comment does seem to indicate she is not stepping away from politics, just from the governorship of Alaska.

Obama visits the White House while the echoes of McCain’s can’t-say-that (or That either) (and definitely not THAT!) protestulations and admonishments still ring in our heads. 

This makes it hard to understand why The Maverick has been so quiet on the snarkfest re: Palin.

Says a new blog pal:  Your silence, sir, is deafening!

These bumper stickers are kind of fun.  Pick one up for just $2.99 plus mailing costs.

Whether you love or hate Bush policy, make sure you read Charles Krauthammer’s column re: Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin and the Bush Doctrine question. 

Krauthammer pointed out what most of us probably didn’t think about while we were figuring out whether Gibson’s glasses could slide any further down his condescending nose:  there have been at least four working definitions of the so-called “Bush doctrine” over the past eight years, none of them official.  

So, neither Palin nor Gibson nor Santa Clause could say for sure what it is without some sort of clarification.  Which is why Krauthammer called the NYT’s view that Gibson ”informed” Palin of the meaning of the Bush doctrine (anticapatory self-defense) “rubbish.”

Krauthammer knows a little something about this because (he points out) he was the one to first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,” Krauthammer wrote that the Bush policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol (and others) amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called “the Bush doctrine.”

Then came 9/11.  In his address to Congress nine days after that event, Bush declared: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” This policy re: terror became the essence of “the Bush doctrine.”

Until Iraq. When Bush offered his major justification for the war vis a vis the necessity of a preemptive act. (This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks of as ”the Bush doctrine.”)

And then there’s the fourth (current) definition of “the Bush doctrine”:  as Krauthammer puts it, “the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world.”  It was clearly enunciated in Bush’s second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

Near the end of his piece, Krauthammer wrote, “If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume — unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise — that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

So, ok, Sarah Palin doesn’t know what “the Bush doctrine” is.  But apparently neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least Palin didn’t pretend to know — while, as the New York Times noted, Gibson “looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and “sounding like an impatient teacher.” 

Seems Gibson is the one in need of a teacher - and I’d say Krauthammer schooled him real good.

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

If we wished to ensure that a bright, ambitious, and capable woman would not make it in contemporary national politics, as practiced by most successful contemporary office-holders and adjudicated by the New York-Washington media, then we would insist on the following ten requisites:

Jack Fowler @ NRO posted this:

MSNBC reports thousands are cancelling their subscriptions to Jan Wenner’s weekly celeb rag over its “Babies, Lies & Scandals” cover slamming Sarah Palin. From the story:

“I’m hearing it’s 5,000, maybe more,” says one well-placed source in the industry. Another source claimed that as many as 10,000 readers have already cancelled their subscriptions. A spokesperson for Wenner Media, which publishes Us, says “it is completely false that we are losing 10,000 subscribers.” As for the 5,000 estimate, the spokesperson only said “that is false, too,” but wouldn’t comment further.

Five thousand might not seem like a large number at first glance, but it’s significant in the context of Us’ printing schedule. The magazine goes to press Monday night, which means subscribers don’t receive their issues until Friday or Saturday. In other words, the cancellations are coming from subscribers who, in many cases, haven’t even gotten their hands on the actual issue.

“When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart,” says one magazine editor. “They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they’re not. Readers are loyal, but the base of a political party is more loyal. They don’t need to read the magazine when there’s so much press around it to know to be upset.”

This post by Yuval Levin is well worth reading.

Some excerpts if you choose not to click through:

I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent mistreatment of her teenage daughter in a difficult time, the ill-informed piling on about the vetting process, the self-intensifying circle of tisking nodding heads utterly detached from a straightforward political event, have been amazing and eye-opening…

The spectacle reveals a deep rot at the heart of the political press, and has been among the most shameful chapters in the history of modern American journalism. Not everyone has joined in, of course, but essentially all of the important institutions of our political press have played their part in one way or another…

…the treatment she has received is not what just any VP candidate would get, and the attitude and assumptions underlying this week’s amazing assault raise very troubling questions about the cream of the crop of political reporters. They have shown themselves to be too insulated and too solipsistic to help the public better understand our politics, and too self-important to report on events as they happen. This is far more than media bias. Let us hope it is a passing episode.

“(Sarah Palin) brought down Alaska’s governor, attorney general, and state Republican chairman. She killed the ‘bridge to nowhere.’ She used increased tax revenues from high oil prices to give Alaskans a rebate. She slashed government spending. She took on the biggest industry in Alaska, the oil companies, to work out an equitable deal on building a new gas pipeline. Obama can’t match even one of these accomplishments.”

- Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, 8/30/08

Here’s her speech.  And here’s some video from an interview with Newsweek earlier this year.  And nice, detailed piece on her from the Anchorage Daily news from 2006.

And then there’s this cute/funny tribute by my friend @ PragmaticallyPolitical:  10 Things I Love About Sarah Palin

PS  The graceless statement put out by the Obama camp re: Palin this morning was uncalled for.  McCain went out of his way to congratulate Obama on a historic nomination last night; Obama should have done the same for Palin.  But he didn’t.  And so Mr. Self-Proclaimed Non-Partisan shows us just how little class he really has.  

For those of you who want to know more about Palin, start with this WaPo piece and learn how she’s made a name for herself as a fiscal Reformer.  Among other things, she teamed up with McCain against $453 million in earmarks for a couple of bridges in Alaska – including the now infamous Bridge to Nowhere. 

 And now for a few Cons:

Politically speaking, it sort of undermines a large part of the case against Obama:  inexperience, lack of credentials, lack of foreign policy and national security know-how.

She has never worked in D.C. so there will be a steep learning curve – and probably a few slip-ups.  (Then again, McCain will make sure she has a great staff.)

And then to all those on the Right who have called the Obama candidacy an example of Tokenism, there’s this question:  Would Palin would been picked if she were a man?

And the Unknowns:

How will the female thing play?  The pro-choice feminists will all hate Palin, but the female Republican base might show up in never-yet-seen numbers.  Bitter and disaffected Hillary supporters might vote for her out of spite.  Or they might see her as a threat to Hillary in 2012 and decide they don’t want her anywhere near D.C.

(And what about the guys?  Will men vote for her because she’s got great legs and is just waaaay better looking than Biden?)

Also, how will she do on the stump?  Can she hold her own?  Will she make any major gaffes (which will cause the opposition to Shriek and Point at her Inexperience)?  Will Biden handle her well or come off looking like a bully when he goes up against her?

On the subject of my dismal (0-3) election prediction record:

Jack Pitney only got it one-quarter right with this prediction last year:

Republicans nominate Rudy Giuliani for president. To hold GOP women who might vote for Hillary and to stress his commitment to reform, Giuliani surprises the political class by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton makes a move into GOP territory by picking Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. Giuliani-Palin wins with 52 percent of the popular vote and 293 electoral votes.

All the news outlets were reporting it as I walked out the door at 7:30 a.m.  Personally, I like the pick and think this is good news for the GOP.  Here are some pros:

She’s a principled fiscal conservative who beat an incumbent by promising to cut government waste in Alaska – and did it.  She slashed pork spending, cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars of unnecessary construction projects, and sold the gubernatorial private jet on eBay (for $2.7M).

She’s for responsible drilling.  I heard a clip from a speech she gave on “the small sliver of coastal terrain” that is ANWR and how/why drilling could/should be done there and elsewhere.  It was good. 

She’s a social conservative and pro-life (but not rabid about it) which will energize the GOP base.  She’s happily married and has five children, the most recent born in April (a Down Syndrome baby she gladly and willingly chose to have).

Any attacks on her lack of experience – she’s been governor for only two years – can be turned around:  she has more senior executive experience than Obama, or Biden (or McCain, for that matter).  Plus, she’s the #2  and not running for POTUS.  Yet.

She’s plain spoken “regular folks” so should connect well with the middle class.  And she’s got a fairly compelling personal story and family life:  athlete, beauty queen, hunter, former professional fisher person (LOL), married her high school sweetheart, son about to deploy to Iraq.

On a more personal note, I like that she’s a Hockey Mom.  (My brother played hockey for years, so we spent many winter weekends hanging around in Michigan and Canadian hockey arenas.)  Not that it has anything to do with politics.  Then again, someone who enjoys a fast-moving, hard-hitting, sometimes down-and-dirty sport like hockey must have a tough streak, right?

I’ll do some Cons later after I think more about it.