The Plank

Palin Round-Up

2009-07-03T23:55:00Z

Bill Kristol has what he calls a "contrarian" take:

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one.
After all, she's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues - and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she'll take a hit for leaving the governorship early - but how much of one? She's probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.
And haven't conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she'll try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She'll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she'll have to perform well.
All in all, it's going to be a high-wire act. The odds are against her pulling it off. But I wouldn't bet against it.

The odds are against it, but Kristol would still bet on it? Anyway, one thing that rings false here is Palin's supposed calculation that she would take a political hit for "ignoring" her job as governor. Politicians do this all the time, and it never seems to matter one bit politically.

On a ligher note, here was Palin today:

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me - sports... basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I'm doing that - keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities - smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it's time to pass the ball - for victory.

This was somehow reminiscent of that great line of Leslie Nielsen's from the original 'Naked Gun' film:

It's fourth and fifteen and you're looking at a full court press.

--Isaac Chotiner

TNR Exclusive: Palin's Ex-Campaign Manager Reacts

2009-07-03T23:37:00Z

A few minutes ago I spoke to Laura Chase, who served on the Wasilla, Alaska, city council with Sarah Palin during the mid-1990s and managed her first campaign for mayor in 1996. (The two women subsequently had a falling out.) I asked Chase to react to the big resignation news:

I kind of expected it. How is she going to run for president if people keep nagging at her in Alaska? ... Republicans probably had a hand in it. [Democratic State Senator] Hollis French--her nemesis on most of these issues, Troopergate--he announced an interest in running for governor yesterday or the day before. They probably want to get [Lieutenant Governor and fellow Republican] Sean Parnell set up to run for governor with a little recognition under his belt, and she runs for president anyway.

So you don't think she's done with politics--that she's just throwing in the towel?

Absolutely no way in hell. Hell will freeze over before that happens. She’s like a bloodhound. Once she gets the scent, she's never going to let it go. She gets what she wants or dies trying. She wants to be president now that she has a following. ... The thing is with Sarah, she craves adoration. And the people that were sitting there at those rallies adored her. They would walk across coals for that woman. ... Once you have a taste of that--it's like a wild dog getting a taste of rabbit. You never ever go back. Nothing is ever the same, tastes as good …

So do you think it's a case of--whenever she travels outside of Alaska, she's beloved; but whenever she's back in Alaska, she's mired in various ethics scandals and political stalemates? Maybe she just decided, I don't need this abuse...

I think it's more than that. When she comes to Alaska, everyone calls her "Sarah." Out there she’s governor--almost president-elect. She’s not Sarah. They introduce her with pomp and circumstance. Build her ego up, do that whole thing. Here, she comes back, she runs into a buch of Alaskans. It's humbling. It's nothing big to us. They don’t mind calling you on the carpet. It's nothing special. She's just one of us. But she decided she wasn’t going to be one of us…

Do you think she would have resigned if some major scandal were about to break? Would that be her likely response to something like that?

She's too stubborn to allow that. She would have just said, 'Bring it on.'

[Cross-posted from The Stash.]

--Noam Scheiber

Palin’s Independence Day

2009-07-03T23:12:00Z

Ed Kilgore is managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a frequent contributor to a variety of political journals.

Generously helping the chattering classes extend a week of speculation about her past and future, Alaska governor Sarah Palin announced today that she was resigning her position on July 26, because--well, it’s not quite clear why, but if you watch her press conference, it seems to have something to do with her concept of point-guard play in basketball. She’s handing off the governorship to her Loot, moving towards the basket, and then executing some play only she knows.

To the extent that there are any coherent rationales expressed in her announcement, they involve the distractions of her battles with her lower-48 enemies (and perhaps their Alaskan stooges), and her realization that she wouldn’t be doing much work as a lame duck, so why wait to resign?

More conspiratorial souls, or perhaps those who think the whole announcement was more than passing strange, are expecting some other shoe to drop--perhaps a scandal, or an indictment, though probably no trips to Argentina. Still others think she’s actually getting out of politics altogether. At least one conservative pundit who’s been known to swoon for her, Bill Kristol, guesses she’s already decided to run for president, and calls it a “an enormous gamble--but perhaps a shrewd one.”

Along those lines, my own guess is that Sarah Palin has gotten too big for Alaska, in her own mind, and in the minds of the hard-core cultural conservative base activists across the country, who have loved her and suffered with her as a sort of St. Joan of the Tundra.

So what better time to declare her independence of her old frozen turf, with all the budget fights, and personnel problems, and the perpetual scrutiny of those who know her best? If she wants, I’m sure she can land a nice spot on Fox, and if quitting her one substantial job after just two-and-a-half-years increases the mockery of The Elites, why should she care? As I said the other day, mockery is nectar to Sarah’s legions.

But whether she’s getting tired of a small-potatoes job after hitting the big time, and wants to move up, or is getting out of the game entirely, she’s definitely a free woman now--unless there is a process-server staking out her front door.

--Ed Kilgore

Palin on Trig

2009-07-03T21:02:00Z

The full text of the speech is here. What to make of this?

In fact, this decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life - my children (where the count was unanimous... well, in response to asking: "Want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children's future from outside the Governor's office?" It was four "yes's" and one "hell yeah!" The "hell yeah" sealed it - and someday I'll talk about the details of that... I think much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults recently.) Um, by the way, sure wish folks could ever, ever understand that we all could learn so much from someone like Trig - I know he needs me, but I need him even more... what a child can offer to set priorities right - that time is precious... the world needs more "Trigs", not fewer.

Who exactly has been "mocking" Trig Palin? This is, in other words, a disgraceful straw man argument. (I could not help but notice Palin's implication that Trig voted for her to resign). On a less serious note, the most amusing paragraph was this:

We need those who will respect our Constitution where government's supposed to serve from the bottom up, not move toward this top down big government take-over... but rather, will be protectors of individual rights - who also have enough common sense to acknowledge when conditions have drastically changed and are willing to call an audible and pass the ball when it's time so the team can win! And that is what I'm doing!

Sic.

P.S. Here is Rich Lowry:

I think I have pretty well-established credentials when it comes to being charmed by Sarah Palin, but that statement, as a statement, was simply terrible. Rambling and not at all persuasive as an argument for her decision. More Gibson/Couric than GOP convention speech. She shouldn't have said a thing without getting Matt Scully—or some similarly talented speechwriter—on the case first. As to how this decision plays out ultimately, we'll see. There's plenty of time if (as I assume) she wants to run in 2012, and she obviously has plenty of capital with Republicans. But not an auspicious start.

--Isaac Chotiner

Right-Wing Blog Round-Up

2009-07-03T20:51:00Z

Matt Continetti, The Weekly Standard:

One thing you learn about Sarah Palin when you study her career is that she never, ever does things by the book. I think it's safe to say today's events are a further example of this tendency.

Kathryn Jean Lopez, The Corner:

Listening to her, it seems like this is a combination of stepping back and moving forward. Stepping back, because it's way too overwhelming to be Sarah Palin, political phenom, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, and Sarah Palin, wife and mother. I don't know that anyone can fulfill all those roles well, simultaneously. And we're unrealistic, I think, when we assume people can or should.

One reservation I've always had about Sarah Palin has to do with her family. If she is stepping down because of what politics has done to her family, because of something in her family life she doesn't want to see as David Letterman fodder, because it's impossible to be governor, a star, and a mom to an infant ... this is good. It demonstrates good judgment and priorities.

Ace of Spades:

And that is that.
It's over. You can't resign from a governorship and then run for higher office. Barring some strong reason, like needing treatment for cancer.

--Isaac Chotiner

Palin 2012: Maybe Not

2009-07-03T20:35:00Z

Andrea Mitchell is reporting on MSNBC that Palin has told friends and associates that this marks her permanent departure from the political scene.

Here is the complete Palin official statement.

--Isaac Chotiner

Palin Does it for The Taxpayers

2009-07-03T20:27:00Z

The weirdest part of a weird speech may have been Palin's claim that by resigning, she would save the state a bunch of money.

"All I can ask is that you trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual and as some Alaskans have seen today, maybe they don't mind wasting public dollars and state time but I do. And I cannot stand here as your governor and allow the millions of dollars and all that time to go to waste just so that I can hold the title of governor. I don't know if my children can allow it anyway."

--Isaac Chotiner

More on Palin

2009-07-03T20:11:00Z

Here is part of the statement her office released. The sense that her political team is incompetent will be strengthened by this memo. An excerpt:

It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success.

She added:

"It hurts to make this choice, but I've given my reasons. I'm reminded of a sign on my parents' refrigerator, 'Don't explain; your friends don't need it, and your enemies won't believe you anyway.'"

The first paragraph above is gibberish. In the second graf, I have italicized two things that would appear to contradict each other. Strange, strange, strange.

--Isaac Chotiner

News of the Weird (i.e. Palin)

2009-07-03T20:10:00Z

Palin announces that she's stepping down as Alaska's governor on July 26. To do what? According to the NYT, to run for president in 2012:

By leaving office early, Ms. Palin will be able to travel around the country more freely and not have to deal with the constraints of being a governor.

It's true that as governor of a state that's not part of the lower 48, Palin was hampered in a way that pretty much every other governor with presidential aspirations is not: a weekend trip to Iowa or New Hampshire was not just a weekend trip for Palin. If she wanted to run for the White House in 2012, she probably couldn't have afforded to run for reelection as governor in 2010. But to resign before her first term is even over--making her skimpy resume even skimpier? Strange.

--Jason Zengerle

Palin To Resign as Alaska Governor!

2009-07-03T19:52:00Z

I will post some of the transcript of Palin's remarks when it becomes available. Suffice it to say that the speech announcing her resignation was given so quickly that you could hardly understand what she was saying. However, at whatever pace her remarks were made, the content of what she said made absolutely no sense. She talked about people in Alaska "looking north toward the future" and went on and on about the troops (no shame in that, of course, but what do American soldiers fighting overseas have to do with her decision?). She also added that she knew "when to pass the ball for victory." In short, it was a typical Palin performance: utterly bizarre and completely compelling.

More to come.

--Isaac Chotiner

Elements of Style

2009-07-03T13:37:00Z

What's wrong with this sentence from today's Financial Times:

US marshals seized the $7m New York City penthouse of Bernard Madoff, the imprisoned fraudster, and his wife, officials said yesterday.

-- John B. Judis

Today at TNR (July 3, 2009)

2009-07-03T11:00:00Z

The Lost Lincoln: Who He Really Was, And Why We Need To Rediscover Him. by Sean Wilentz
TNR's Founding Fathers Spectacular: Wood On Washington! Schlesinger On Adams And Hamilton! Wilentz On Jefferson! And Much More...
‘Public Enemies': Johnny Depp Is Magnetic As John Dillinger, But Will You Care When The Lights Come Back On? by Christopher Orr
How The Iraq War Clouded Obama's Judgment On Iran, by Nader Mousavizadeh
TNRtv: Afghanistan's Ambassador On His Country's Big Challenges, From A Thriving Poppy Trade To Legalized Marital Rape, by Said Jawad
Congress 2.0: It's 2009--Isn't It Time We Allow Senators Incapable Of Making It To Washington To Vote From Home? by Jason Zengerle
Why A Half-Assed Climate Bill Is Probably Worth Supporting, by Bradford Plumer

As always, be sure to check out economic news on The Stash, environment and energy coverage on The Vine, the latest on health care at The Treatment, and Marty Peretz's The Spine. Also be sure to take a look at TNR's new blogs by William Galston, Damon Linker, John McWhorter, and Alan Wolfe.

Dillinger Puts On A Show

2009-07-02T22:45:00Z

With the new John Dillinger biopic out, we decided to pull up a TNR article from 1934 about the legendary bank robber:

Two of the bandits on the outside were gentlemen; one was a tough. He didn't smile at the audience. He scowled. He pushed the people aside with the point of his gun. He ordered cars away from the parking place in front of the bank. He knew a lot of words that went with swearing.

The other two smiled politely as they officiated. The tear gas finally drove the bandits out. They had taken only $52,000 when they might have got $200,000. When they got into their cars they forced customers and others to stand on the running board or hang on the back over the extra tire. They politely told their hostages what they were to do. The hostages knew what would happen if they didn't. But the bank robbers were polite.

Click here for the rest of Kresensky's article on Dillinger. And click here for Christopher Orr's review of Public Enemies.

TNR Video Slideshow: Best And Worst National Anthem Performances

2009-07-02T21:45:00Z

"The Star Spangled Banner" is a difficult song. It has been criticized in this magazine for its aesthetic and symbolic deficiencies and its Jacksonian sentiment. As former TNR editor Michael Kinsley recently put it, the song is "notoriously unsingable" because it spans two octaves and most people can only sing one--so the results tend to be polarized: good performances, like the Jimi Hendrix one below, become iconic, while bad performances become infamous.

Click through this video slideshow to see some of the best and worst performances of the national anthem.

(Here, Jimi Hendrix performs the national anthem at Woodstock in 1969.)

--Elise Foley

Hail, Ants

2009-07-02T19:08:00Z

Headline of the day: "Ant mega-colony takes over world"

(Read the story before you go all Kent Brockman in response.)

--Jonathan Chait

White House Salaries and Washington Paydays

2009-07-02T19:02:00Z

Yglesias:

I will say that one thing I like about Washington is that relative to other major American metro areas, DC is relatively egalitarian in economic terms. The $172,200 that the top White House staff make is good money but it’s hardly enough to put you in the stratosphere of the American economic elite. And yet, these are some of the most important and successful men and women in Washington. Go to New York or LA or Chicago and the biggest of the big shots will be making 10 or 20 times that.

I hear what he's saying, but while this is true in a narrow sense, I think Matt is missing something fundamental about how Washington works.

Sure, these people aren't paid outlandish amounts of money. But there's every reason to think that many of them will be paid big money. Take Rahm Emanuel as a case study. He was a hard-working, underpaid staffer in the Clinton White House. He then seems to have parlayed his political connections into an investment bank gig which paid him $16 million in less than three years. And while Rahm may be a spectacular example, countless other top Clinton White House aides went on to lucrative careers in fields like lobbying and public relations consulting--many of them here--largely built on the foundation of their insider experience and connections. (The same goes for Capitol Hill, by the way. People there work hard and are underpaid. But even seemingly modest Midwestern guys like Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt have gone on to earn millions after leaving government. And not just them but their top staffers, too.)

And don't even get me started on the Bush-era equivalents of McLean.

So while people currently in government may not be raking it in, the reality of modern Washington is that a high-profile powerful job is often a kind of punched ticket that ensures future wealth--sometimes, yes, 10 or 20 times what these senior White House aides are now earning.

--Michael Crowley

A Graphical Representation Of Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy

2009-07-02T18:49:00Z

By all accounts Mitt Romney's 2012 bid for the presidency is moving full speed ahead. Last month, he gave a major address in which he laid out his view of international politics--and boy was it convoluted. Channeling the business jargon common at places like Bain Capital, the management consulting firm he founded, Romney tried to break down world politics as if he were giving a PowerPoint strategy presentation to a corporate board.

Which got me thinking, what would Romney's foreign-policy worldview look like if it were depicted visually as a PowerPoint slide? I asked a consultant friend to put together a mock-up. (Click here to read the article, and here to download a full-sized image.)

--Barron YoungSmith

Palin Reconsidered

2009-07-02T18:44:00Z

Ed Kilgore is managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a frequent contributor to a variety of political journals.

At virtually any given moment, the news-cycle-driven chattering classes of politics have in the background of their computer screens or the pockets of their briefcases a Big Thumbsucking Magazine Article on a political topic that they read during periods of calm. The Big Article du jour is Todd Purdum's massive profile of Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair.

Most of the buzz about the piece deals with a variety of off-the-record snarks about Palin from McCain campaign staff. Indeed, conservative columnist Bill Kristol and McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt have engaged in a public exchange of insults over alleged leaks to Purdham.

Personally, I thought Purdum's best insight was about the exceptionally exotic nature of Palin's home state of Alaska, which he thinks the McCain campaign never understood:

The first thing McCain could have learned about Palin is what it means that she is from Alaska. More than 30 years ago, John McPhee wrote, "Alaska is a foreign country significantly populated with Americans. Its languages extend to English. Its nature is its own. Nothing seems so unexpected as the boxes marked ‘U.S. Mail.'" That description still fits. The state capital, Juneau, is 600 miles from the principal city, Anchorage, and is reachable only by air or sea. Alaskan politicians list the length of their residency in the state (if they were not born there) at the top of their biographies, and are careful to specify whether they like hunting, fishing, or both. There is little sense of government as an enduring institution: when the annual 90-day legislative session is over, the legislators pack up their offices, files, and computers, and take everything home. Alaska's largest newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, maintains no full-time bureau in Juneau to cover the statehouse. As in any resource-rich developing country with weak institutions and woeful oversight, corruption and official misconduct go easily unchecked. Scrutiny is not welcome, and Alaskans of every age and station, of every race and political stripe, unself-consciously refer to every other place on earth with a single word: Outside.

But what bothered me most about the profile was that with so many words to work with, and for all his focus on why McCain was a fool to put her on the ticket, Purdum never gets around to examining in any detail why the Conservative Base loves her so. That's a strange omission, particularly since the whole piece begins with Palin's speech earlier this year at an Indiana Right-to-Life event--significantly, her first public appearance outside Alaska in 2009.

In all the hype and buzz about Palin when she first joined the ticket, and all the silly talk about her potential appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters, the ecstatic reaction to her choice on the Cultural Right didn't get much attention. She wasn't an "unknown" or a "fresh face" to those folks. They knew her not only as a truly hard-line anti-abortionist, but as a politician who had uniquely "walked the walk" by carrying a pregnancy to term despite knowing the child would have a severe disability. And all the personality traits she later exhibited--the folksiness, the abrasive partisanship, the hostility towards the "media" and "elites," the resentment of the establishment Republicans who tried to "manage" her, and the constant complaints of persecution--almost perfectly embodied the world-view, and the hopes and fears, of the grassroots Cultural Right. (This was particularly and understandably true of women, who have always played an outsized role in grassroots conservative activism.) Sarah Palin was the projection of these activists onto the national political scene, and exhibited the defiant pride and ill-disguised vulnerability that they would have felt in the same place.

This base of support for Palin--maybe not that large, but very passionate, and very powerful in places like the Iowa Republican Caucuses--isn't going to abandon her just because the Serious People in the GOP laugh her off in favor of blow-dried flip-flopping pols like Mitt Romney or blandly "electable" figures like Tim Pawlenty. To her supporters, mockery is like nectar. And that's why Sarah Palin isn't going to go away as a national political figure unless it is by her own choice, or that of the people of her own state.

--Ed Kilgore

[Cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist]

Wolff Gets Catty

2009-07-02T17:20:00Z

Well, this blame-the-wife screed should certainly make Michael Wolff popular with the ladies.

Jenny Sanford Is a Bummer

Obviously every marriage--and every affair--has complicated internal dynamics. Very rarely is either party completely faultless. But this kind of bitchy slap at an entire gender ("Here, I suppose, is the news flash: Women, who don’t have to marry them, see women differently from how men see them") is enough to get Wolff shanked the next time he's out lunching at Michael's.

--Michelle Cottle

TNRtv: Afghan Ambassador on His Country's Big Challenges

2009-07-02T16:53:00Z

In the second part of a TNRtv series on Afghanistan, Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawad addresses some of his country's most pressing challenges: a thriving poppy trade, the need for a greater Afghan lobbying presence in Washington, and the controversial law signed by President Karzai earlier this year that legalizes marital rape.

--Ben Eisler

If you missed part one, catch up here. Also check out the latest on TNRtv:

Molavi: Even More Adventurism From a Weaker Tehran?

Llosa: Why Obama Should Support The Honduran President

Johnson: Geithner's Latest Multi-Billion Dollar Gift to the Banks