Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

This is what I get for being a comic book geek and a political junkie -- an auto-select of news stories from Google that takes me to a review of the premier edition of Steampunk Palin.

No, your eyes did not deceive you. Someone has gone through the time and effort to create a comic book called "Steampunk Palin."

In which she forms an unlikely alliance with the cyborg President "Robama" to fight an evil big corporation that's doing, um, something bad up in Alaska and turns out to be led by Al Gore. No, really.

And as you can see, Steampunk Palin has hu-u-u-u-uge breasts. It is a comic book, after all.

Taiwanese Animators Forecast 2012 Election

A working knowledge of Mandarin is absolutely unnecessary to understand everything said or depicted in the video.

It Is Happening Again

In less than twenty-four hours, I have learned that SarahPAC has raised over $866,000 and spent over $742,000 flying its celebrity politician about the country.  The ability to raise numbers approaching a million dollars a quarter, and less commented on but probably more significant, the massive outreach to conservative grassroots, has lent weight and given a spotlight to what I already through were former Governor Palin's Presidential ambitions.

Almost immediately, as if to counter the possibility that Sarah Palin would become the annointed, inevitable Repubilcan Republican nominee, Newt Gingrich (!) announced that he was more serious than ever about running for President during the upcoming cycle.   This isn't actually all much of a statement when read at face value, seeing as Gingrich has never actually declared his candidacy for President in any cycle.  But the impact is not in the literal truth but rather the fact that he raised the flag at all.  So while not quite tossing his hat in the ring, Gingrich through surrogates offered comparisons of himself to Bill Clinton as a candidate.

And then this morning, I can read that the Obama camp is already preparing their campaign template to run against Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or pretty much anyone else the GOP nominates -- by running against George W. Bush.  The idea is, I guess, that any GOP candidate is "going backwards" while Obama is "going forwards" and therefore the representative of "change" despite being the incumbent.

When you play chess, if your first or second moves are not what you wanted, you still have time to change your strategy and set up a different kind of play.  That's the import that should be read into these "events," which of course are not really events at all but simply factoids and throwaway comments scooped up by a voracious and hypercompetitive news industry hungry for any kind of a political story at all.  Chances are still favorable that the eventual GOP nominee will be someone who right now has a relatively low profile and some ideas that can catch fire.  (A guy can always hope, right?)

Today's point is -- the 2012 Presidential election is now underway.

Why The Tea Party Movement Is Doomed

Like it or not, the United States of America has a two-party political system.  Eventually, any political movement that gathers any steam, any appreciably number of followers, or any recognized intellectual force, becomes a plum for one or another of the parties to grab.  That party will gain votes if it can show that it can make common cause with the new movement, and fields candidates who say things that are sympathetic to that movement.  That is what is happening with the Tea Party movement now.  When Sarah Palin tells Tea Partiers that the time is coming very soon to pick a "D" or an "R," she's quite right -- and no one has done more than her to court the Tea Party votes to the GOP than any other mainstream politician.  Not that this would have been a difficult sell -- while Tea Partiers certainly had criticism of the free-spending ways of the Bush Administration, the focus of their invective was always aimed at the Obama White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress, and the anger did not coalesce into political action until after the 2008 elections.  Gov. Palin was always pretty popular with the Tea Party crowd anyway, and she never left the GOP.

So that's why the Tea Party movement is doomed -- not that it has failed to articulate something or to meaningfully affect in the political discourse.  Indeed, it is its very success and energy that dooms it to become co-opted and assimilated into the GOP.  The only real question is whether it becomes an identifiable faction within the party the way gun rights advocates, pro-lifers, budget hawks, and religious conservatives are, or rather stands for a set of generalized and somewhat indefinite concepts.  I tend to think the latter.

Sarah Palin And The Hand Jive

Holy crap, it's been three days and people are still blogging about Sarah Palin writing notes to herself on her hand while speaking at the Tea Party convention in Nashville on Friday.  Seriously.  How is that different than if she had used a teleprompter or index cards?  Anyone who's had to do public speaking for longer than five minutes at a stretch knows how easy it is to forget even very basic things.  So she used a few notes, and chose a rather juvenile method to write them down.  So what? 

No other politician in America would have received such vicious scrutiny and content-free criticism.

I say, criticize what she said, not the notes she used to remind herself to say it.  What did she say that's worthy of criticism? 

After spending ten minutes justly criticizing the Administration for the bank bailout and the stimulus package, she then advocated tax cuts without advocating a scaleback in government services.  That's bad for the national debt.  ("Washington has got to across the board, lower taxes for small businesses so that our mom and pops can reinvest and hire people so that our businesses can thrive.")

She complained that Abdul Mutallab (the Amsterdam "Christmas bomber") got a lawyer and was read his Miranda rights, suggesting that basic and fundamental components of due process are somehow bad.  ("The protections provided—thanks to you sir [PALIN ADDRESSES MALE VETERAN IN AUDIENCE]—we’re going to bestow them on a terrorist who hates our Constitution and wants to destroy our Constitution and our country? This makes no sense because we have a choice in how we’re going to deal with the terrorists. We don’t have to go down that road. There are questions that we would have like answered before he lawyered up.")

She mocked the idea that the President ought to be respectful of the Constitution.  ("Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at grave risk. Because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we’re at war. And to win that war, we need a commander-in-chief, not a PROFESSOR OF LAW STANDING AT THE LECTERN!")

She was dismissive of the possibilities of diplomacy to resolve international conflicts.  ("...we must spend less time courting our adversaries and spending more more time working with our allies. And we must build effective coalitions capable of confronting dangerous regimes like Iran and North Korea. It’s time for more than just tough talk. Ah! Just like you . . . probably just so tired of hearing the talk talk talk . . . Tired of hearing the talk!")

All of these suggest that she has not thought through her ideas for governing the country.  All of this suggests that were she put in power, she would take the country down a dangerous path which we will later regret taking.  And none of it has anything to do with a few scribbled notes on her hand.

The Book Moves, The Crowd Loves Her

I reported a while back that a friend who works at a bookstore told me that the Sarah Palin book was gathering dust on the shelves. Now she says that it's moving well. This little video shows what might be a reason why: the woman has a good sense of humor. I give you -- Shatner reads Palin, Palin reads Shatner.

I think really gives Shatner a run for his money.

Yesterday's News

This is one of the more conservative corners of California that I live in.  A Democrat hasn't been elected to represent this area in generations.  The central industry here is building aircraft for the Air Force and the nation's premier aircraft testing facility is located here.  Bear that in mind as I deliver this bit of news.

I had dinner tonight with a friend who works at the local Barnes & Noble, by far the largest and most prominent  bookstore in the area.  The store received a shipment of 144 copies of Going Rogue last Tuesday.  So far, the store has sold 8 copies of the book.  8/144 = 5.6%.  The book is moving so slowly they've already marked it down to the "40% off" category.

Maybe the book is selling really well online.

Runners World

This cover of Newsweek goes a long way towards making Sarah Palin look unprofessional and suggesting that she is not to be taken seriously.  When I first saw it, I wondered, "Why would she allow a photograph like that to be taken in the first place?"  I thought she was smarter than that.  She may have her own brand of sometimes earthy politics (recall the interview she gave a year ago in which she deliberately stood in front of a bleed-out funnel while Thanksgiving turkeys were being slaughtered behind her -- that was intentional imagery), but she does know to control her image.

A little looking around reveals that when she did the photo shoot, she thought the photos were going to be used in an athletic magazine, Runner's World, where professional dress is not how a subject of an article is expected.  And it only makes sense; she is an avid jogger.  To make it even slimier, it appears that Newsweek got the photograph without the permission of either the photographer or Runner's World.  One of those two owns and controls the copyright to that photograph.  Unclear, at best, how or if Newsweek got the rights to the photo.

I don't like a good portion of the prominent policy positions that former Governor Palin appears to have taken, either in the Presidential campaign or after.  I do like her concern about the strength of our money and I hope other politicians follow that lead.  I don't get the impression she's learned enough about public policy to be a serious candidate for high office -- but she is presumably smart enough to learn, and I think that if she seriously made the effort, she could overcome the impression of being an intellectual lightweight, similar to the way Ronald Reagan overcome his "Hollywood airhead" image.*  And ye Gods am I weary of the tawdry affairs of the insipid personal doings of Clan Palin and those somehow connected to it.

But this Newsweek thing ain't Sarah Palin's fault -- she's getting a bum deal about it from scuzzy, likely sexist newsmagazine editors.  It's fair to evaluate the political stances she takes, the candidates and politicians she associates with, where the money she raises comes from and how she spends it.  In other words, judge her as a politician, based on her behavior and her policies.  But I can't fault Palin for allowing herself to make a public appearance while dressed inappropriately.  There is nothing inappropriate about appearing for a photo shoot for Runner's World wearing clothing that is appropriate for, well, running. 

Newsweek should be ashamed of itself for an unfair and even deceptive cover photograph; even liberal media watchdogs are saying so.  Oh, and if you're going to review her book, make it a point to at least read it first.  It's not nearly as long as the health care reform bills.


* Reagan had the tutelage of none less than William F. Buckley, Jr. to get him up to speed on not just the big picture and finer details of public policy, but also the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of that philosophy.  I don't know what kind of contemporary equivalent to Buckley could be found to play Yoda to Sarah Palin's Luke. And query if Palin would think such a thing was necessary, which is getting back to why I'm not particularly a fan of hers.

I Forsee Copyright Problems (UPDATED)

A left-leaning publication house called OR Books is going to release a book called Going Rogue:  Sarah Palin An American Nightmare on the same day that former Governor Palin's memoir Going Rogue: An American Life will be released.  The font, layout, and cover illustration of both books are very similar.

OR Books is in some trouble if they go through with this plan, I should think.  It's not that they can't criticize Gov. Palin, -- it's that they can't do it by poaching her intellectual property.  The book is, I presume, a for-profit venture by Palin and she's entitled to trade off her own ideas (or those given to her by her publisher, who is definitely in it for the money).  For the record, I think publishing a book with an eye to selling it and making money from the sales is a very good thing to be doing and I wouldn't begrudge Palin a penny of the royalties she earns.  Similarly, if OR Books thinks there is an audience for an anti-Palin book, well, she's a politicians so criticizing her is fair game and they, too, are entitled to whatever profits they can earn from the market.

Now, the title is different and there is certainly no problem with using a photograph fo Palin to illustrate the contents of a book critical of this public figure.  But it's really difficult to look at the two books side-by-side and conclude that one didn't intentionally steal the artwork from the other -- and do so with the intet to confuse a potential buyer.  I consider myself a fairly attentive consumer, one who looks closely at details -- and someone who was attuned to the issue before approaching the subject matter.  Still, I was confused.  If an attentive, legally sophisticated, and pre-advised consumer was confused as easily and thoroughly as I was, the "average" consumer would almost certainly be led astray to the point that it would be little better than chance to have bought the actual correct book.

That is the essence of copyright -- you can't take someone else's work and pass it off as your own.  The EW article I linked to below shows yet a third book called "Going Rogue," this one also critical of Palin -- but at least that one has artwork sufficiently dissimilar from Palin's real memoir that I would have had no doubt about what it was I was buying and what to expect in the book.

If OR Books goes through with its plan, I kind of hope Sarah Palin sues them for all they're worth. I'm not a particular fan of Sarah Palin but she's entitled to write, market, and sell her book on fair terms.  There's plenty of ways these OR Books dudes could have made their point and sold their book without intentionally confusing people or stealing Palin's intellectual property.

UPDATE:  Good points here from Prof. David Post at Volokh -- the applicable standard in copyright is "beyond fair use," and fair use includes parody or criticism.  But in trademark law, confusion is the applicable standard.  So maybe there is a good defense to copyright -- but "fair use" in the trademark context is very different than "fair use" in the copyright context.  A "fair use" of someone else's mark is what happens when you compare attributes of your product or service with the competitor's.  There is another point -- the OR book critical of Palin will be sold in paperback, and the actual Palin memoir, at least right away, will be sold in hardback, which is usually a larger size than a paperback.  But I still say that the obvious intent is not just to parody the real Palin book but rather to emulate its look a closely as possible.  And even if it's non-actionable plagiarism, that's still pretty scuzzy.

A Party Of Antiscience

Rick Moran has been running a great series of posts at Right Wing Nut House about the decline of intellectualism in modern conservatism.  And I can think of no more telling symptom of that problem than this tidbit pointed out by David Hume:  it appears that all of the likely Republican Presidential candidate for 2012 are creationists and deny evolution, and favor the "teach the controversy" position:

Bobby Jindal "...has suggested that teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution may not be out of place in public schools."  He put his money where his mouth was on that issue, too, authorizing public school teachers to teach intelligent design and criticism of evolution.

Tim Pawlenty is on record as defending Sarah Palin thusly:  "Intelligent design is something that, in my view, is plausible and credible and something that I personally believe in but, more importantly, from an educational and scientific standpoint, it should be decided by local school boards at the local school district level."

Former Governor Palin herself has said of the subject:  "Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information.  Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Mike Huckabee, for his part, tries as hard as he can to not answer direct questions about teaching intelligent design, which is what we lawyers call "tap dancing."  But there's little doubt that he actively disbelieves in evolution.

Of the prominent Republicans out there right now, only Mitt Romney comes closest to actually embracing science -- and with trademark style, he tries to have things both ways:  "I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body."  Of course, in doing this, he is missing the point of evolution entirely -- if God guided evolution, then evolution isn't natural selection at work, but rather artificial selection, the way a dog breeder creates a daschund out of successive generations of larger hound dogs.

For a guy who is in the middle of reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth, reciting mountains and mountains of evidence -- not just fossils -- for evolution, this is a bitter pill to swallow indeed.  No likely GOP candidate understands science and most of them subscribe to a "teach the controversy" policy platform.

Teaching the controversy sounds like a politically palatable compromise, but there are plenty of "controversies" we shouldn't teach in public schools because the "other side" of the "theory" is simply not worthy of credulous presentation -- some of which at one time were accepted as the unimpeachable scientific truth and the state of the art of human knowledge.  These include:

• Intelligent falling
  
• The geocentric model of the solar system
• Alien construction of the Great Pyramids
• Cryptozoology (that is, Bigfoot, Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, Chupycabra, etc.)
• The "stork theory" of human reproduction
• Human health as the balance of the "four viscous humours" of phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood
• Santa Claus
• Jerusalem-centric tricontinental global cartography

There is no need to teach any of these "opposing theories" or subject the "conventional" theories to which they are opposed, because these "opposing theories" are laughably and demonstrably not science.  We should take into account a candidate's endorsement of teaching mythology in science class when evaluating that candidate's world view and suitability for office.  Treat a candidate for office who insists that both intelligent design and evolution should be taught in science class the same way you would treat a candidate who insists that the "stork theory" be taught in sex education.

Which portends very poorly for the Republican party indeed.

Taking Charge Of The Reboot?

John McCain wants to re-make the GOP.  Well, someone has to do it:

...those familiar with McCain’s thinking say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.

This is almost certain to put him on a collision course with the future Presidential campaign of McCain's former running mate, who very clearly wants to push the party in the opposite direction. A result which I am not the only one thinks would be bad for the party in the long run.

Pragmatism inherently involves leaving ideological perfection behind and instead focusing on both what works and what is possible to accomplish with the political, fiscal, and social tools available. For that reason, of course, McCain's efforts will be seen as tantamount to treason by the social conservatives. But as far as I'm concerned, they are yesterday's news and the future lies in more or less the direction McCain is pointing to.

Damn It, I Can't Help Myself

The ongoing squabble between Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston is more than a little bit like the Britney Spears - Justin Timberlake divorce. You know that you're wasting your time by pursuing it. You know that it is utterly and totally irrelevant to anything that even remotely matters in your life -- even if you are a political junkie. But somehow, when Vanity Fair publishes its interview with Johnston, called "Me and Mrs. Palin," you can't help yourself any more than you can stop that impulsive upgrade to a super-sized order of fries, and you hate yourself afterwards for doing it. But you are somehow compelled to go look and see what's up.

And Vanity Fair rewards you by giving you exactly what you went there for, just like a condescending pornographer or drug pusher, and you take it even though you despise yourself for it. "Oh! You want this, don't you? Here you go, you gossipy bitches. Yeah, you know you want it. You need it, don't you, bitches? Come on, now, who's your daddy? Now fork over the dough and patronize our advertisers!"

Come on, you know Andrew Sullivan has a big old pup tent down in his shorts because of this.

The picture, by the way, appears to be the galley of what actually appears in the magazine; I've hotlinked to the magazine's website to generate the picture here. Presumptively, the image is copyrighted by Vanity Fair Magazine. It also will serve only to drive traffic to the magazine's website which attracts eyeballs to the magazine's website and will no doubt increase sales of the magazine itself, so Condé Nast attorneys -- please do take just a moment to think about the fact that I'm doing your client a favor by using the image here before you send me any cease and desist letters. Besides, it's fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 as commentary so if you sue me you'll lose and I don't have any money for you to collect anyway. Just leave me alone.

Parallel Politics

Bearing in mind the biases of its author, this Juan Cole essay is nevertheless interesting in its analysis of populist politics. The point is that there are substantial similarities between the political tactics, strategy, appeal, and goals of Sarah Palin on the one hand, and Mahmood Ahmadinejad on the other. Cole leaves out, or at least significantly understated, the extent to which both politicians under his microscope rely on voters whose world views are colored by fundamentalist religion.

To be sure, Cole could only take the comparison so far. But I'm surprised at how far he took it.

Part Of A Continuing Series Of Critiques Of Bonehead Moves By Moveon.org

If moveon.org were serious about trying to advance clean air legislation, and if it were serious about keeping Democratic dominance over the Republican party, it would not be running this ad.

What, is Sarah Palin going to change her mind about the Clean Air Act because moveon.org put a negative advertisement about her on the internet? For Palin, being criticized by moveon.org is something good -- it's evidence that she still matters.

The better move for moveon.org would have been to use the same ad to put pressure on Republican members of Congress from closely-divided states or districts, who are opposing the laws they are trying to advance. They would not use Sarah Palin as the personification of the Republican Party; they underestimate the degree and manner which their political opponents will reflexively and unthinkingly react to criticism of St. Sarah of Wasilla.

What they should do is treat Palin as what she is -- politically irrelevant -- and focus their energies on people who are vulnerable to the kind of pressure that moveon.org can bring, not to spend those energies on people who will profit from their attacks.

The Force Will Not Be With Her

Big Hollywood blogger Kurt Schlichter is, I fear, a bit too fond of Sarah Palin for his own good. He wrote yesterday that her abrupt and as-yet unexplained resignation from the Governorship of Alaska may have been prompted by media criticism of her and vicious attacks on her family, but this has made her “more powerful than [her enemies] can possibly imagine.” A cute analogy, especially with the clip from Star Wars. But Schlichter’s Obi-Wan Kenobi analogy is simply not right. I know that Sarah Palin fans want to believe what Schlichter is writing turns out to be true, but wanting it doesn’t make it so.

Soon-to-be-former-Governor Palin is not stronger now than she was before and certainly will not become stronger than her liberal critics can possibly imagine in the future. She is weaker now, not stronger, than she was even a week ago. She will only become weaker once she becomes “Former Governor Palin.” In order to gain power, you need to show that you can use the power you already have effectively. No less a staunch partisan Republican political strategist than Karl Rove agreed with former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that her resignation is a “risky strategy” that has left him “perplexed.”

First, if she’s going to try and build a national campaign starting now, this is a very unorthodox move and consequently, she’s shooting herself in both feet. Three recent examples demonstrate that bailing out of government is a bad way to prepare for a Presidential campaign:

A) Hillary Rodham Clinton. Eight years’ worth of machinations, resume-building, maintenance and upgrades to an already-impressive political machine, and what's more, possibly the most impressive set of political alliances and presumptions of inevitability did not result in President Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton was outdone by then-Senator Obama virtue of the fact that fundamentally, she did not have enough personal executive experience running an enterprise like a Presidential campaign. At best for Palin, she has not yet demonstrated the kind of executive skill necessary to do that. Palin fans will likely bristle at this characterization of Governor Palin, but see my explanation below examples B) and C).

Nor has she been able to convince me that she is capable of personally overseeing the kind of political machine-building that Clinton did during the Bush Administration. Maybe she wouldn't need to if she piggybacks on the "movement," which already exists and already has machinery of its own in place. That seems to be how she catapulted herself onto the stage of state politics several years ago.

B) Fred Dalton Thompson. He didn’t declare for months after the primary season opened. He assembled “virtual” machinery, recording YouTube videos from a small studio in his house. He skipped debates and continued to party like a private citizen. He didn’t network, didn’t fundraise, and took too long to put together a platform on the issues – and when he did get around to doing that, he didn’t look or sound all that different than the guys who had been out on the campaign trail for months. He didn’t win a single delegate and got only eight unelected delegates to commit to him before he released them to McCain.

An unorthodox campaign style with “new machinery” did not produce President Fred Thompson – for all the talk of the “new machinery” Obama assembled, a scandalous amount of his electoral power came from old-fashioned volunteer work, and even more old-fashioned dirty tricks like ballot-box stuffing and polling-place thuggery. What was new about Obama was that he found a new way to build the old-fashioned machinery. What was new about Fred Thompson was that his non-traditional campaign produced non-traditional results.

C) Rudolph William Lewis Giuliani. Remarkable personal charisma and six years’ worth of groundwork raising money for himself and for the political allies he sought as backers was not enough for Rudy! to find purchase in the Republican Party. Too many strange things from his past, too many bad decisions made along the campaign trail. Now, in his case, he did not reverse position on abortion, but he did promise "movement conservatives" that he would appoint "strict constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court, and as we all know, "strict constructionist" is conservative code for "Will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade," something that is so far on top of the conservatives' wish list that they seem willing to forgive nearly anything else a politician or a judge does as long as they do that.

Sarah Palin, too, has outstanding personal charisma and unlike Rudy! she is personally pro-life and does not need to cozy up to the religious right on this issue. Now, I presume that if she is quitting now to lay the groundwork for a run full-time and from a location more convenient than Juneau or Wasilla. She will do the same thing that Rudy! did from 2002 to 2008 by whoring himself out to other candidates to give speeches and lend his political support and fundraising ability to them. Palin, too, can only try to make the right friends by raising money and making campaign appearances for them in 2010. But making very strange decisions – personal, policy, and political – are a pattern that can be found in Sarah Palin’s abbreviated political history, as well. The resignation is only the culmination of a series of odd decisions she's made, from "going maverick" in the middle of the McCain campaign to letting herself get interviewed in front of a working open-air poultry slaughterhouse to demanding new elections for Senator after it seemed to her the voters of Alaska voted wrong. And this bodes very poorly for her abilities as a candidate.

As promised, here is my thesis for Sarah Palin’s unproven executive ability. Sure, Alaska has a balanced budget, but that’s because it makes so damn much money on its excise tax that a fourth-grader could balance the state’s budget. Palin's brief tenure as Governor of Alaska has been highlighted by a number of ethics investigations that found the Governor to have abused her authority but which lacked the teeth to punish her in the face of a generally-friendly Legislature -- the most high profile of which she claimed exonerated her when in fact the exact opposite was true. Also, she presided over the the creation of a natural gas pipeline that had been in the works for four years before she assumed office, vacillated on accepting Federal pork money, and the institution of helicopter wolf hunts (which may make sense if you accept the idea that wolves in Alaska needed to be culled, but it just looks bad and besides, this is hardly a towering accomplishment). She took on some corruption in her own party, which was good, but has been unable to escape the taint of corruption herself. You can find the rumors about how her really nice house got built yourself.

Second, whether there is a scandal or corruption problems with her or not, it looks like she’s stepping down because she has something she wants to hide. You could say, “She wants to protect her family from this evil media machine,” and I’d totally respect that if it were true. But if she refuses to endure the media circus, then that means that she doesn’t want to run for President (at least, in a way which would be reasonably calculated to her actually winning). The fact that it looks like she’s running out of the kitchen because she can’t stand the heat is what’s important, because perception matters more than reality. I’ve heard more than a few rumors that the scandal she is ducking has to do with her time as Mayor of Wasilla rather than as Governor of Alaska, with a deal that looks really similar to the Ted Stevens scandal.

(An aside: Palin didn’t win any points with me for sticking up for Ted Stevens, either. That’s not to say I think the prosecutors handled the case against him well, because they didn’t. Stevens is a free man now because the prosecutors overstepped the case. But to say the prosecutors screwed up the case is not the same thing as saying Stevens was innocent. The evidence strongly suggests he was on the take, and we don’t need a figure of towering, arrogant, unapologetic corruption as a leader in the GOP. We now return to the peroration of your regularly-scheduled jeremiad.)

There were people -- nearly all of them self-identified "movement conservatives" -- who wanted Dan Quayle to run for President in 1996, in 2000 and even still had a few die-hard proponents early in the 2008 cycle. Quayle’s supporters were attracted to the former Vice President for the same sort of visceral reason that they are attracted to Governor Palin now: he was an object of derision and hate by the left and they felt sympathy for him as a whipping boy who didn’t really deserve the abuse he got. This was a reaction to a choice made by the Left. Had the Left not savaged Quayle so thoroughly, the Right would have picked a different avatar.

This was, and still is, bad politics -- don't let the Left pick your candidates for you because they're going to pick the one that they think they can beat easiest. That person, right now, is Sarah Palin. Ever since her resignation, every Democrat I know has said, "I hope this means she does run for President, and I hope you guys are dumb enough to nominate her." This is the political equivalent of the double-dog dare. These Democrats say that not because they fear or despise Palin. (Well, they do despise her, but that's because she's a "gender-traitor," a woman who dares to adhere to a political point of view at variance with the "feminist" constellation of policy positions.) It's because like Republicans, they like winning. And hey're convinced they can beat her.

You may (correctly) think the Democrats are wrong-headed about (many of) their policies, and you may find them (more or less correctly) to be morally bankrupt as a political unit and as represented by their leadership. But don't let that fool you into thinking they're stoooopid.

Dan Quayle was irrelevant in 2000 and even more irrelevant in 2008, and he had the good sense to realize that. He shows up to events, speaks to the rank-and-file faithful, raises some money, and then he goes home. Dan Quayle’s past is Sarah Palin’s future.

Well Now That's Interesting

Gee, why do you think she's doing this?

Soldiering On

Iran falls into national paralysis as the nation reels from apparently-corrupted elections. Initially, there's little way for us in the West to tell if the elections were less democratic than expected, but over time we learn that the returns came in way too fast and many cities reported more votes counted than there were people registered to vote, and that pretty much can't help but look suspicious. The candidate who officially lost the election, Mousavi, issues statement after statement denouncing the election and the government of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad sends out thugs to break up the resulting street protests. Mousavi's denouncements continue, the protests continue. Then, Supreme Leader Khameni tells Mousavi, "Toe the line, bitch."* Mousavi replies, in effect, "Or what? You gonna kill me? Dude -- you think I'm more dangerous to you alive... or dead?" Just then, a young woman is shot to death by one of Ahmadinejad's thugs and the event is captured on a cell phone's camera and tweeted all over the world. Gasoline, meet fire.

All this has been a little bit overwhelming to see. I'm not entirely sure that the importance of this youth revolution in Iran is of such surpassing importance. The young voters are not protesting the institutions of the Islamic Republic. They are not protesting against theocracy, at least not yet. They are mad because they thought their guy was going to win and it looks like they got the election stolen from underneath them. So far the clerics who ultimately run the show there haven't given them any reason to be worthy of trust. If the kids were out in the streets demanding a secular democracy, I'd be very excited. Until then, this really looks to me like election violence as we'd see pretty much anywhere. It would be really cool if Iran stopped being a theocracy but at this point it doesn't look to me like that's in the cards.

President Obama, meanwhile, takes his daughters out for ice cream on Father's Day, and seems to be concentrating on a health care reform package of at-best questionable wisdom and at-most dubious affordability -- so much so that even Democrats are starting to be concerned about the price tag.

Well, what's he supposed to do? The U.S. and its leaders have been demonized for more than a generation in Iran. Whatever we say or do, Iranians reflexively want to do the opposite. And we're a huge political bogeyman against whom the worst of the bad guys over there rally their minions. Silence is about the best possible policy imaginable from the White House. I may not be real fond of the health care reforms coming down the pike, but give the President the credit he's due when he's making the right call and keeping his mouth shut on this one. Maybe he should be concentrating on...

As the nation sinks further into crushing debt, a preview of what's to come appears to be playing out in Sacramento. The nation's largest state is still far away from making the additional cuts and tax hikes needed to solve what has now grown to a $23 billion budget deficit. That's a deficit on the order of what the United States had to deal with as deficits -- within living memory. Ultimate cuts are clearly going to be made in law enforcement, education, social welfare, and infrastructure. There is talk of a constitutional convention to re-structure the state government from the ground up.

Well, I've been saying for a long time that we need to make cuts and that they're going to be painful. I'm of two minds about the idea of a constitutional convention -- on the one hand, yeah, we clearly need something radically different than what we've got right now, but on the other hand, what evidence is there for the proposition that a convention be any better-equipped to solve the problems of the state than the Legislature is right now? Who gets to pick the delegates to the Convention, anyway, and if it's going to happen, where do I sign up?

Oh, and the mayor of Los Angeles will not be running for Governor in 2010. Not that I blame him; I wouldn't want the job, either. Tom Campbell and Meg Whitman have both got to be insane if they think they stand a snowball's chance in Death Valley of winning the general election. It'll either be San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom or Attorney General (and former Governor) Jerry Brown.

What? Didn't I say a year and a half ago that it was the 1970's all over again? Huge budget deficits, revolutions in Iran, disco music, a popular Demcoratic President unable to rein in a runaway liberal Democratic Congress, teenagers with really bad shaggy haircuts and strange clothing, inflation, politicians arguing about abortion and gun control, massive pop-culture resentment to the previous Republican Administration, John Travolta a major star falling into obscurity, unemployment, and tiny unattractive cars -- and it looks like Jerry Brown is going to be the Governor of California. Anything I miss? Oh, yeah, this time around no one's talking about the metric system, other than now everyone knows how much soda you get in a two-liter bottle.

South Carolina's governor, a widely-touted Presidential candidate in 2012, vanishes. No one's seen or heard from him since Thursday. His wife has no idea where he is, but she says she's "not concerned," he's just "recharging" after a tough political battle. His political enemies are ready to start drawing blood. His bodyguards have, well, some egg on their face. And his Presidential prospects are at serious risk.

If the guy is sane, he's looking out at world events and looking ahead to the debt the country will be saddled with from 2013-2016, and the bizarrely high level of popularity President Obama enjoys despite the Carter Administration-like problems that are emerging during his Presidency. I'd be on a flight to Vegas, saying "F*@% that noise. You want it in '12, Sarah Palin? It's all yours. I try and do the right thing and get stabbed in the back by my own party? No thanks, I'll take wall-to-wall hookers and desktops full of blow instead of dealing with this government crap. Oh, what, my future? Shit, even Elliot Freaking Spitzer's making a comeback, so maybe I'll just grab me a room at the Venetian, have them send up a baseball steak medium rare, a fifth of Jimmy Beam, and a brunette. I'll come back when I'm good and damn ready to."

...Oh, wait, he's hiking the Appalachian Trail? Damn, that's not nearly as interesting as what I wrote. It's not even in South Carolina at all.

Pat Buchanan was the keynote speaker at an English-only event. The banner misspelled the word "conference."

Sometimes these things just write themselves. In fact, no one would have paid much attention to the English-only conference if it hadn't been for the amusing mistake.

So that's my news roundup from the past four days or so.

Truth be told, it's exhausting keeping up with current events. I've considered putting the blog on hiatus for a week or two because I need to recharge my creative batteries and focus on some other projects instead. Hell, if Mike Reynolds can go for three months doing nothing but a squib bragging about referring to "sport peppers" in a British newspaper, then damnit, I can take a week off, too. You don' t owe us anything, but we miss you, M. Takhallus.

* An admittedly loose translation from the original Farsi.

Planetary Politics And Sarah Palin's Future

Nate Silver, though not a conservative himself, does seem to have a fairly clear eye about politics. He has created a very interesting way of indexing the potential contenders for the GOP's 2012 nomination, by graphing in two dimensions the social conservatism of the politician with the politician's credential as an "outsider" versus a "populist." Shamelessly hotlinked, the chart looks more or less right to me:

I'm pretty sure the "Bush" in the diagram is Jeb Bush, not either of the former Presidents.

Now, to some extent I think that the chart is limited in scope by virtue of the fact that there aren't that many contenders out there now, so Silver relied on several names from the 2008 race. He suggests that there is a reasonable possibility that Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson may be in the mix in three years; I kind of doubt that myself. I also have a real hard time seeing Kay Bailey Hutchison in the mix, either.

But for the most part, I think this is right. It is right both in execution and more importantly in concept. It's not enough to index candidates on their degree of social conservatism, because there are other dimensions by which Republicans distinguish themselves. A figure like Mitt Romney gains appeal by promising competent, effective government; a Mike Huckabee gains appeal by promising to "shake things up" in Washington. These are fundamentally polarized kinds of appeals and both parties have candidates from up and down that spectrum.

There are other dimensions worth examining as well, such as economic policy; however, at this time, it would seem that the Republicans have lost their way on this issue, since they still lack credibility as budget hawks and haven't come up with all that many ideas for addressing our present economic woes. And they're all going to be advocates of beefier national defense than will be in place come 2012, so in that sense they'll be indistinguishable from one another also.

So the big lesson here is that in terms of populist/outsider appeal and strong social conservatism, Sarah Palin appears to have cornered the market. Unless someone on the right side of the spectrum makes a convincing populist play, that quadrant of the field would be Palin's for the taking. If she wants it, which it's becoming clear to me that she does.

So it looks like my earlier obituary on her political future may have been in error.

The Banality Of Obsessive Palin Disorder

For some reason that is not entirely clear to me, the bizarre and pointless campaign claim that Trig Palin was somehow Sarah Palin's grandson and not her son and there is some sort of massive conspiracy to conceal this fact has survived not only the initial flush of publicity surrounding the campaign, and indeed survived the campaign itself. And it's growing.

Just as a sample -- Tripp Johnston, who is (purportedly) Governor Palin's grandson and (purportedly) the son of her daughter Bristol Palin and boyfriend/fiance Levi Johnston, was born a few days ago. But the announcement did not hit the presses until three days after the birth and Half Sigma smells a rat. Megablogger Andrew Sullivan does, too. And on the horrendously overvalued Huffington Post, you can follow a breathless headline to a report about Johnston's mother's legal troubles.

Here's a bit of unpleasant truth for both Palin fans and the Palin-obsessed: The Palins are deeply banal people. Economically well-off, religious, embroiled in family and community disputes of various degrees of pettiness, politically and socially conservative, they are very much like the busybodies who inject themselves into suburban local politics -- yes, Sarah Palin is exceptionally good at that sort of game, which is how she got to Juneau. But it's the same insipid game you can see anywhere, including in your own town, church, or social circle.

Sarah Palin could be interesting if she had a political future or if she were a source of interesting ideas or if she were some sort of mythic figure. By "mythic" I don't mean she's the modern-day equivalent of Hercules; I mean someone whose story gives us something that the rest of us could use to pattern our lives around (or in opposition to, as the case might be). For instance, a lawyer at my firm tells a story of a woman who was giving a presentation to the board of directors of a major defense contractor. After she was introduced, she stood up and walked over to the podium to begin her talk, and the skirt of her suit fell down around her ankles. She stopped in her tracks, picked up the garment and put it back on, and said, "Now that I have your complete attention, let's begin." That's a mythic figure -- she provides an example of something that you might do in a tense, horribly embarrassing situation.

Sarah Palin has not, as far as I can tell, done or even been purported to have done, something with that sort of emotional resonance. If she will be remembered for anything, it will be for the absurdity of her claims to be qualified to lead the country. Palin did not actually say she could see Russia from her house (that was Tina Fey impersonating her), but she did say that her foreign policy credentials included Alaska's proximity to Russia -- and no one says that Rick Perry or Arnold Schwarzenegger are experts on foreign policy or immigration because their states border Mexico.

So if Palin is a mythic figure, she is one of opposition rather than emulation -- she is an example of what not to do.

Personally, I find it unlikely that Sarah Palin will ever rise above the level of Governor of Alaska -- yes, being the Governor of a state is no small achievement, even with a relatively small population to whom one must appeal. But she got brought up from the AAA league into the majors before she was ready, and she amply demonstrated that in the Presidential campaign -- even to this observer, who tried to keep an open mind about her for a long time. She will need to re-make her image as some kind of a wonky policy wizard in order to overcome this problem; and in so doing, she will abandon the "Average Jane," small-town folksy persona that was the foundation of her charisma in the first place. So I think she's out.

And her family's tawdry affairs are, whether rightfully private or not, really kind of uninteresting. Those people who seem unable to let go of finding deeply personal ways to attack or malign her are something of a mystery to me. Dudes: SHE LOST! She's done. Out of the picture. Whatever it was about her that you hated so intensely, you've managed to purge it from the body politic. And the people who so intensely liked her back in the campaign and still do, take care to understand why you like her. Are you sure that it isn't just to piss off the people who continue to be negatively obsessed with her?

Point is, continuing to obsess about Sarah Palin and her family is really, really pointless and weird.

Post Election Poll Results

Like most of you Readers, by far the biggest surprise I had on election night was seeing Prop. 8 pass. I'd like to thank the one Reader who was most surprised by my loss of a bottle of Scotch -- thanks for the vote of confidence. And I agree with you Readers' second-biggest suprise being that Sarah Palin kept her ignorant yap shut said nothing during John McCain's concession speech.

Personally, I think she's got no viable political future; the campaign has thoroughly discredited her in my mind. But, like I noticed yesterday, she is going to Iowa. After all, a sitting Governor of Alaska surely has lots of regular political business to transact in Iowa -- trade missions to set up, language teachers to exchange, and of course fine-tuning the UN-administered corn-for-oil program.

And I bet that the same sort of people who continued to say that they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling the country even as thousands of our soldiers died every month in Iraq and the stock market got flushed down the toilet -- the same sorts who would approve of Bush if he strangled a live meerkat to death during a photo-op with the President of South Africa -- those are the same people who were genuinely surprised that McCain-Palin 2008 lost, and those anre the same people who are already jockeying for position in the Palin For President 2012 campaign.