You know what Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford have in common? Basically nothing except momentary membership in the Republican Governors Association. Mark Sanford has a spine and Sarah Palin doesn't.
I've been happy to see that Mark Sanford still shows no sign of resigning his office as Governor. And I'm not saying that out of some backhanded hope of handing South Carolina Republicans an anvil for the next 18 months. What Sanford confessed to was not a crime and has no bearing on his ability to do his job as Governor. I am absolutely sick of this absurd expectation that every person holding elected office be a saint. Sanford is a human being and he screwed something up in his private life. Now I would like him to shut up about it and go back to being the Governor of South Carolina. I would not have voted for him, but he was elected to hold this office and has not betrayed any trust between himself and the people of South Carolina.
Sarah Palin. As it turns out, her critics were right all along. She is a frivolous person who has found herself far, far out of her depth.
I still firmly believe that in every town in America of even middling size, there are at least a few people who would make fantastic Presidents of the United States if the stars lined up just right to put them in that office. Mayors, fire chiefs, high school civics teachers and random well-read people with a firm grasp of human nature. That said, Sarah Palin is probably not one of them.
When the going got tough, she quit. Sarah Palin is a quitter. A quitty, quit-ish quitter who quits and quits and quits. There was no scandal and no great embarassment save the usual ill-informed tripe that comes out of her mouth every time she is asked a question. She just couldn't take the heat of being attacked by political enemies, being described by the 'main stream media' or the possibility of being a lame duck Governor (as if Governor Palin would ever have wanted for attention).
The talk of her running for President is now laughable. If she couldn't take the stress of being Governor of Alaska, it ain't going to get any easier being President of the United States.
Anyone who rants against the 'liberal mainstream media' as much as she does is definitely out of their league. Liberals thought the mainstream media was biased towards conservatives during the Bush years and now conservatives think that it is biased towards liberals. This is the way it goes - the media kisses the ass of whomever they see as more powerful at a given moment. If you want to succeed at the highest levels of American politics then part of the job is that you learn how to either manipulate or get along with the media. There are valid criticisms to be made about that media, but if you are running for state-wide or federal office then you just look like a whiny little wimp for bitching about it on-camera.
I can only shrug at the exit of Sarah Palin. It doesn't bother me as much as Sanford's resignation would, since it doesn't signify anything other than Palin's own weakness. My only regret is the loss of someone in public life who represents the legions of serious female hunters in America, the existence of which the the rest of the country has failed to notice. As for Mark Sanford, I hope that he hangs in there and completes his term.
12 comments:
You can point out things like the difficulty of marksmanship, but at the end of the day, I think the majority of Americans that are ignorant about female hunters are not going to be impressed by someone who chases her prey down from a helicopter. Bad media or not, that's the image of Palin that comes up when her name and hunter are used in the same sentence.
She didn't "chase her prey down from a helicopter" you moron. She signed legislation that allowed that to control the wolf population, legislation that was overwhelmingly supported by Alaskans.
p.s. I thought Alaskans had the right to make laws governing their state without having morons like you interfere.
John,
Cory didn't interfere. He just expressed an opinion.
I actually covered the Alaskan wolf issue pretty thoroughly here during the election. You might enjoy having a look at the piece that I wrote on Palin and wolf hunting:
http://rule-303.blogspot.com/2008/10/in-defense-of-palins-stance-on-aerial.html
Cory,
True, she is not the best ambassador one could hope for. But it was nice having *someone* in public view who demonstrates that women can hunt just as well as men can.
John Doe: Someone not have their coffee this morning?
Jackson was talking about media image and regretting the loss of a female politician who hunts and thus raises the awareness of female hunters. I was talking about Palin's media image, pointing out that it might be more negative than good considering what she is associated with.
My tone was reflective of the image.
As for her participating in aerial hunting (correction, from a plane). I recall some issue being made about her doing it, though I confess I'm having trouble reproducing it. Still, that changes little of my point. Which was that in the public mind, Hunting + Palin = pansy ass inhumane hunting of beautiful animals from the air. I.e. not the best image of female hunters.
While I do find the practice cruel due to the fact that, short of being a damn good shot, it isn't easy to ensure a clean kill, I didn't say anything about hunting laws. Most of my comments on Jackson's blog tend to focus on how to address anti-gun/anti-hunting ideology. I play devil's advocate sometimes, but it's pretty obvious where I'm coming from.
Cory,
I spent a good while looking into this and I never saw any evidence that Palin personally culled wolves from an airplane. She just supported the state policy of allowing it to be done under specific circumstances. During the 2008 election, her enemies ran misleading attack ads against her on the issue.
The problem (regarding this specific issue) was not Palin herself. It was the fact that people who knew absolutely nothing about hunting or about wildlife management issues in Alaska ran BS attack ads during the campaign. The fact that other people lied about her does not mean that Palin herself is a bad ambassador for female hunters. The appropriate response should not be to bow to the liars and look for a new standard-bearer - it should be to face the misinformation head-on and explain the facts.
Which is what I have tried to do, while Palin herself has chickened out and ran off the battlefield.
Wow, is she ever pathetic.
So basically now all of the liberals reading this will be mad at me for defending Sarah Palin, and all of the conservatives will be pissed off at me for dissing her. Everyone will pretty much hate me now, generally.
Jack
Great article on the aerial hunting. I missed that one the first time around.
Population control in an interesting dimension of hunting. It is essentially hunting only in the involvement of a gun or bow. That said, its as good for hunting as it is bad. Population control as an offshoot is one of the better defenses for hunting in out region, yet the idea of hunting hunting wolves or prairie dogs, seems
repulsive.
One thing about the aerial shooting bill is still not clear to me: who gets to shoot? If it authorized some kind of general allowance for the public (as opposed to wildlife control), then I do have some issue. As hard as it is to regulate how many animals a hunter kills on foot, shooting from the air strikes me as a tad more difficult.
As for the facts with Palin, I agree that we shouldn't bow out per se. But the thing is, as under enthusiastic about politics as I am, I'm not the only one after all this time who thinks she participates in aerial shooting of wolves. I'm not the only one with an uninformed impression of aerial hunting. She's had time to clear her image, and, as you admit, she hasn't. She's leaving with the image still intact, as it were true. People should always pursue the truth, but more and more its become apparent that being shoddy at playing the game is only a little better than being guilty. I think she was worse for women hunters than no representative, because she didn't correct this image. It's not a hard one to correct as you've shown. Until someone who can hold their grown steps up, I think women hunters are better off representing themselves by doing what they do.
Cory,
As I recall from my research into this last year, it can be either an authorized state employee (local conservation officer/game warden?) or a local subsistence hunter who has received special permission from the Alaskan game department. That permission is not given out lightly. Just anyone can't go doing this and it is not available to the general public - let alone the 'trophy hunters' whom aerial hunting's detractors would like us to think are the marksmen involved.
If anything, I would expect that it would be easier rather than harder to regulate hunting from aircraft as opposed to on foot. An airplane or helicoptor is a very conspicuous thing, visible from miles away. Wheras a hunter on foot could slip in and out of a given area completely unseen.
I find that kind of culling distasteful, but I can not condemn it. Personally, when I hunt deer I make a point of selecting does in order to help control our local population. So technically I am a 'cull hunter' myself, although using every scrap of the meat makes me feel better about it.
wait, didn't Sanford just straight-up disappear for several days, without telling any of his staff what was going on, and without appointing the L.Gov of the state to handle things in his absence? To me, that would constitute a "betrayal of trust" between himself and the people of South Carolina (at most jobs, not showing up for work for a few days will usually get you fired.)
DJ Hummingbird Feeder,
Yes, I agree that it was 'bad' that Sanford left the country for a few days without giving the Lt. Gov. a heads up. But no, I don't agree that this is grounds for dismissal.
The man is entitled to take a vacation now and then. It wasn't like he disappeared with no warning - he told his staff that he was going to be gone for a few days. He just didn't tell them exactly where he was going.
What he does during his time off is between him and his wife.
For some reason, people have gotten it into their heads in the last decade or so that any time a politician does anything the slightest bit bad, his or her career should automatically be over. There's no middle ground. Either the guy is supposed to be pure as the driven snow or he's supposed to resign. This is idiotic. Human beings make mistakes and we should keep the relative severity of those mistakes in mind before calling for someone's head.
Again, I would not have voted for Sanford and I disagree with him about almost everything in terms of policy.
If there had been an emergency in SC during Sanford's week or so of being incommunicado, what would have happened? Lt. Gov. Bauer should have been able to take immediate action. Instead, he would have spent who knows how much time trying to reach Sanford rather than attempting to assume power that he didn't believe he legally had.
Everyone is entitled to a vacation, but if you are the head of a state and are leaving said state (substitute country, county, city, etc for state as well) you darn well better let people know you'll be out of your area of authority and that so-and-so is in charge.
To fail to do so shows a serious lack of responsibility and a clear placing of selfish desires over the needs of duties of your office. Heck, I'm nobody in the grand scheme of things, but if I'm going to be where I can't get into work within an hour or two I have to let the boss know. They also have to be able to reach me within a reasonable period of time, unless I'm where there literally is no way of reaching me. Even if I'm on vacation.
My coworker went camping in the mountains of NC where he had no cell coverage. He had to leave the ranger's office number with the boss along with which campsite he was in just in case something came up and they needed him.
To think that a Governor can just leave a state with nothing more than a "I'm taking the next week or so off" to his staff is really shortsighted and, frankly, rather naive.
As a citizen of SC, I think his affair is shameful but that his dereliction of duty is grounds for dismissal.
GunGeek,
And as a citizen of SC, your opinion counts for 10 times as much as mine does on this matter. I'm not being a smart-ass either - I really mean that. I am a Virginia resident so he's not my Governor. Whatever you all say, goes.
I'll defend Palin on this one, the attacks on her were more than an inconvenience or just mean. When you spend more time defending yourself as a person on the legal front than doing the job your elected for it is time to step down.
For the same reason I think politicians with scandals personal or public should step down as well. The time spent focusing on spin or damage control reduces their ability to work.
Of course I am odd as I have this other believe that public servants with the capacity to make decisions affecting large industries should not have stock or interest in the company(ies) or industry. I think this should extend out to their immediate family and out to at least 1st cousins. Why rules that are held over the heads of government employees are not also held over the heads of public officials is outrageous.
An easy example is a felony, if I had one there is no way I would have my current job. Why should politicians who have a larger effect be allowed to keep their jobs with DUI's, fraud, and felonies? Makes me wonder.
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