As Palin Stars, McCain Goes Along for Ride: Margaret Carlson 2008-09-11 04:02:00.0 GMTCommentary by Margaret Carlson Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- By this time, you know more aboutAlaska Governor Sarah Palin than John McCain did when he picked her as his running mate, which isn't to say you've gotten answers to the big questions.
As I headed out to see Palin yesterday in Virginia, I wanted to sort out how much of what McCain said about his vice presidential choice in the first blush of new love was true.
For instance, the colorful detail that Palin sold the state's private jet on EBay isn't exactly so. A broker disposed of it, so she keeps the sentiment by saying she ``put it'' on EBay. She's still claiming she said, ``Thanks, but no thanks'' to the ``Bridge to Nowhere,'' when it's been shown she loved the project until she saw it wasn't going anywhere.
In any event, are you really a frugal steward of the taxpayer's money if you charge a per diem for you and your family for 312 days out of the year when you're at home in Wasilla?
As for the earmark-seekers that McCain vows to name and shame when he vetoes legislation with pork in it? She used to be one of those people and hired a lobbyist associated with Jack Abramoff to land money for such undertakings, some of which McCain, in a former life, ridiculed.
Palin is an action figure akin to Jesse Ventura with a high body count. She dismissed two law-enforcement officials -- one of whom coincidentally wouldn't fire Palin's former brother-in-law,who was locked in a custody fight with her sister, and another for allegedly wanting to close bars in Wasilla at 2 a.m. insteadof 5 a.m.
There was her top legislative director, whom she praised publicly to high heaven but got rid of for ``poor job performance'' after she learned he was having an affair with a married friend of hers.
Banning Books
As for the town librarian being fired, the official story is that Palin did call to ask how you would go about banning books if you wanted to do such a thing, a purely hypothetical inquiry. And yes, the librarian was reluctant to ban books and yes she was terminated but supposedly for some other undisclosed reason. Anyway, she eventually got her job back.
Palin, who said parents of special-needs children would havean advocate in the White House, cut funds for the SpecialOlympics, Catholic Charities and Covenant House. It would be good to know what she favors that parents need.
But for the moment, for all the facts matter, Palin could have laid the caissons for the Bridge to Nowhere and burned books in the town square. To the huge audience in Virginia, she hung the moon and the stars. Crowds and celebrity were on the list of Obama's flaws until Palin started attracting the first and became the latter. Now McCain doesn't leave home without her.
Just Like Them
The 20 people I asked said they supported Palin because she's just like them. I wouldn't want a vice president just like me. I'd prefer someone who graduated close to the top of the class from a respected university, tested intellectually in any number of jobs, with a cogent philosophy about what government should do and with a lucid plan to do it.
But for many, being a mother of five, a frontierswoman who can field dress a moose and run over the good old boys in Juneau like a pit bull, is more important. Some might think a pregnant woman bypassing hospitals and traveling 22 hours to a clinic after her water broke is unwise if not reckless. But for others it's one more example of just how spunky Palin is.
According to recent polls, a lot of undecided voters prefer spunk to, say, health care. Obama wants to expand coverage and lower costs. McCain wants to give tax credits for buying insurance and to tax as income health benefits an employee gets through an employer. It takes a powerful amount of spunk to overcome that difference.
Mommy Wars
Women are driving the new numbers. Palin has reignited the Mommy Wars and the family values fault line, with some feminists and conservatives switching sides.
Some feminists huff about how a mother with a Down syndrome baby and a pregnant teenager can throw herself into being a heartbeat away from a president who's 72 years old. Conservatives are all for letting mothers decide on balancing career and children, and cheering on Palin's Mr. Mom even though he's away for months at a time working on the North Slope and training forthe Iron Dog snowmobile competition.
But that's not the only switching of hats. Conservatives have long damned teenage pregnancies as the result of a fraying moral fiber induced by the loose sexual mores of liberals, Hollywood and welfare mothers. Now when teen pregnancy comes to a Christian family, it's``beautiful.'' Conservatives have argued that pregnant students be banned from school activities or any honors on the grounds that not censuring them conveyed tacit approval to others.
Between Shame, Celebration
Surely it conveys approval to parade the as-yet-unmarried couple on stage at a national convention. There must be a middle ground between shame and celebration.
Since the convention, the campaign has dissolved into a carnival of personality politics. You would think that after putting the class clown into the Oval Office over the class nerd,with the inevitable results, we might want to forget about who we would prefer to have a beer with and concentrate on who is goingto save the country from financial meltdown and war: Will it be the party that got us there or someone else?
Maybe shooting a moose has something to do with being the leader of the Free World. Maybe McCain thinks Palin is ready to step in on Day Two. It's also likely picking her was, as Karl Rove said, ``not a governing decision but a campaign decision.'' As the argument flares over whether ``lipstick on a pig'' is a sexist comment or one of the world's most shopworn cliches, the question is no longer whether Palin will be put out to campaign alone but whether her sidekick McCain will.
--Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: HowGeorge Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former WhiteHouse correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg Newscolumnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
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