Category Archives: Sarah Palin

Whither Sarah Palin? (update/repost)

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Taken all in all, I incline to think that John McCain’s loss this past Tuesday will prove a boon to Gov. Palin’s political career. To be sure, the folks who ran the McCain campaign are trying pretty hard to pin his loss on her, as a way of shifting the blame off themselves—but I don’t think anyone’s buying it; indeed, from the reactions I’ve seen so far, the only people they’re hurting are themselves. Throw in the interesting and quite plausible suggestion from Matt Lewis that this isn’t about 2008 at all, but rather is an attempt at a pre-emptive strike for 2012 by a potential competitor, and there just doesn’t seem to be any reason to take these criticisms seriously. As long as Gov. Palin keeps staying above the fray, she should come through unscathed by her ticket’s defeat.That’s a good thing, because a victory might well have done harm to her future career prospects. The odds are pretty good that things are only going to get worse over the next few years, and that the GOP’s current minority will prove to be a blessing in disguise; of course, for that to prove out, change will need to come to the party, but Gov. Palin is now in an unfettered position to help bring that change—which she would not have been as VP. As such, given that her geographical obscurity has been wiped out by two months in the national spotlight and that she now has a deep and strong base of support in the national GOP, she’s in a stronger political position going back to Juneau than she would have had in Washington, D. C.That still leaves the question, what next?At this point, Gov. Palin would have to be regarded as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, but a lot of things can happen in four years; if she just rests on her laurels, she’ll see others pass her by. She needs to take her position as a leader in (if not formally of) the national party and use it, both to strengthen her own position and to advance the GOP cause. To do this, of course, she needs to keep herself out there as a national politician. The usual way to do this is to run for the Senate, but in her case, that probably isn’t the best option.She could, of course; at this point, it looks like Ted Stevens has won re-election despite his conviction, which almost certainly will mean either his resignation or his expulsion by the Senate to serve his sentence. This will trigger a special election to fill his seat, and Gov. Palin could run—and some people are already urging her to do so. The benefit to that would be that if she runs, she’ll win, which will give her a safe seat through the next presidential election cycle; if she doesn’t, that gives the Left two years to hammer her and try to bring her down before her term as governor is up in 2010. The question is, would this be a good opportunity? Sen. Stevens earned a rock-solid seat by bringing home large quantities of pork, on which the state of Alaska is largely dependent, given how much of the state is owned by the feds. Gov. Palin has done a fair bit in her time in office to reduce that dependence, but there’s a lot more work to do in that regard; for her to run for the Pork King’s seat on a pledge not to seek pork and to keep that pledge could put her in a very difficult political position down the line—and for her to do anything else would ruin her nationally.Alternatively, Gov. Palin could wait until 2010 and challenge Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary; if she did so, however, she would be running for that seat not in order to serve in the Senate, but to run for the Senate simply in order to facilitate a presidential run that would begin shortly after she took her seat would be the worst sort of politics, and it seems hard to believe that Alaskans would go along with it. What’s more, such a tacky move would only damage her standing and reputation.Given that, it seems that Gov. Palin will need to work by other means to keep herself on the national stage. There are several ways by which she can do this. One, as Adam Brickley notes, is to do her job as Governor of Alaska, and in particular to do everything possible to expedite the building of the natural-gas pipeline. This, combined with intelligent national advocacy of drilling in ANWR, will serve to strengthen the country both domestically and in its international position, to strengthen the identification of the national GOP with domestic energy production and energy independence, and also to help her maintain a high national profile as a conservative reformer who gets things done.Another thought Adam had, which hadn’t occurred to me, would be for Gov. Palin to establish a PAC and do fundraising for national Republican candidates for 2010. By doing this, she could give the congressional GOP a real boost two years from now, as well as building support and loyalty among other leaders in the party. Even better, along with sending them money, she could spend time campaigning for Republican candidates across the country, using her own formidable political skills directly to boost their chances. Given that she will be a marked woman for the national Democratic Party in 2010, it might even be better for her not to seek re-election, but to take the time she would need to spend campaigning for herself and invest it instead in other Republican candidates (including, of course, Sean Parnell or whoever would be the GOP candidate to replace her in Juneau). Of course, if she did so, she would need to find another job, but I’ll come back to that in a minute.Before addressing that point, it should also be said that Gov. Palin would do well to work to win over conservative skeptics like Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, George Will, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley—not because their opinions are particularly important, but because impressing those who ought to be her supporters and currently aren’t is the most direct way to establish herself as the true standard-bearer of the Republican Party. The best way to do this is to address the current lack of a strong conservative identity in the national party, strengthening it and bringing it back to its roots, and to do so in a way which also dispells the easy caricature of her as an intellectual lightweight. Therefore, as one who framed the troubling challenge presented by Iran with the question “what would Reagan do?” I would suggest (as would Jim Geraghty) that Gov. Palin should ask herself the same question, and do what Gov. Reagan did in the 1970s:

Reagan . . . [spent] years in the 1970s mulling the great issues of the day, reading voraciously, and presenting detailed commentaries on everything from the SALT and Law of the Sea treaties to revultions in Sub-Saharan Africa to the future of Medicare. Then and only then, finally, after 16 years on the national stage, did the GOP give Ronald Reagan its nomination and present him as its candidate for the presidency.

Obviously, she’s still going to have her day job, at least through 2010; but in and around that, and raising her kids, I believe Gov. Palin should devote as much time as she can to studying and writing on the great issues of our own day. Keep building her governing experience dealing with the challenges of Juneau—and as much as possible, take advantage of that to use Alaska as a “laboratory of democracy” on issues like health care—but engage intellectually as well with the challenges of Iran and Pakistan, Social Security and judicial philosophy, the future of NATO and how to deal with a resurgent Russia, practical approaches to changing the system in D.C., and what our stance ought to be toward China. Co-author pieces with leading conservative intellectuals—maybe an article on judicial nominations with Antonin Scalia, to throw out one wild idea. Help rebuild the conservative intellectual treasury that was squandered by the GOP during its time in power. And off these articles (and perhaps books), I’d like to see her give speeches under the auspices of the Hoover Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Foundation, the Institute for Religion and Public Life, and other such organizations. If she does decide not to seek re-election at the end of her term, she could go to work for an organization like AEI, or perhaps in the national party leadership structure, and use that as a platform to continue developing and arguing for her conservative agenda.In short, I believe Gov. Palin should keep her name out there, not just by doing political things (though she should certainly continue as she has begun in Alaska), but by using both her position and her gifts to articulate, develop and defend conservative political philosophy and its applications. In so doing, if over the next four years voters become accustomed to seeing her name and picture appear along with insightful, well-argued, thought-provoking pieces in places like The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, conservative opinion magazines such as National Review, the Weekly Standard, and The American Spectator, websites like RealClearPolitics, and perhaps even on occasion in the MSM if they allow it—including, on topics which make it possible, illustrations from her own achievements in Alaska—then she’ll maintain her public profile but in a way that gives the lie to those who’ve tried to dismiss her; and along the way, she’ll reinvigorate American conservatism in much the same way as Ronald Reagan did, and help the GOP along in the necessary task of taking stock and getting back to being the party it needs to be. Two birds, one stone—and an entirely fitting task for one who would be her party’s leader, to start by leading it back to its soul.

Fake Scandal of the Month Club: Sarah Palin cleared

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Via the Baseball Crank:

We have news from Alaska that the investigator for the State Personnel Board has issued a report—contrary to the findings of the Legislature’s independent investigator—and concluded that Gov. Palin did not abuse her authority in the case of State Trooper Michael Wooten, the controversy over “Tasergate” or, if you prefer, “Troopergate.”

Read the whole thing.

Liberal feminist says: “Sarah Palin’s a Brainiac”

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One of the frustrations of this campaign season has been watching so many people—even conservatives, and even smart conservatives (like Peggy Noonan, or Bird over at The Thinklings)—buy the dismissive leftist line, backed by predatory editing to distort her MSM interviews, that Sarah Palin is intellectually and otherwise unqualified to be VP. On that, listen to Elaine Lafferty, the former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine:

It’s difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin’s “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS’s Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I’m agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart. . . .Now by “smart,” I don’t refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don’t really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.For all those old enough to remember Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included “I’m just a country lawyer” . . . Yup, Palin is that smart.

It’s not a long piece, and it’s well worth your time to read the whole thing.HT: Beldar

Kudos to SNL

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You have to give Lorne Michaels and the rest of the folks at SNL credit: they’ve done a really good job with this election season. They haven’t pulled their punches—in fact, at points, they’ve showed more willingness to tell the truth than the reporters whose job it is to do so; the skit they did on the bailout is perhaps the most obvious example of that, since it was so blunt that NBC felt the need to edit it:

Here’s the edited version, which is still quite good:

The one that really got me, though, was their skit of the first presidential debate where they had Obama insisting that under his plan “most members of the Chicago city council, as well as city building inspectors” would get a tax cut “because my plan would not tax income from bribes, kickbacks, shakedowns, embezzlement of government funds, or extortion.” I suppose they figured since their McCain followed that with a non sequitur, it was okay, but I still find it hard to believe they actually put that in there.In line with this, I thought they handled Sarah Palin’s appearance quite well. It posed some interesting challenges for Lorne Michaels, as he noted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, but they rose to the occasion. They didn’t hand her anything, but they let her play to her strengths, and I think both she and the show benefited as a result. The way they handled the open was, I think, particularly interesting:

To be sure, Gov. Palin has actually been talking to the press a fair bit lately, but that’s fine; as Michaels says, SNL deals with perception, not reality, and the McCain campaign’s early folly in sequestering her (courtesy of Rick Davis, who should have been booted all the way out when Steve Schmidt came on board) created this perception. She now has to deal with it in turn—which SNL helped her do. Credit to them.

The case against Barack Obama, in Joe Biden’s own words

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I haven’t yet written about Sen. Biden’s remarks in Seattle this past Saturday because I’ve been sick—I think it was Monday evening before I even did so much as turn on either the TV or the computer (which at least saved me from angsting over the Seahawks)—and I still don’t have a great deal of energy, but I’ve been rather astonished by them; I appreciate the points folks like Hugh Hewitt, Beldar (and also here), Bill Kristol, and Tom Maguire have raised in response, which I think are right on. Beyond my amazement at the extraordinary lack of political discipline shown by the Democratic ticket in fundraisers (it’s amazing that Sen. Biden actually thought it was a good idea to say what he said, but no more so than Sen. Obama’s comments in San Francisco last April), these are the things that really strike me out of all this:One, it’s one thing for me to project a major attack on the US in the first year of an Obama presidency, based just on reading the trends and the tea leaves; it’s quite something else when Sen. Joe Biden, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party—and thus one of the most thoroughly-briefed people in the world, a man who’s been told what almost no one is told—says so. It’s especially something else when he says the attack will come within six months and offers multiple threat axes. Folks, this isn’t just a prediction now, it’s the next best thing to a guarantee: if we elect Sen. Obama in two weeks, sometime next year, we’re going to get hammered. His own running mate assures us of that, and he’s seen as much of the playbook as there is to see.Two, Sen. Biden says, “I think I can be value added” because “I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know”; this would be more reassuring if his partition plan for Iraq and his recent fantasy about the US and France kicking Hizb’allah out of Lebanon didn’t indicate that he’s forgotten most of what he knew about foreign policy as well.Three, Sen. Biden pre-emptively dismissed the idea that we have the military capability to respond to what’s coming. Saying this in public is nothing less than giving aid and comfort to the enemy; it’s something a braver age would call treason. Such remarks, should the Obama/Biden ticket win next month, will do nothing but embolden the enemies of this nation and make them more willing to attack us; whatever they might believe about our ability to defeat them, they will know that our leaders don’t believe we can defeat them, and that as a consequence they have half the battle won right there. That will only make them more willing and even eager to attack, because it raises the possible rewards and lowers the risk.Four, though I don’t think it’s as obvious as Hewitt thinks that this is what Sen. Biden is talking about, I think he’s right to say that

an Iran-Israel confrontation is coming, and that if Obama is president, America will sit it out with, at best, words that do nothing to support Israel or deter Iran. . . . A President Obama will blink when Iran threatens Israel by approaching the nuclear tripwire. A President Obama will seek to force Israel to live with Iran as a nuclear power capable of either striking Israel or shipping to Hezbollah the means of threatening the very existence of the Jewish state, and the supporters of Israel in the U.S. will be stunned and then angry.

I think he’s right because I don’t think Sen. Obama has the political will to do otherwise. As Dr. Victor Davis Hanson told Hewitt in an interview,

It’s easy to say, as Obama says, it’s a game-changer if Iran were to get a nuclear device. What does that mean, a game-changer? That’s intolerable. What he’s not telling you is that if I choose to make sure that they don’t have a nuclear device, then that means that basically the United States is going to have to impose an embargo or a Naval blockade because the Europeans will still try to profit to the 11th hour, or even a military strike. I, Barack Obama, must be hated by people in Berlin. There’s no more Victory Column great extravaganzas for me. There’s no more fawning interviews with Der Spiegel. It’s going to be hatred from those people. I’m going to be a unilateralist pre-empter, and I’m going to do that, and all the people in the Muslim world and the Arab world that love me and fawn over me are going to hate me as worse than you know what. Okay, I’m willing to do that for a principle. Do you think he’s going to be willing to do that, or John McCain? I’m sorry, but I don’t think that all of that cheap rhetoric about invading Pakistan and a game-changer in Iran is anything other than rhetoric, because I think the problem with Obama is he’s bought into the idea of Vero Possumus, the new presidential seal that he’s promulgating, that the seas are going to cease to rise, that the planet won’t heat up, this is the change that we’ve been waiting for. And he really believe in this Messianic sense that people love him for himself. And he’s not going to be willing to give up that easily.

Unfortunately, messianic leadership only works in combination with messianic wisdom and messianic humility—and those a) are only to be found in the true Messiah, the Son of God, and b) lead not to political victory but to death on a cross. As for messianic leadership without those other components? Well, that doesn’t lead to political victory either, but to true disaster.Five, Sen. Biden’s reason for saying all this to those folks in Seattle was to prepare them to hang in for a terrible two years that will see the Obama administration become terribly unpopular. I wonder if he’s followed that through to realize just how unpopular the Democrats in Congress will likely become as well? Certainly, everything he says supports my own thought that we could see a GOP tidal wave in 2010 wipe out Democratic majorities all over the place. (If so, all the more important that folks like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and the others who will lead the GOP going forward take the time to think long, hard, and deeply about how to address the issues our country faces, both domestic and international.) As Hewitt put it, Sen. Biden sees a crisis coming and “suspects that Obama will react to the coming crisis in a way that demoralizes the country and which shatters public confidence in Obama.” I’ve been comparing Sen. Obama to Jimmy Carter ca. 1976, but this is sounding more like the 1979-80 version of Jimmy Carter—and that’s not good news. It’s not good news at all.Six, obviously, Sen. Biden believes that in saying all this, he’s making the case for Obama supporters to stand strong behind their candidate. I don’t. I do believe, however, that he’s underscoring a very important reality. While I’m convinced that electing Barack Obama will only embolden our enemies abroad and weaken our strength at home, and thus worsen the problems we’re facing, these problems, on the whole, have little to do with Barack Obama. He hasn’t done anything to help them, but neither have most of his colleagues, and some of them he could do nothing about. They exist regardless, and will continue to exist regardless, and thus it would be far too facile to say that electing John McCain would mean that we get to avoid them. We don’t. I believe we’ll see better economic policies if he wins, but this will still be a turbulent and trying time for our economy no matter what; and while I believe foreign enemies such as Iran and al’Qaeda will be far more circumspect in the face of a President McCain than a President Obama, they’re not going to just pack up shop, go home, and sit out the next four years if he wins. Far from it: they’ll be working to bring us down either way, and they’ll be a clear and present danger to us either way.All of which is to say: whoever wins, fasten your seatbelts—we’re in for a bumpy ride, and a long, long night.Addendum: here’s what Gov. Palin had to say in response to Sen. Biden’s remarks:

Whither Sarah Palin?

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If you read my last post, you know that my prognosis for the McCain/Palin ticket is pretty grim. This raises the question (at least in the minds of some), what does this mean for Sarah Palin and her political future?The answer is, I think, nothing bad. The immediate presumption is that it would be better for her political prospects to win this election, since “incumbent VP” is usually a pretty strong position from which to run for president; but as I noted last night, Gerard Baker’s right that this is probably going to be a rough four years to be sitting in the Oval Office, and there’s no guarantee that a McCain presidency would be a successful one. Obviously, I don’t believe an Obama presidency will be, and just as obviously, I think a McCain administration would at least be better; I don’t know that I actually think it would be good. I think his judicial appointments would be solid, and I trust his instincts and judgment on foreign policy and national security; given, however, that he can’t even make up his mind whether he wants to attack Barack Obama or not, or on what, or how, or what his message is, or how it should be delivered, and that he can come up with plans on health care and other issues but can’t seem to muster the wit and will to articulate and defend them clearly . . . well, let’s just say that if he does win, I don’t have high hopes for his administration’s record on domestic policy. I think a President McCain could handle Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the rest of the crazies in Iran as well as anyone could; but facing an equally hostile regime on Capitol Hill, I think he’d be much less effective in dealing with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. As such, it’s entirely possible that a loss in November will be a blessing in disguise for Gov. Palin.The question is, where does she go from here? The immediate answer is of course obvious: back to Alaska. Equally obvious is the fact that that doesn’t answer the question. At this point, Gov. Palin would have to be regarded as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, since she has national recognition and a broad base of support in the party, well beyond anything that any other potential candidate can muster; the question is, what does she need to do to build on that?The first thing, I think, is to keep herself out there as a national politician. This may be somewhat tricky to do, because the usual way to do this—run for the Senate—is not an obvious option for her. Lisa Murkowski’s Senate seat comes open in 2010, but for Gov. Palin to run for it simply in order to facilitate a presidential run two years later would be the worst sort of politics, and it seems hard to believe that Alaskans would go along with it. What’s more, such a tacky move would only damage Gov. Palin’s standing and reputation. There is the possibility that Ted Stevens’ seat could be available after the election, if he loses his trial but wins re-election; in that event, the Senate would probably expel him to serve his sentence, which would trigger a special election in which she could run for his seat. This sequence of events, however, seems unlikely (among other things, the government’s case against him is actually remarkably flimsy), and even if it did occur, it might not be a good opening for Gov. Palin anyway. Sen. Stevens has won a rock-solid seat by bringing home large quantities of pork, on which the state of Alaska is largely dependent, given how much of the state is owned by the feds. Gov. Palin has done a fair bit in her time in office to reduce that dependence, but there’s a lot more work to do in that regard; for her to run for the Pork King’s seat on a pledge not to seek pork probably isn’t tenable at this point—and for her to run on any other basis would ruin her nationally.Given that, it seems that she will need to work by other means to keep herself on the national stage. It would help if she were to do so in a way that convinced conservative skeptics like Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, George Will, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley—not that their opinions are particularly important, but because impressing those who ought to be her supporters and currently aren’t is the most direct way to establish herself as the true standard-bearer of the Republican Party. As well, it would be best for her to choose an approach that will not only benefit herself but also benefit the party, strengthening it and bringing it back to its roots. Therefore, as one who framed the troubling challenge presented by Iran with the question “what would Reagan do?” I would suggest that Gov. Palin should ask herself the same question, and do what Gov. Reagan did in the 1970s:

Reagan . . . [spent] years in the 1970s mulling the great issues of the day, reading voraciously, and presenting detailed commentaries on everything from the SALT and Law of the Sea treaties to revultions in Sub-Saharan Africa to the future of Medicare. Then and only then, finally, after 16 years on the national stage, did the GOP give Ronald Reagan its nomination and present him as its candidate for the presidency.

Obviously, she’s still going to have her day job; but in and around that, and raising her kids, I believe Gov. Palin should devote as much time as she can to studying and writing on the great issues of our own day. Keep building her governing experience dealing with the challenges of Juneau—and as much as possible, take advantage of that to use Alaska as a “laboratory of democracy” on issues like health care—but engage intellectually as well with the challenges of Iran and Pakistan, Social Security and judicial philosophy, the future of NATO and how to deal with a resurgent Russia, practical approaches to changing the system in D.C., and what our stance ought to be toward China. Co-author pieces with leading conservative intellectuals—maybe an article on judicial nominations with Antonin Scalia, to throw out one wild idea. Help rebuild the conservative intellectual treasury that was squandered by the GOP during its time in power. And off these articles (and perhaps books), I’d like to see her give speeches under the auspices of the Hoover Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Foundation, the Institute for Religion and Public Life, and other such organizations.In short, I believe Gov. Palin should keep her name out there, not just by doing political things (though she should certainly continue as she has begun in Alaska), but by using both her position and her gifts to articulate, develop and defend conservative political philosophy and its applications. In so doing, if over the next four years voters become accustomed to seeing her name and picture appear along with insightful, well-argued, thought-provoking pieces in places like The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, conservative opinion magazines such as National Review, the Weekly Standard, and The American Spectator, websites like RealClearPolitics, and perhaps even on occasion in the MSM if they allow it—including, on topics which make it possible, illustrations from her own achievements in Alaska—then she’ll maintain her public profile but in a way that gives the lie to those who’ve tried to dismiss her; and along the way, she’ll reinvigorate American conservatism in much the same way as Ronald Reagan did, and help the GOP along in the necessary task of taking stock and getting back to being the party it needs to be. Two birds, one stone—and an entirely fitting task for one who would be her party’s leader, to start by leading it back to its soul.

The last hurdle for an Obama victory

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I’ve been working for a while on a post, which I’m planning to get up later today, on what I expect out of an Obama presidency—and at this point, that pretty much is what I expect. I believe John McCain has a chance to win, but I don’t believe he’ll make his case forcefully enough to do so. Still, because there are significant unanswered questions about Barack Obama, he does have the ability to do so, and as a consequence, the McCain campaign has been starting to show some signs of life again. A lot of that is due to Sarah Palin; now that they’ve let her off the short leash to campaign on her own and do things like local TV interviews (that one’s with a Tampa station), she’s once again injecting some energy into the ticket. It also helps that the MSM are finally starting to notice some of the things the Obama campaign has been trying to keep behind the curtain, as with this CNN report on the relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers:

This is an issue for which the Obama campaign has no good answer, as Mark Halperin’s interview with Robert Gibbs shows. All Gibbs, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, could do was try to answer questions Halperin wasn’t asking and refuse to address the question he was asking: “Does Barack Obama think it’s appropriate to have professional ties to an unrepentant terrorist?” Gibbs ended up (on a question about his favorite country-music lyric) with this: “I’ll say it to you, Mark, but not to your listeners: ‘Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.'”Some might say that Sen. Obama’s association with Ayers shouldn’t matter; if the Obama campaign wants to take up that challenge, address it straight on, and make that case, more power to them. So far, though, they’re refusing to do that, trying to duck the question and hope people just don’t care; and as Peter Wehner notes, that’s not a responsible approach.

Some may believe it should matter a lot, some may believe it should matter a little, and some may believe it shouldn’t matter at all. But that association, like the associations with the Reverend Wright and Tony Rezko, are part of Obama’s history and deserve to be discussed in a temperate, reasonable, factual way. Mark Halperin attempted to do just that. Team Obama’s evasive and clumsy response simply raises additional doubts about its candidate and his past. If there’s a simple explanation to Obama’s past associations, it would be helpful to hear what it is.

The thing is, as Sen. Obama knows full well and most people don’t realize, for him, “just some guy who lives in my neighborhood” isn’t nearly as dismissive as it sounds. He lives in Hyde Park, in a fairly tight-knit community of intellectuals who range from “very liberal” to “extremely liberal”; folks like the Obamas, Ayers, and Rashid Khalidi, the radical Palestinian advocate who lived in the neighborhood until 2003, formed a much closer group, a much stronger community, than the word “neighborhood” suggests to most people these days. The folks who live in the Obamas’ neighborhood, including Ayers and Khalidi, have done a lot to shape them into the people they are.Along with these associations goes another one, Sen. Obama’s ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now); this is a bit of an odd case, since he likes to talk about his time as a community organizer, but doesn’t want people to know about the organization that would show them what that was really all about. That might have something to do with the fact that ACORN is being investigated for voter-registration fraud (we now have, for instance, 105% of the eligible population of Indianapolis registered to vote—and it’s not just happening there, it’s all over the place), which is particularly troubling since the Obama campaign has paid ACORN $800,000 for voter-registration efforts. You’d think his campaign would know that this is what they mean by “getting out the vote,” given his long association with them. (Earlier, during his time on the board of the Woods Fund, that fund gave ACORN almost $200,000.) Then again, in Chicago, this is just standard operating procedure, so maybe it doesn’t seem unreasonable to them. Even so, you can understand Sen. Obama and his campaign not wanting people to know what “community organizing” really looks like:

Acorn’s tactics are famously “in your face.” Just think of Code Pink’s well-known operations (threatening to occupy congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David Petraeus) and you’ll get the idea. Acorn protesters have disrupted Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and Acorn has burst into a closed city council meeting there. Acorn protestors in Baltimore disrupted a bankers’ dinner and sent four busloads of profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor’s home, terrifying his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally supports Acorn said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line.

Obviously, that sort of strategy isn’t any visible part of Sen. Obama’s run for the White House; but this isn’t the image he wants people to have in mind when he talks about being a community organizer.In a lot of ways, it seems to me, what the Obama campaign is really trying to do is to keep people from thinking about him as a Chicago politician, because everybody knows what that means. I think that’s the big reason they want us all to forget about Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko, and the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, and for that matter Richard Daley; because if you start thinking about him in terms of those people, and then throw in the questions about the legitimacy of a lot of the money the Obama campaign has raised (and their failure to answer those questions), then Sen. Obama stops looking like a new figure in politics and starts looking like nothing more than old-style Chicago corruption with a new face. I’ve said before that the McCain campaign needs to tie Sen. Obama to Nancy Pelosi (and also Harry Reid), and they do (and they’ve tried, at least somewhat, but so far without enough success); the other thing they need to do is tell the public that he’s just another Chicago politician. Gov. Palin has started making that case; Sen. McCain needs to step up and drive it home.HT for several of the ACORN links: The Anchoress

Sarah Palin’s greatest qualification: integrity

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Thanks to Beldar for pointing this out, because I wouldn’t have found it: the Baseball Crank has a great post on Gov. Palin’s long and strong record of integrity as a politician (one which, along the way, refutes a number of media misrepresentations from primary sources). Apparently, this is the first of a three-part series examining each of the four main national-ticket candidates in this regard, so I’ll be interested to see the next two as well. It truly is a superb piece, and well worth the time it takes to read it (it isn’t short).It should also be noted that the whole site is worth exploring, especially (but not only) if you like baseball; I’ve been a big fan of serious analysis of baseball ever since I first ran across Bill James 20 years ago, so I think I’ll add this one to the blogroll. I was particularly intrigued by his short post on “Bill James, Sabermetrics, Conservatives, and Bloggers” (which, as you can probably guess, generated a heated response from liberal baseball fans wedded to the stereotype of conservatives as nasty, irrational Neanderthals); I don’t know that he’s right in his conclusions, but he offers some interesting thoughts.