Does Sarah Palin make mistakes?

Of course she does; but judging by his comments on an earlier post of mine, colleague and friend of the blog Doug Hagler appears to think that I don’t think so. Now, I don’t do dares—that’s been a personal policy of mine for a long time—but since Doug responded so admirably to my counter-challenge, making the effort to find ten positive things to say about George W. Bush (whom he normally tends to describe in terms that suggest the devil incarnate), I’m happy to respond in kind. Herewith then, are a dozen mistakes Sarah Palin has made. (It wasn’t a hard list to put together; I’ve touched on most of these before, here or elsewhere.)

1. Trusting Frank Murkowski. It all worked out for her in the end, but trusting Gov. Murkowski enough to accept an appointment as ethics commissioner and chair for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission put her in a very difficult and vulnerable position. She’d already found herself pitted against one political mentor; given that Gov. Murkowski had already gone the nepotism route in appointing his daughter Lisa to fill his Senate seat, one would think she should have been more suspicious as to whether he was really on the up-and-up.
2. Failing to include a sufficient breach-of-confidentiality provision in the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Given the circumstances under which she ran for governor, it’s understandable that Gov. Palin made an ethics law for the state’s executive branch a priority. Unfortunately, she failed to insure that it included a provision parallel to that in Alaska’s Legislative Ethics Act, which specifies that if an ethics complainant breaks confidentiality on their complaint, that complaint is automatically dismissed. This protection against politically-motivated frivolous complaints would have prevented the EBEA being turned into a political weapon against her.
3. Failing to include provision in the EBEA allowing speaking, etc. outside of Alaska. Given that Gov. Palin has been involved in national politics (primarily through the National Governors’ Association, at first) from quite early in her time in Juneau, this was a definite lack of foresight.
4. Failing to include in the EBEA any provision that persons filing complaints judged to be frivolous would be required to reimburse the state for the cost of the complaint. Again, such laws need to include teeth to insure that only people who have real and substantive complaints file them. Failing to provide for this resulted in a considerable cost to the state of Alaska over the course of the previous calendar year.
5. Initially supporting the Gravina Island bridge. This one isn’t really all that surprising; for all the ridicule in the Lower 48, why shouldn’t the people of Ketchikan have a bridge to their airport? The problem isn’t the bridge’s location, but its cost, which is why after her election, Gov. Palin killed the project (a fact for which the Alaska Democratic Party gave her full credit). If she’d looked into the details more closely during the campaign, she could have come to her mature conclusion sooner and avoided support that would later be mildly embarrassing.
6. Not insisting that Trooper Mike Wooten be fired for cause. Given that this guy was her ex-brother-in-law, it’s understandable that Gov. Palin would want to avoid the appearance of using her office for political gain; but there was far more than enough justification for his firing, given some of his actions, and the fact that he’s still an Alaska State Trooper does not reflect well on the state. At the same time, she ended up tarred with that appearance anyway. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat and just do what’s best, regardless of how it looks.
7. Not simply firing Walt Monegan rather than attempting to allow him to save face. He was an at-will employee who was undermining the governor’s agenda for the state and defying direct orders. The face-saving offer of another position accomplished nothing except making it look like Gov. Palin was trying to placate him, and he didn’t need placating.
8. Not doing something more drastic about Levi Johnston when he started hanging around her daughter Bristol. What, I don’t know, but the dude’s a classic good-looking loser; while the Palins were by no means as blasé about it as Johnston has liked at times to pretend, one wishes they had managed to keep him from taking advantage of their daughter the way he did.
9. Allowing herself to be staffed with McCain hand-me-downs after accepting the VP nomination. John McCain may well have run an even more dysfunctional campaign than Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that’s saying something. You can see why Gov. Palin would have simply accepted the staffers the campaign gave her, but that was a mistake; some of those folks were good and had her best interests at heart, but some weren’t and didn’t, and this made her vulnerable to them later on. She should have taken control of her own staffing from the beginning.
10. Allowing the McCain campaign to try to squeeze her into its mold with such things as the infamous $150,000 wardrobe makeover and the decision to control her press availability. That hurt her image and muffled her political voice and virtues. That leads to
11. Not “going rogue” sooner and more decisively. She did better when she went back to her own clothes, when she started slipping the leash and talking to the press on her own hook, and when she started showing her independence. As soon as it began to become clear that the way the McCain campaign was using her wasn’t working, she should have broken loose. Perhaps most importantly, when they wrote off Michigan, she should have followed through on her instincts and gone campaigning up there on her own hook.
12. Letting pique get the best of her in the Couric interview. That made her look bad and gave critics and comedians fodder to beat her up with; no woman as well-read as Gov. Palin actually is should have let irritation drive her to blow off a question about what she reads. If she were going to give vent to irritation, there would have been far more productive ways. Clearly, and by her own admission, Katie Couric and her attitude rubbed Gov. Palin very much the wrong way—but she was old enough and mature enough to have dealt with that rather than giving in to it.

Now, Doug may complain that I have listed no character flaws here—which is more or less true, though #12 does offer something of an indication. That she has character flaws and besetting sins, I do not doubt, since she is human as are we all; but I only observe her at a distance, and trying to get a feel for someone’s flaws at a distance requires either a) direct testimony, b) a long record from which to deduce them, or c) both. In my post “The self-esteem presidency,” for instance, I referenced both statements from Obama insiders—not direct quotes, but reported by the Obamaphile media, so I see no reason to doubt their veracity—and a number of pieces of evidence, plus a long piece by Ed Lasky, which draws on considerable evidence in its own right, to offer what I think is a reasonable conclusion about one aspect of the President’s behavior patterns. People allege other, more serious, character flaws, but I just don’t see sufficient evidence to sustain the charges. Similarly, while people have accused Gov. Palin of all sorts of character flaws, to this point, there has been little or no evidence to support their claims (and much of the so-called “evidence” offered has been untrue), and thus no real justification for any conclusions.