My Thoughts on Sarah Palin

I know I don't post on politics that often, and I don't want to turn this site into yet another political punditry place. Quite frankly there's far more than enough blogs like that out there, and the light to heat ratio among political blogs is pretty darned lousy. That said, I wanted to try and write down a few of my thoughts about John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, now that I've had the chance to mull things over a bit.

While I'm not a libertarian, I used to be a Republican growing up. I'm still pretty culturally conservative and straight-laced, even if my libertarianism tends to make me somewhat the black sheep of the family. In fact, I'm probably culturally conservative enough that a lot of my more "cosmopolitarian" friends probably think I'm a little bit of a heretic.

So, that said I have mixed feelings about Sarah Palin. On the one hand, I do admire her sticking to her principles when it came to carrying her down-syndrome baby Trig to term. I'm also pro-life, which probably puts me in a pretty small minority in libertarian circles.

Her religious views and her mixing of religion and politics doesn't even bug me as much as it does some. I remember when we came to Mojave, my former coworker Pierce went to a Chamber of Commerce meeting, and nearly wigged out when they started with a prayer. For me, that didn't seem that weird--after all, I went to a school where even some of the engineering classes would sometimes start with a prayer. It didn't hurt anyone, and in fact most of the engineers I know from BYU are hardworking, honest, and just as competent as their more secular friends. So the fact that she's openly religious isn't a negative with me like it is in some circles.

She even did some things to fight some of the corruption in Alaska. From the sounds of it, it was a pretty corrupt place.

All that said, the one thing that hasn't impressed me very much has been her dishonesty on several occasions. She's had two occasions now where she fired people for possibly political reasons, where she lied to reporters when first asked about it. She's currently under investigation for one of those instances. She "backtracked", which is a polite way of saying she started being more honest, only when confronted with evidence that she wasn't telling the truth. Admittedly, when you get blindsided with accusations, it's easy to get sort of caught in the headlights.

What's more troubling to me is her intentional misrepresentation of some of her past record as a politician. Several times now she has blatantly misrepresented her involvement with the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere". Her claim that she said no to the thing completely overlooks the fact that she actually campaigned for the earmark when she was running for governship, even going so far as to use the slogan that that town wasn't "nowhere" to her. She only turned on the earmark when it became politically expedient to do so, when the pork came to national attention. Even then, she didn't give the money back, and instead spent it on all sorts of other projects in Alaska, including a road leading right up to where the Bridge to Nowhere was going to be built. The way she describes herself though you'd think that she had fought it from the beginning.

Then there's the story of selling the governor's plane on ebay. John McCain bragged about how she had done so, and "made a profit" in the process. In reality she did put it on ebay, but it didn't sell. It only sold when an Alaska politician and ally of Palin's brokered a deal to sell the plane to a campaign contributor of his for about 80% of its market value. It probably was good to get rid of the thing, and being as far from the rest of the US as they are, maybe there really weren't any buyers at the market value, but you can see why the real story didn't sound anywhere near as good as the claims being made.

I'm also not very enthused about her rapid about-face regarding the whole "Troopergate" ethics investigation. The fact that she and all of her aides are now stonewalling the thing and trying to get them to postpone the ruling until after the election, smells too much like the kind of disrepect for the law that we've had to live through for the past several presidencies.

All told, I'm a bit disappointed. While on the surface, she's probably closer to me politically than any of the other three running for the two major parties, her occasional lack of integrity is a real let down. I know she has a really compelling sounding story, but at least from what I've read as I've dug a little deeper (and to be fair, the reality is that just about none of us really know much about Sarah that we haven't heard from partisans on one side or another or reporters), she comes off sounding like the kind of ambitious, opportunistic politician as the rest of them. She may have a unique sounding background, and she may have accomplished some good along the way, she may even be overall a fairly decent person, and a good mom.

I guess that expecting honset politicians means I'm doomed to perpetual disappointment, but there you have it. I guess I can accept imperfect people as politicians. After all, I am planning on voting for Bob Barr, whose previous record is fairly odious from a libertarian position. People make mistakes, and when they're willing to honestly admit them, and then try to fix the damage, I have a lot of respect for that. But people who bend the truth on a regular basis, and show no signs of penitence don't really impress me. He may not be perfect, but so far Bob Barr doesn't have to worry yet about losing one of his few votes. He may be bland as a politician, and I know that I am "throwing my vote away", but compared to the rest he's looking better all the time.