Palin's Governance: Vindictive, Secretive, and Hypocritical
Fortunately, The New York Times is doing the vetting of Sarah Palin that John McCain didn't bother to do. The conclusion:
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials. ...Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Once she became governor, Palin hired at least five high school classmates for government positions. She installed one of them as the director of Alaska's Agriculture Department. The former classmate cited a "childhood love of cows" as a job qualification. [more ...]
Palin filled other jobs with friends who had uncertain qualifications.
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc. ...Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.
Palin isn't all that interested in people who aren't her friends from Wasilla ... except maybe her new friend from Arizona.
Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated.
Palin refused to be interviewed for the Times article. That's unsurprising. She probably didn't want to explain troubling decisions like this:
In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.
The builder was a Palin campaign contributor. Another contributor, Steven Stoll, had a longstanding feud with John Cooper, the town's museum director. Palin eliminated Cooper's job. According to the Times print edition (a portion of the quotation is omitted from the on-line article), Stoll told Cooper: "Gotcha, Cooper. And it only cost me a campaign contribution."
Palin boosted her reputation as a reformer by attacking Alaska's Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, for conducting party business on state time. When a reporter discovered that Palin had been conducting campaign business from her mayor's office, Palin admitted her error to him, then prepared a press release accusing the reporter of "smearing" her.
Palin campaigned as a proponent of open government, but that's not the way she governed.
The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.
Sounds a lot like our current presidential administration.
Sarah Palin is unfit for office. John McCain's impulsive decision to select her as his running mate without bothering to vet her demonstrates his own unfitness for the presidency.
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