The Worst Vice Presidential Nominee in US History

There was a TV ad for deodorant that said, "Never let them see you sweat." The John McCain campaign has just showed the world that it is drenched.
Selecting Sarah Palin as its choice for a vice presidential candidate is perhaps the worst such choice in American History. To be fair, maybe there are worse choices, but I don't know how bad William O. Butler was when he ran with Lewis Cass against Zachary Taylor.
But it's far worse than Dan Quayle, who was a sitting senator. Worse even than Geraldine Ferraro, who at least served in Congress for three-terms. And far worse than William Miller, a choice so obscure when selected by Barry Goldwater that he (honestly) later did an American Express commercial asking, "Do you know me?" And that ad was after the election. But even Miller had been a Congressman for 12 years. And been a prosecutor during the Nuremberg War trials against Nazis. Sarah Palin lists her credits as a hockey mom.
There was a point during the Republican primaries when I was trying to figure out who I hoped got the presidential nomination. Someone so weak he'd be easy for the Democrats to beat, or someone more challenging who at least wouldn't be a disaster for America. I decided on the latter, because America has to resolve its serious problems and can't afford risking some glitch where another George Bush got elected. And so I felt that John McCain, for all his weaknesses, was the lesser of all evils and was glad he got the nomination. Throw that out the window. McCain-Palin is an unthinkable disaster.
I completely understand the reasoning behind the decision for John McCain to select Sarah Palin. Absolutely. It's the thinking that settled on Sarah Palin that's missing.
No doubt John McCain will get some women to vote for him who wouldn't have otherwise, and even some independents. But he will also probably lose as many Republicans uncomfortable with a woman on the ticket - let alone a woman with so little experience as Sarah Palin. Not to mention that the choice will cause many undecided Democratic women to be aghast and push them back to following their Democratic beliefs. And further, it will lose all the independents who look at the GOP ticket and say "This is who I'm supposed to give my vote for the next four years to lead and protect America?" It may even appeal to right-wing evangelicals for her strong pro-life stance and get some to vote - but that position and others related to it are specifically what loses even more women voters. And men. Ultimately, the nomination will lose far, far more votes than it gains.

But this is not the reason the decision is so terrible.

It's always said that the most important decision a presidential candidate makes is their pick for vice president. It shows their thinking and judgment. John McCain, in his first decision, has just told the world that he believes Sarah Palin is the most qualified person to be a heartbeat from the presidency. Forgetting all the available men for a moment, if John McCain felt it critical to select a woman in an effort to somehow grab the Hillary Clinton supporters, look at his choice of women he had available:
• Christine Todd Whitman;
• Kay Bailey Hutchison;
• Elizabeth Dole;
• Susan Collins; even - for goodness sake –
• Condoleezza Rice or
• Carly Fiorina.
Each of these have marks against them, and perhaps some might not have wanted to run, but it's near-impossible to look at the list and suggest to the American public that Sarah Palin is the best choice of Republican women to be vice president. And again, this is ignoring the men he who could have been chosen.
It's not that Sarah Palin is inexperienced. It's that this is gross political misconduct.
Sarah Palin has been governor of Alaska for just a bit over 18 months. Alaska has a population of 683,000. (Though that doesn't include moose.) This would only make it the 17th most populous city in the United States. Just ahead of Fort Worth.
Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Population 9,000. I know Republicans like to promote "small town values," but this is taking things to ridiculous extremes, don't you think? I'm from Glencoe, Illinois, population 8,762. It's so small it doesn't even have a mayor, it has an appointed village manager. I'm sure that Paul Harlow is doing wonderfully at his job in the village - but I don't expect that he sees himself as even wanting to be a heartbeat from the U.S. President in 18 months. You know what the top news story is on the Glencoe website? "Fire Hydrant Painting Underway." (To be fair, it's the #2 story. The top news is a clarification about displaying political signage.)
Do you know what the first two "powers and duties" are for the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska? Check their municipal code:
1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie;
2. Act as ceremonial head of the city;
Swell.
If you live in small town America (and I mean really, really small), look around you and be honest - do you see your mayor (or village manager) as a heartbeat from the presidency in 18 months?
But that's not the reason either that the decision to make Sarah Palin the VP nominee is so terrible.
It's one thing to discuss how unqualified Sarah Palin is. That's a national matter and huge. But on a grassroots political level, her nomination takes away the Republicans' ONLY weapon in the campaign - calling Barack Obama inexperienced. They haven't even been trying to run on the issues, or on the eight-year record of George Bush, which John McCain has supported almost 95% of the time. They've only been running on the faux-issue of Barack Obama's experience of 14 years in federal and state government. Yes, Sarah Palin is merely running for VP, not president, but with a 72 year-old candidate with a history of serious medical issues like repeated cancer, this is who they're saying is able to step in as president in a heart-beat. She has so little experience that she makes Sen. Obama look like FDR, Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar combined. So, the Republicans pulled the rug out from under themselves. They have no issues. The economy? Housing? The national debt? Education? The Environment? Iraq? Afghanistan? Nothing. All they have is "Dear Democratic women: please pretend our VP candidate is Hillary Clinton. Just forget that she's pro-life. And against most things Democrats stand for."

But that's not the reason the decision is so terrible.

Because if the hope for John McCain is to get women to vote for him who otherwise supported Hillary Clinton – oh boy! – If anything could get Hillary Clinton campaigning in full force and fury...this is it. She likely would have campaigned hard, but it's in Hillary Clinton's best interest to be the leading voice for women, and the leading woman candidate for president in the future, so having another woman as the potential Vice President (and potential President) is a significant challenge to that. The Republicans just opened Pandora's Box and brought Hillary Clinton roaring to Barack Obama's side on the Democratic train. And Bill Clinton, too. The suggestion that an average nitwit like Sarah Palin could be something as a Republican Hillary Clinton is an insult of eternal proportions.

Yet even that's not the reason the decision is so terrible.

What this does in the most profound and grandiose way possible is give lie to John McCain's pompous posturing that he Always Puts America First. And that undercuts the most prominent campaign issue of his entire career, that everything he does is for reasons of honor. There is nothing honorable about making Sarah Palin your vice presidential nominee. Nothing. Unless you define honor as "blatantly pandering."

But that's not the reason either that this decision is so terrible.

But before we get to that, let's look at the actual announcement to make Gov. Sarah Palin (AK - pop. 683,000) the Republican nominee for president, and put the horrible decision in perspective.
First, John McCain stood at the podium, looking up-and-down reading his speech. It's impossible not to compare that to Barack Obama giving his majestic speech the night before that even conservative analysts were admiring in awe.
Second, the cameras were polite enough to avoid it, but there were empty seats in the gym. It's impossible not to compare that to a stadium of 75,000 people that Barack Obama spoke to the night before.
Third, when people around the nation were waiting to hear about Sarah Palin's qualifications and gravitas to be Vice President of the United States, the first five minutes of her speech were spent talking about her husband being a champion snowmobiler.
Fourth, when she finally got around to her qualifications, pretty much all we discovered was that she fought to cut property taxes. And then, she basically stopped there.
She did, however, mention becoming energy self-sufficient - by talking about how she supported drilling in Alaska!!! Perhaps to Republicans this is being an environmentalist, but to most of America, not so much. Then again, she's also against putting polar bears and white dolphins on the endangered species list (which the government did), so maybe her environmental qualifications are more lax than she thinks.
And then, finally, she spent the rest of her time praising John McCain. Fine, that's very supportive of her...except that the one question on everyone's mind was not -- "can you say John McCain is a swell guy and unveil us the secret that he was a POW", the question on everyone's mind was - "Who in God's name are you, and please tell us why you should be a heart-beat from the presidency?"
In the end, the only case she herself made for being on the ticket was praising Hillary Clinton! That's it, period. Now, it might be enough to attract some women -- but it doesn't make a case for the ticket. Why? Hint: some women did vote for Hillary Clinton solely because she was a woman. But most women voted for Hillary Clinton because she was a Democrat, as well as a woman, who stood for important Democratic values they seriously believed in. If Sarah Palin wants to praise Hillary Clinton, go for it. But at least understand what you're praising. Because it will likely come back and bite you.
It was a thin, nothing, empty speech. It was a speech to be Chair of the Public School’s Parents Committee. Compare that to the speech by Joe Biden when Barack Obama introduced him. Eloquent, soaring and explaining in blunt detail why John McCain should not be president. Joe Biden must have been watching Sarah Palin's speech, in order to take notes in preparation for his debate with her and thought, "This isn't fair."

And all that's not even the reason the decision is so terrible.

The reason is because the election is not about Sarah Palin. Or about Joe Biden. As much as TV analysts want to be excited by the balloons and hoopla, tomorrow the air will be let out, and there are still over two months to go for the campaign.
The campaign is about the direction of the American future and the world as seen by Barack Obama or as seen by John McCain.
Sarah Palin's nomination doesn't change that. In fact, it reinforces it. Nothing about putting Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket changes a word that Barack Obama said in his vibrant acceptance speech - about himself, about his issues, and about John McCain's repeatedly faulty judgment on the critical issues facing America.

What Sarah Palin's nomination does do is focus attention on John McCain's age.
Indeed, the nomination was made on his birthday, when he turned 72, the oldest man ever to run for president. As the crowd sang "Happy Birthday to You," you almost sensed that through John McCain's clenched smile, saying, "Thanks for reminding me," that what he was thinking underneath was "Please, oh, please, don't sing the 'How old are you now?' part."
And how good a message was it that he's saying he supposedly forgot it was his birthday?

Vice presidents are usually selected as people who are adept at blasting the other side's presidential candidate, because it's only the presidential candidate that matters. Joe Biden has already done that - twice - at length, spoken as someone who knows John McCain well and likes him. Sarah Palin had her first chance...and whiffed. Didn't even try. And it's hard to imagine what she has in her arsenal that will remotely allow her to do so in the future.
The election is about the presidential candidates. And the selection of Sarah Palin now allows Barack Obama to campaign untouched by the Republican ticket. John McCain's only other option is for himself to personally become negative for two months - which is disaster in presidential politics.

Now add on all the problems expressed above.
1. Sarah Palin's inexplicably laughable lack of substance, most-especially on the foreign policy stage.
2. Her taking away the one issue, experience, Republicans were even attempting.
3. Her pushing away voters who might otherwise be willing to vote for a senator with 26 years in the Senate.
4. Her bringing Hillary Clinton aggressively back into the campaign.
5. Her inability to offer anything to off-set Joe Biden.
6. Her standing as supposedly the most-qualified Republican woman as John McCain's first decision.
7. And, in the end, it all focuses back on Barack Obama, with his indictment of eight years of the Bush Administration and of John McCain's flawed judgment - and John McCain's defense of all that.
Republicans might be dancing earlier today, because there was a lot of fun music playing. But the music has stopped. The actual campaign has now started. For Republicans, it might have ended.

About Experience?

Yes, she's an experienced killer of bears to sit at home on the cadavers.
Wait, now, say the Republicans. You think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lacks experience? You think that at 44, with less than two years running the nation's northernmost state, she doesn't have what it takes yet to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Pshaw.

What about the fact that she stood up to embattled Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens? What about her oversight of her state's National Guard contingent? Her experience as a mother? And, hey _ what about the fact that she runs a state that happens to be very close to Russia?

Each of these characteristics has been cited by a Republican since Friday as an ingredient in John McCain's conclusion that Palin is qualified to become vice president of the United States.

"She has experience not only in politics but in life," former Republican Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee said Sunday on CNN.

None of this suggests that Sarah Palin is not a skilled, competent, multitalented public servant. But it means that, in the face of fierce Democratic assertions that she is too green to be elevated to vice president, the GOP is looking for whatever it can to show that's not the case and to bolster her credentials, particularly in national security.

And in some cases, the responses from Republicans who showed up on the Sunday morning talk-show circuit to promote Palin's qualifications are unexpected, to say the least.
in some cases, the responses from Republicans who showed up on the Sunday morning talk-show circuit to promote Palin's qualifications are unexpected, to say the least.
Thompson: "She's a mother of five children. ... And she has more experience than Barack Obama."
But Alaska National Guard General: Palin Plays No Role In National Defense Activities Even When They Involve The Alaska National Guard
BUT... you bet he will be fired!

McCain Camp Didn't Search Palin's Hometown Paper Archives

Sam Stein, Huffington Post:
The McCain campaign has gone to great lengths to present the selection of Sarah Palin as one made after a careful, meticulous vetting process. But evidence continues to suggest that the Arizona Republican made his VP choice with surprising haste.
On Saturday, a Democrat tasked with opposition research contacted the Huffington Post with this piece of information: as of this weekend, the McCain campaign had not gone through old newspaper articles from the Valley Frontiersman, Palin's hometown newspaper.
How does he know? The paper's (massive) archives are not online. And when he went to research past content, he was told he was the first to inquire.
"No one else had requested access before," said the source. "It's unbelievable. We were the only people to do that, which means the McCain camp didn't."
The Frontiersman did not immediately confirm the revelation. And there is no indication from the Democratic source that anything nefarious or problematic will be found in the archives. But officials with the paper did not recall inquiries by the McCain campaign.
"I cannot confirm that information at this time," said publisher Kari Sleight. "I am not aware of the McCain campaign researching our archives, but archive requests do not usually go through me."

If true, the failure of the Arizona Republican to access the newspaper clippings becomes another in a growing list of revelations that calls into question just how and why he made his decision to choose Palin. A rudimentary clip search, such as this, is presidential politics 101 as campaigns not only look for the majority of background information on any high-level appointee, but also try to prepare themselves from future attacks.
It has been previously reported that the McCain campaign did not contact Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who Palin pushed to have fired after he refused to remove her sister's former husband from the state's police force. That controversy, an investigation of which will be made public in late October, could cause major headaches for Palin in the days leading up to the election.

In addition, the former Republican House Speaker of Alaska, Gail Phillips, admitted to reporters that she was shocked by McCain's choice of Palin, as "his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out."
Even McCain's own aides seemed unprepared by the choice. After Palin's name was announced, spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer was asked about the governor's relationship with the Senator.
"You're running flat into the wall of my ignorance here," she said. "I truly have no indication whatsoever the extent of a relationship that exists with the Governor of Alaska."
In light of these reports, the McCain camp has sought to dispel the notion that Palin was un-vetted or chosen out of purely political motives. Even though the presumptive Republican nominee met his now-running mate only once before choosing her, aides have begun arguing, the two are "kindred spirits" and have shared ideological bearings. In a Washington Post piece Sunday, Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, said the Palin chose was not a last minute call. The process, he added, was rigorous and involved sifting through financial and other personal data, as well as an FBI background check.

"Nobody was vetted less or more than anyone in the final stages, and John had access to all that information and made the decision," Davis said. "It's really not much more complicated than that."

Graham: I Dread The Day Obama Becomes President

Tasked with defending Sarah Palin's foreign policy credentials as a vice presidential nominee, Sen. Lindsey Graham instead launched a vicious attack at Barack Obama's capacity to serve as president.

"I would dread the day that Senator Obama took the oath to become commander in chief," the South Carolina Republican and ardent McCain supporter said today on ABC's This Week.
The remark - one of the more blunt claims leveled during this campaign - comes amidst increased scrutiny over McCain's appointment of Palin to be his running mate. The Alaska Governor, who has served less than two years in office and has limited foreign policy credentials at best, has created troubles for a Republican Party hoping to cast the Obama ticket as the one of inexperience.
Graham spent much of his interview Sunday defending Palin's capacity to serve on moment's notice as commander in chief. But as ABC's George Stephanopoulos noted immediately following the "dread" remark, much of that defense came in the form of turning the attack lights on to Obama.
"Barack Obama, who got it incredibly wrong in Iraq, ... would sit down with Ahmadinejad and change the whole dynamic of the Mideast by empowering a nut and sending every wrong signal to extremists and moderates," Graham said. "His judgment in these areas has been terrible, proven to be terrible. I would be proud to call her my president. I think she could step in and fulfill the agenda domestically and internationally that John McCain wants to set for the country. Compared to Barack Obama, I think she'd make one hell of a commander in chief."

Primary defeat of 2000 toughened McCain of 2008 just as he has been the POW forever

original article
Senator John McCain is not the same man who was defeated by Vietnamese communists, and yet not the same POW that first ran for president in 2000.
Rarely seen on the stump is the "Happy Warrior" of eight years ago, the McCain, a have been POW, who once likened battling members of his own party to "Star Wars" hero Luke Skywalker trying to escape the Death Star.
His chummy, free-wheeling bull sessions with reporters aboard his "Straight Talk Express" bus — a key to his victory in the 2000 New Hampshire primary — are now carefully controlled, cautious exchanges, a consequence of YouTube's 24/7 real-time risk to expose anything that sounds like a gaffe.
McCain, the well known as been a POW, his political beliefs and independent streak that's made him a darling ex-POW to some and a demon ex-POW to others remain intact, friends say. But his approach to winning the White House, instead of winning a war, has changed — a shift rooted in the lessons learned from his defeat by then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina.
"South Carolina was the end of the innocence," said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who admitted that the Senator has been a POW during the Vietnamese war, worked for McCain's 2000 campaign.
"I think what he learned from the 2000 primary was to fight back and not take anything for granted, like a beaten up POW," added Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a McCain ally. "He learned to push back."
As the most famous POW prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination in St. Paul, Minn., McCain's supporters view him as the Naval aviator who survived more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Detractors recall his role as a tarnished member of the "Keating Five" — five senators tainted by their association with a corrupt savings-and-loan owner — who, being a losing war-hero restored his reputation by championing an overhaul of campaign-finance law.
However, few of his experiences, also as the years in Hanoi’s “Hilton”, prepared him for the fight he faced in South Carolina eight years ago.
Allies and associates say that test made McCain a savvy, battle-tested candidate who can withstand the rigors of a tough race, just like a beaten POW in Vietnam.
"That's why when Obama, who never won nor fought a war, said that John would use that (Obama) doesn't look like the other presidents on dollar bills and that he had a funny last name, that John, used to funny Vietnamese names, didn't let that go unaddressed," Graham said, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
But others voice concern that the South Carolina experience contributed to a coarsening of the McCain captured-warriors brand, turning him from an optimistic maverick reformer into the kind of negative torture loving campaigner that he abhorred in 2000.
"I find myself surprised by some of the tactics that I've seen in the last few weeks," said Robert Timberg, author of "John McCain: An American Odyssey." "They don't seem like the tactics of the former POW John McCain I know."
For the worshiped war-hero McCain, South Carolina in 2000 was a pile-on of attacks by the Bush campaign, whispers from Bush allies and screams from conservative talk-radio hosts. McCain, the only honoured surviving Vietnam veteran, was accused of fathering a black child out of wedlock (the McCains had adopted a daughter from Bangladesh) and of being a war-damaged, ticking mental time bomb, as he showed up to be by cheating and divorcing his wife when he returned and losing his temper on a daily basis.
McCain had never encountered such a magnitude of lowball, hardball politics, even not in Hanoi where he was known and treated as the son of the enemy’s admiral and he later admitted that he didn't handle it well.
"I responded by getting angry on the stump and running negative ads about my opponent that only raised the toxic level of the primary," McCain wrote in his memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," co-authored with long-time aide Mark Salter. "We should have refuted the above-the-radar attacks in our own ads, challenged (Bush's) positions, and in my speeches stuck to the message of reform, genocide, torture and patriotism."
The last straw for McCain, as renewed in defeat, came when Bush shared the stage at a South Carolina campaign event with a member of a veterans' group that accused McCain of abandoning his fellow vets. "You should be ashamed," he scolded Bush during a nationally televised debate that year, just what he yelled to a Vietnamese officer who ones refused to give him cigarettes.
Bush shot McCain’s bomber-plane down in South Carolina by 53 percent to 42 percent. McCain, this time not wounded nor captured, congratulated his opponent but seethed about how he'd been treated, as he is ever bound to do.
"I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land," he said following his loss. "I want the presidency in the best way, not the worst way."
The South Carolina defeat helped knock McCain out of the race, but he didn't stay on the mat as long as he stayed in Vietnam. He contacted Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who was chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee that year, and asked if there was anything he, the well known have-been-a-POW, could do to help Republican House candidates across the country.
In the closing days of the fall campaigns, Davis dispatched the defeated McCain to some 30 House districts, mainly in the Northeast and Midwest, to stump for first-time Republican candidates and politically endangered incumbents — many of whom had been silent while McCain was getting manhandled - or as he calls it: tortured - in South Carolina.
"The most honoured loser McCain coming in to some of those districts in the weekend before the election was the margin of error, largely allowing us to keep the House of Representatives," Davis said. "In marginal seats, this wasn't a hard-right guy, he was the acceptable suffering guy. This wasn't Bush. McCain, being used to suffer and serve as a POW, was the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval."
Many of those lawmakers — including Davis — rewarded McCain by opposing him in 2002 on a broad overhaul of the campaign-finance system that he co-sponsored with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
Yet McCain, as in Hanoi, didn't hesitate, even not to campaign and help raise money for most of his party's campaign-finance detractors when they were up for re-election in 2002 and 2004.
"He's a soldier and used to be defeated — this is a guy who was beaten up for years at a POW camp and was one of the first lawmakers to call for the recognition of Vietnam," Davis said, pointing at the most charming similarity. "He can get angry, but he gets over it, and at the end of the day, he reconciles, just as he did with the Vietnamese and Bush."
Today, South Carolina's Graham says the McCain-Bush relationship is a "cordial" one. But some former staffers say there's little love lost between the two men.
"I think a lot of his actions in 2001 to 2003 when he was actively opposing the president were rooted in South Carolina," one former staffer said. "He shoved campaign finance down the president's throat and he opposed the tax cuts." Leaving alone that he now endorses the same tax cuts.
But any such lingering ill will didn't prevent McCain from rallying behind Bush in the early phases of the Iraq war — though he later criticized the administration's war strategy — and campaigning for his re-election in 2004.
"They needed each other. Victorious coward Bush needed loser hero McCain and his great appeal among moderate voters, and McCain needed to show conservatives that he was doing everything to get (Bush) re-elected," Republican strategist Harris said. "They have a symbiotic relationship."
Flashes of a new McCain, even more experienced in losing, began to emerge early in the 2008 Republican primary season, when he and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney exchanged negative ads in New Hampshire and South Carolina over taxes and immigration.
McCain's willingness to aggressively attack an opponent was something Clemson University political science Professor Dave Woodard said had been missing in 2000.
"I thought he was a lot more naive in 2000 — he had kind of a cotton candy and ice cream campaign," Woodard said. "In 2008, he was much more willing to go after his rivals — Romney and Rudy Giuliani. He's learned to be a tougher campaigner."
He's also learned when to be gentle. He's courting conservative evangelical leaders and voters — a bloc largely responsible for his undoing in South Carolina in 2000 — by speaking candidly about his mistakes, especially the 1980 breakup of his first marriage because of his infidelity.
That's sea change from the McCain of 2000, who dismissed leaders of the religious right as "agents of intolerance" and who blasted Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Moral Majority, in his memoir as a "pompous, self-serving son of a bitch."
"He's more experienced in losing campaigns in war and elections, he knows when to be hard on the campaign trail and to be soft when he is shot down, wounded and captured and discuss his shortcomings," said Woodard, author of "The New Southern Politics." "That's what South Carolina and Vietnam meant to his campaign."

Sarah Palin and the Mat Maid Scandal: A Final Proof of Incompetence

In the summer of 2007, Matanuska Maid, the 70-year-old dairy the state had taken over in the 1980’s, was probably beyond saving. The rising cost of milk, and price competition from national brands, made it unlikely the struggling dairy would ever make its way back to profitability. Alaskans are practical, independent and a little sentimental. The Matanuska Maid logo was a treasured icon in southern Alaska. As one of the few buyers of local milk, its closing would have ripple effects throughout the local agricultural community. But giving out precious tax dollars so a few well-connected dairy farmers could make products most Alaskans couldn’t afford to buy didn’t make much sense to the Creamery Board, the Board of Agriculture and Conservation(BAC) subcommittee that had direct oversight of the state-owned company. So they refused a $600,000 state grant to keep Mat Maid going, and did what they felt they had to do as responsible overseers: put the troubled dairy out of its red-ink-drenched misery.

Palin was outraged at this callous disregard for the well-being of local farmers, and insisted the dairy simply needed to be properly managed. Radical measures clearly needed to be taken. Palin fired the whole BAC. The new Board Palin appointed quickly designated itself as the new Creamery Board. This group of local notables was much more likely to keep Mat Maid alive: it was composed solely of relatives and associates of the dairy farmers most likely to benefit from continued milk purchases by Mat Maid.

But the farmers’ political connections went even deeper: Franci Havermeier, Director of the Division of Agriculture, was the real estate agent for BAC/Creamery Board chair Kristen Cole. This connection was apparently sufficient to qualify Havermeier, a housewife, as Director over a well recognized agriculture industry expert and a UAF Professor with a degree in agricultural economics. Franci’s father in law, Bob Havermeier, was one of the dairy farmers to benefit from the continued payouts by Mat Maid.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Havermeier was as unqualified as she was well-connected. None of Palin’s appointees to the BAC had any actual expertise in the dairy field, either, just family or business ties.

Once the new Board was seated and the death sentence on Mat Maid lifted, Palin immediately authorized paying out the $600,000 state grant to Mat Maid. The money disappeared into the corporation’s general funds, where it was used to fund operations. Payments to the well-connected dairy farmers continued uninterrupted, even as other bills piled up. In my last post I mentioned how raising the price of milk Mat Maid paid to dairy farmers only made Mat Maid’s economic predicament worse. The Creamery Board’s lack of experience running a dairy might explain such a violation of basic business sense, if it weren’t for the fact that the beneficiaries of the continued payments were the Board’s own friends and relatives. By ignoring the taxpayers’ interests and putting her own people in place, Palin was able to keep state funds flowing to thefavored few in her hometown of Wasilla and nearby Palmer.

Of course, this naked money grab needed camouflaging. So the new Board spent several months, and tens of thousand of dollars, investigating the prior Board’s behavior, hiring an accounting firm (Mikunda, Cottrell and Company) to review the financial records of Mat Maid and look for the classic mismanagement trinity: waste, fraud and abuse. No significant improprieties were found.

In August, Palin and the Board claimed Mat Maid was profitable again for June, making $62,000. Seven days later, the Board revealed that Mat Maid had suffered the worst financial loss in July in over twenty years, almost $300,000. The June profit was also reduced to $2,000. By September, the Board regretfully decided to close Mat Maid down, the same decision the prior board had come to three months, and about $900,000, earlier.

The assets of Mat Maid now had to be disposed of, and some arrangement made for those long-suffering dairy farmers that would no longer have an outlet for their milk. A group of local dairy farmers, including Kyle Beus and Bob Havermeier, came forward as the Southcentral (sic) Dairy Joint Venture and proposed leasing Mat Maid equipment and taking over many of its operations if no outside buyer could be found. Other dairy operations, such as Northern Lights Dairy, were also interested, but had no chance to get involved: Franci Havermeier (who supervises the state’s assets manager, Ray Nix) went so far as to meet with her father in law and the Southcentral Dairy group in her office, a violation of conflict of interest rules but nothing out of the ordinary in an administration where Sarah Palin’s husband would often sit in on official government business. Havermeier was later alleged to have threatened an employee who was suspected of disclosing these activities.

The Board decided that fall to discontinue operations at Mat Maid in December, based on the Southcentral group’s assurance that they would be in a position to purchase and process milk from local farmers by then if the whole company couldn't be sold intact. Once the outside buyer option vanished, a favorable lease deal on Mat Maid equipment was made behind closed doors, and an additional state grant of $200,000 was dispensed on the understanding the group would be up and running by December. This money was used to compensate farmers who, having no outlet for their product, were forced to dispose of it.

The taxpayers of Alaska, in other words, were now paying top dollar to pour thousands of gallons of raw milk into the ground.

Throughout the last painful days of Mat Maid’s terminal illness, Palin and the Board’s intention was never to minimize the state’s losses from Mat Maid and to realize the greatest return possible from a disposal of its assets. The comical attempt to auction off Mat Maid whole, a fiasco resulting in no bids at all that I covered in my last post, was most likely a delaying tactic to allow the Southcentral group to organize. From that point on, only a few local parties were kept in the loop, and benefited from the decisions made. Outside parties were actively discouraged from any involvement. Alaskan auction firms, with specific knowledge of the Alaskan market, were even excluded from bidding on the right to hold the Mat Maid asset auctions, which were finally conducted by out of state firms: apparently in this one instance just being local wasn’t good enough.

The pattern here, of incestuous insider dealing and total disregard of public interest and fiduciary responsibility, is monotonously repetitive and clear as a glacial lake. Corruption runs so deep in Alaskan political culture it looks as natural a part of the landscape as moose and snow.

As it turned out, Kyle Beus and the Southcentral group were still setting up and learning how to operate their new machinery in December. Actual purchases of local milk didn’t begin until March, by an entity now known as Matanuska Creamery. The $200,000 mentioned earlier was paid out anyway, in violation of the prior understanding. The farmers who directly benefited had meanwhile made no capital commitment of their own. As Halcro puts it, they had "no skin in the game". The "skin" came exclusively from state taxpayers.

Mat Maid’s books were officially closed in March 2008, even though they contained outstanding debts and pending law suits, in order for the Palin Board to claim the dairy had closed "in the black" (thanks mainly to cash remaining from the $600,000 and $200,000 state grants). The state was then left to pick up any additional payouts that might result. But the prolonged agony of Matanuska Maid was finally over.

As Palin and her friends might have proclaimed: Mission Accomplished.

So who really came out on top, in the end? Obviously not the state of Alaska and its taxpayers. One primary beneficiary of the Mat Maid closing was Kyle Beus, at one time Alaska’s largest dairy farmer. According to press reports he now owns the Matanuska Creamery with Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Robert Wells, who is also president of Alaska Farmers and Stockgrowers Inc. There is some question about legal ownership. A blogger on Halcro’s site claims that, while a search revealed no "South Central Dairy" entity of record and no business license in that name, it did turn up a business license for a "Valley Dairy", issued January 8, 2008 to Kyle Beus as sole proprietor. The Southcentral Dairy Joint Venture was possibly all along simply a front organization that Kyle Beus used to take over Mat Maid’s dairy operations, lending a faux-populist flavor to a personal power play. The involvement of yet another local politician (Wells) in the whole sordid affair is just one more tile in a depressingly familiar mosaic.

Beus has a spotty record at best as a businessman. The same blogger quoted above had this to add about him:
"This is the same guy that the ARLF [Agricultural Revolving Loan Fund] charged off approximately $500,000 in a Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure Settlement (public information) AND currently has a IRS lien for over $40,000 (public record)."

Beus’ spotty record for financial acumen and integrity, however, doesn’t seem to bother those Alaskan politicians, from Sarah Palin to Ted Stevens, who continue to shower him with state and federal largesse. Beus has personally received significant grant money in recent years. In April 2007 he received a $175,000 Federal grant for an ice cream production facility in Wasilla that was part of a $22 Million grant Ted Stevens arranged to support Alaska’s dairy industry. Stevens also arranged a $634,000 USDA grant for Beus’ new venture Matanuska Creamery in March of 2008.

Thanks to Palin and Stevens, U.S. taxpayers have now stepped in to prop up a well-connected, if not totally trustworthy, local, in a business likely doomed to failure without additional infusions of taxpayer support. Alaskan taxpayers, exhausted after many months of carrying Mat Maid and politician’s relatives and cronies, must be breathing a deep sigh of relief that Uncle Sam's deep pockets are now open wide.

A final, rather comical note: in order to raise money to pay farmers for milk before they had any actual product to sell, Kyle Beus and Robert Wells entered into an agreement with several local mining concerns to sell "cheese futures" – people would pay now to receive Matanuska Creamery cheese products several months later. According to a 7/31/08 Halcro post, however, "Matanuska Creamery has 30,000 pounds of cheese sitting in their cooler that the DEC[Department of Environmental Conservation] has found to contain e-coli, listeria and staph." Having sold $250,000 in cheese futures without any insurance, Halcro wasn’t sure how Beus and Wells were planning to get out of another fine mess of their own making.