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.

TrooperGate, the Real Story

Getting Real About Palin I've noticed some people who should know better claiming that bringing up Gov. Palin's troopergate scandal is tantamount to making a victim of or defending her slimeball ex-brother-in-law who allegedly once used a taser on his stepson.
That's awfully foolish. So I thought I'd put together a post explaining why.
The person in question is state trooper Mike Wooten -- Palin's ex-brother-in-law who's embroiled in a bitter custody and divorce battle with Palin's sister. Back in the second week of August, well before Palin became a national political figure, TPMMuckraker was reporting on this story. And as part of the reporting we tried to get a handle on just how bad a guy Wooten was. Most people who are familiar with the ugliness that often spills out of custody and divorce cases know to take accusations arising out of the course of them with a grain of salt unless you know a lot about the people involved. And if you look closely at the case there are numerous reasons to question the picture drawn by the Palin family. Regardless, we proceeded on the assumption that Wooten really was a rotten guy because the truth is that it wasn't relevant to the investigation of Palin.
Let's review what happened.
The Palin family had a feud with Wooten prior to her becoming governor. They put together a list of 14 accusations which they took to the state police to investigate -- a list that ranged from the quite serious to the truly absurd. The state police did an investigation, decided that 5 of the charges had some merit and suspended Wooten for ten days -- a suspension later reduced to five days. The Palin's weren't satisfied but there wasn't much they could do.
When Palin became governor they went for another bite at the apple. Palin, her husband and several members of her staff began pressuring Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan -- a respected former Chief of the Anchorage police department -- to can Wooten. Monegan resisted, arguing that the official process regarding Wooten was closed. And there was nothing more that could be done. In fact, during one of the conversations in which Palin's husband Todd was putting on the squeeze, Monegan told Todd Palin, "You can't head hunt like this. What you need to do is back off, because if the trooper does make a mistake, and it is a terminable offense, it can look like political interference."
Eventually, Palin got fed up and fired Monegan from his job. (Palin claims, not credibly, that she fired Monegan over general differences in law enforcement priorities.) This is an important point. Wooten never got fired. To the best of my knowledge, he's is still on the job. The central bad act was firing the state's top police official because he refused to bend to political pressure from the governor and her family to fire a public employee against whom the governor was pursuing a vendetta -- whether the vendetta was justified or not.
Update:

Palin's Post-Scandal Appointee Served Just Two Weeks. It looks like there's even more muck than meets the eye in Trooper-Gate.
After the allegedly improper firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) appointed former Kenai Police Chief Chuck Kopp to the post. Kopp served just two weeks this summer as the head of law enforcement in Alaska, resigning on July 25, after a past complaint of sexual harassment and a subsequent letter of reprimand surfaced in news reports.
But Palin made sure he had a soft fall from grace, giving him a $10,000 severance package for just two weeks served.
While Palin has conceded she was aware of the past complaint against Kopp, she claims that she thought the complaint had been unsubstantiated and was unaware of the letter of reprimand.

Soon after this, questions were raised in the state about Monegan's firing and he eventually came forward and said he believed he'd been fired for not giving in to pressure to fire Wooten.
After Monegan made his accusations, Palin insisted there was no truth whatsoever to his claims. Nonetheless, a bipartisan committee of the state legislature approved an investigation. In response, Palin asked the Attorney General to start his own investigation which many in the state interpreted as an effort to either keep tabs on or tamper with the legislature's investigation. Again, very questionable judgment in someone who aspires to be first in line to the presidency.
The Attorney General's investigation quickly turned up evidence that Palin's initial denials were false. Multiple members of her staff had raised Wooten's employment with Monegan. Indeed, the state police had a recording of one of her deputies pushing Monegan to fire Wooten. That evidence forced Palin to change her story. Palin said that this was the first she'd heard of it and insisted the deputy wasn't acting at her behest, even though the transcript of the recorded call clearly suggested that he was. Hear the audio here.
Just yesterday, Monegan gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he said that not only Palin's aides, but Palin's husband and Palin herself had repeatedly raised the Wooten issue with him and pressured him to fire him. And now he says he has emails that Palin sent him about the matter. (In an interesting sidelight, that may end up telling us a lot, Monegan says no one from the McCain campaign ever contacted him in the vetting process.)
The investigator appointed by the state legislature began trying to arrange a time to depose Gov. Palin last week -- in other words, in the final days before her selection.
So let's put this all together.
We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It's called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan's claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise.
The available evidence now suggests that she
1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms,
2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative,
3) lied to the public about what happened and
4) continues to lie about what happened.
These are, to put it mildly, not the traits or temperament you want in someone who could hold the executive power of the federal government.
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Is the Whole GOP out of Touch?

Rudy Giuliani comes to VP pick Sarah Palin's defense
Rudy Giuliani defended the GOP's vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as having more executive experience than Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden "combined."

Giuliani, who failed in his own bid to be president and got passed over for vice president, kept up his new, designated role: Republican attack dog for John McCain.

Having spent part of last week in Denver, where he gleefully lobbed shots at the Democrats' convention, Giuliani picked up the ball yesterday by contrasting Palin's 20 months as governor with Obama and Biden's experience in the legislative branch.

"Maybe it's my own background as a mayor and United States attorney, but this whole idea of executive experience to me would really qualify her," Giuliani said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"I mean I think that she already has more executive experience than Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden combined."
click to view
When moderator Bob Schieffer asked how Palin's experience as a mayor and governor in little populated Alaska could outweigh Obama's and Biden's, Giuliani chuckled.

"Sure. You know why?" said Giuliani. "She had to make decisions. All Sen. Obama has had to do is talk. That's all he does."

Sen. Fred Thompson, another failed presidential contender, added to the refrain when he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "Wolf, I hate to break it to you, but you don't get national experience by being on the Sunday talk shows….She has more experience than Barack Obama."

Speaking on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanapolous," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) added, "She's done things Obama would never dream of."

Palin's qualifications was one of the two major talking points yesterday on the Sunday shows, the other being Hurricane Gustav.

Because of the storm, Republicans were weighing whether to delay, shorten or even cancel portions of the four day event, which tomorrow was supposed to include a prime-time keynote speech by Giuliani.

The former mayor is an interesting choice for the keynote, which is usually a chance to serve up heaping portions of political red meat to the party faithful.

But Giuliani is pro-choice, pro-gay rights and has favored strict gun controls in the past, all positions that place him outside the party's conservative base.

"We disagree about that," Giuliani said about his pro-choice views in a sit-down with The News. " But I don't disagree on the fact that John McCain is very well qualified to be president, and I have the extra added advantage of having announced that when I was a candidate [for president].... That he should be the president if I wasn't able to win."

The Palin Trap

I may be broke but, I'm not flat busted There is something in the spelling of this text... and more: she's just a crude slut as my today's earlier post shows.

On Friday, following McCain's announcement that Sarah Palin was his choice for running mate, like way too many others I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy that this was the stupidest decision of a GOP presidential candidate since Dan Quayle was tapped for the role. Now that my post-DNC sense of invincibility has worn off, however, so has my triumphalism. I woke up yesterday morning with a much different sense of the Sarah Palin choice. I think it's a trap.
The McCain campaign knew exactly how both Democrats and the traditional media would respond to the Palin announcement, because it was entirely predictable. Choosing someone this plainly unqualified wasn't a mistake, and it wasn't even a gamble. It was a trade-off.
My suspicion is that the McCain campaign doesn't really care that Palin undermines McCain's case for experience, because they're not planning to use that argument anymore. They've decided that the experience argument is ineffective against Obama's change message, and they're more or less giving it up. Moreover, they know how to respond to attacks on Palin's total lack of qualification for the office, and are in fact inviting those attacks as a way to build sympathy with working class independent voters. That's where Palin's value lies.
Instead of continuing on the experience theme, McCain is front-loading his "Country First" message, and his campaign is taking the competition for working class voters on economic issues much more seriously than they were a few months ago. McCain has finally figured out that this is not going to be a national security election, and that Iraq is a distant second to the recession as the central issue in 2008. So it doesn't matter that Palin has no foreign policy experience. That's not what they need her for - they need her for the debate over the economy.
Of course, Palin is useless for any actual debate on the subject that might require policy expertise and persuasive argumentation. In that, she's similar to McCain, who is not identified as a Senator with any special knowledge on economic issues, and has been exposed as an out of touch multimillionaire. For all these reasons, and with GOP-style economics completely out of style, the McCain campaign is at a major disadvantage in any wonky policy debate on fixing the economy. Knowing this, and knowing that the election is going to be won or lost on whether their ticket is regarded as the best equipped to meet that challenge, the McCain campaign is doing what the GOP always does when it has to fight for working class voters in a debate that Republicans can't win on its merits: they are reverting to symbolic politics, a role for which Palin is tailor-made.
Palin was educated at a not-famous public university, received a bachelor's degree in journalism and became a sportscaster before entering the political arena. She married her high school sweetheart, a commercial fisherman and oil company worker (not an executive, or even a manager). Her political career began at the PTA. She raised four kids while holding down her career, and recently had a fifth. Compared to McCain, Obama and even Biden, her story is easily the most sympathetic to working class voters, especially white women. While the McCain campaign whispers to voters in Peoria that Obama is not 'one of us,' with Palin they will be able to present a face and a story that is reassuringly familiar - much more so than the top of the ticket.
The McCain campaign is going to trot Palin out whenever they need to make the case that they feel America's pain. They're going to contrast her story to Obama's, and even to Biden's (not the part about being a scrappy kid from Scranton, but the part about being in the Senate for a million years). They're going to have her stick relentlessly to her personal biography, and avoid at all costs any discussion of policy. And whenever any Democrat attacks her for being inexperienced, they're going to turn to working class voters and ask why all these Harvard-educated, pointy-headed know-it-alls think that they know better how to help working families than a woman who worked her way through a demanding career while raising five kids, stayed married to her hard-working husband, and was so successful that she became a governor and then a VP nominee. They're going to turn any question about Palin's 'experience,' whether from a Dem or from a journalist, into another elitist attack on working class culture, another example of snooty, brainiac liberals condescending to ordinary Americans. And to boot, a bunch of good old boys picking on Mrs. Mom.
I don't believe that this is a bid for Hillary supporters, I think it's a bid for the same segment of the electorate that almost every tactic from both campaigns has been aimed at: white working class swing voters. I think the inevitable attacks on Palin are part of the purpose of her selection. By turning her into a lightning rod, they will be able to deflect attacks away from McCain toward a far more sympathetic figure, and then use those attacks as evidence in a far more powerful counterattack against typical liberal elitism.
We're best off not taking that bait.

Sarah Palin Likes the Hard Way. She Is Not A Lady!

Wasilla City Hall
When an opponent and survivor of cancer is publicly called a bitch and a cancer Governor Sarah Palin is amused

Early this year, an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News ripped into Gov. Sarah Palin's appearance on a morning "shock jock" radio show as "plain and simple one of the most unprofessional, childish and inexcusable performances I've ever seen from a politician."
So what happened? Palin has repeatedly feuded with the state's Senate president, Lyda Green, over a wide range of legislation. Last January, Palin appeared on "The Bob and Mark Show," whose host Bob Lester despises Green. That's when the trouble started:
Early on in the conversation before Palin started to crack up, Lester referred to Sen. Green as a jealous woman and a cancer. Palin, who knows full well Lyda Green is a cancer survivor, didn't do what any decent person would do, say, "Bob, that's going too far."
But as the conversation moved on, Lester intensified his attack on Green.
Lester questioned Green's motherhood, asking Palin if the senator cares about her own kids. Palin laughs.
Then Lester clearly sets the stage for what he is about to say by warning his large audience and Palin. He says, "Governor you can't say this but I will, Lyda Green is a cancer and a bitch." Palin laughs for the second time.
What were teenage boys thinking when they heard the governor laugh at someone being called a cancer and a bitch? How about the teenage girls who look up to Palin. What did they think when they heard her laugh?
But there is more. Lester then describes Green's chair as big and cushy. A clear reference to the senator's weight. Palin laughs a third time. She's just having a grand old time.
Palin was clearly enjoying every second of Lester's vicious attack on her political rival.
Here's the audio:
As the Daily News op-ed notes, Palin later released a statement reading, "The Governor called Senator Green to explain that she does not condone name-calling in any way and apologized if there was a perception that the comment was attributed to the Governor." Then again, at the end of the call in question, Lester asked if he could come visit Palin, and she responded, "I'd be honored to have you."
So what does the incident actually say about Palin? If nothing else, it plays into the developing perception that she has a ruthless streak when taking on her political opponents, whether they be opposing legislators or state/local employees.

Barack Obama Campaign Spokesman Bill Burton responds to John McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate:

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same."

Sen. Chuck Schumer says:
"After the great success of the Democratic convention, the choice of Sarah Palin is surely a Hail Mary pass. It is a real roll of the dice and shows how John McCain, Karl Rove et al realize what a strong position the Obama-Biden team and Democrats in general are in in this election. Certainly the choice of Palin puts to rest any argument about inexperience on the Democratic team and while Palin is a fine person, her lack of experience makes the thought of her assuming the presidency troubling. I particularly look forward to the Biden-Palin debate in Missouri."

Rep. Rahm Emanuel:
"Is this really who the Republican Party wants to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency? Given Sarah Palin's lack of experience on every front and on nearly every issue, this Vice Presidential pick doesn't show judgment: it shows political panic."

Rep. Jim Clyburn on South Carolina ETV Radio:
"I do believe that McCain has to do something to reshuffle the cards, shake up the establishment, do something unexpected and Governor Palin has all the kinds of things that McCain might see as a way to shake things up. I think [her selection] would be something similar to Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle proved to be sort of an embarrassment as a campaigner. Being thrust on a national stage like that could be very tough. Now Mondale tried to shake things up by going with Geraldine Ferraro.she proved to be a disaster as a running mate. And as a campaigner, she was absolutely awful. And so I just think that it is very risky for McCain to do this, but it may be all he has left."

Barbara Boxer:
The vice president is a heartbeat away from becoming president, so to choose someone with not one hour's worth of experience on national issues is a dangerous choice.
If John McCain thought that choosing Sarah Palin would attract Hillary Clinton voters, he is badly mistaken.
The only similarity between her and Hillary Clinton is that they are both women. On the issues, they could not be further apart.
Sen. McCain had so many other options if he wanted to put a woman on his ticket, such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe -- they would have been an appropriate choice compared to this dangerous choice.
In addition, Sarah Palin is under investigation by the Alaska state legislature, which makes this more incomprehensible.

Meanwhile, the non-partisan group Campaign Money Watch responded that the pick underscores McCain's loss of maverick reformer credentials:
"In choosing Governor Palin, Senator McCain is clearly trying to shore up his past maverick reformer image - an image that is now in tatters due to the type of campaign he's run and the big money lobbyists he depends on every day of the week," Donnelly said.
"This selection raises plenty of questions," Donnelly continued. "She bills herself as a reformer, but has been silent on whether she supports public financing of elections in her own state. As governor of an oil-producing state, she's been a friend to Big Oil. Given John McCain's extensive fundraising from Big Oil, her selection raises concerns of whether the McCain-Palin ticket will promise the same access for oil companies and their lobbyists that we've seen for nearly eight years from the Bush-Cheney administration."

Obama distanced himself from some of the harsher criticisms of Palin, the Politico reports:
"I think that, uh, you know, campaigns start getting these, uh, hair triggers and, uh, the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments," he said, according to the pool report, apparently criticizing his staff for going overboard, as he did occasionally in the primary.
He was referring to a more gracious statement of congratulations he issued later with Biden, which he then reiterated.
"I haven't met her before. She seems like a compelling person ... with a terrific personal story.
"I'm sure that she will help make the case for Republicans, unfortunately the case is more of the same, and so ultimately John McCain is at the top of the ticket."
"He wants to take the country in the wrong direction, I'm assuming Gov. Palin agrees with him and his policies," he said.
"But the fact that she ... will soon be nominated ... is one more indicator of this country moving forward ... one more hit against that glass ceiling. I congratulate her and look forward to a vigorous debate."

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
Transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, near Lowville, N.Y., have sometimes become so congested that the company’s only choice is to shut down — or pay fees for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.
Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.
In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.
“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.
Enthusiasm for wind energy is running at fever pitch these days, with bold plans on the drawing boards, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s notion of dotting New York City with turbines. Companies are even reviving ideas of storing wind-generated energy using compressed air or spinning flywheels.
Yet experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
These barriers mean that electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to federal figures.
In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.

Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
Unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology. An Energy Department plan to source 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind calls for a high-voltage backbone spanning the country that would be similar to 2,100 miles of lines already operated by a company called American Electric Power.
The cost would be high, $60 billion or more, but in theory could be spread across many years and tens of millions of electrical customers. However, in most states, rules used by public service commissions to evaluate transmission investments discourage multistate projects of this sort. In some states with low electric rates, elected officials fear that new lines will simply export their cheap power and drive rates up.
Without a clear way of recovering the costs and earning a profit, and with little leadership on the issue from the federal government, no company or organization has offered to fight the political battles necessary to get such a transmission backbone built.
Texas and California have recently made some progress in building transmission lines for wind power, but nationally, the problem seems likely to get worse. Today, New York State has about 1,500 megawatts of wind capacity. A megawatt is an instantaneous measure of power. A large Wal-Mart draws about one megawatt. The state is planning for an additional 8,000 megawatts of capacity.
But those turbines will need to go in remote, windy areas that are far off the beaten path, electrically speaking, and it is not clear enough transmission capacity will be developed. Save for two underwater connections to Long Island, New York State has not built a major new power line in 20 years.
A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines.
But Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a former energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, contends that these piecemeal efforts are not enough to tap the nation’s potential for renewable energy.
Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.
“We still have a third-world grid,” Mr. Richardson [supporting the Obama-Energy-Plan] said, repeating a comment he has made several times. “With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.”

OK, but how about to do it yourself?