"The Palin Problem" - Commentary by Tony Seton

The Palin Problem

Barack Obama has taken a smart position on The Palin Problem. He vehemently told the press to stay away from the candidates’ families. Yeah, right, like mosquitoes don’t find the holes in your window screens. Dysfunctional behavior is the media’s mother’s milk, regrettably; it draws viewers and readers like a magnet.

The reason is that we are a voyeuristic culture, attracted to the personal ills of celebrities because it ain’t us. There but for the grace of god.... We feel better about not being so high because we can’t fall so far.

But the real Palin story isn’t about family, it’s about remarkably poor judgment. Sarah Palin’s judgment that as mayor she could fire the town’s police chief because he backed her opponent in the election; that as governor she could fire the top state security official because he refused to fire her ex-brother-in-law trooper; that as candidate for vice president of the United States she could say she had opposed the infamous bridge to nowhere and not mention that she had actively supported it.

The worse judgment was John McCain’s. If he didn’t choose Palin to be his running mate he at least signed off on her, after meeting her only once or twice. Is that someone you want in the right seat when you’re piloting our nation? Especially when he had spent the past eight months deriding Obama’s lack of executive experience. Um, Obama ran a $300 million, 18-month campaign that toppled the near-anointed frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination.

And as regards foreign policy expertise? Well, Cindy McCain says as governor of Alaska, Palin was close to Russia so....

Sally Quinn had an excellent piece in The Washington Post yesterday about someone who is offered a job for the wrong reasons, knows she lacks the qualifications, but is seduced by the lust for power. In Quinn’s case it was to anchor at CBS News; she lasted four months. In Palin’s case the stakes are considerably higher.