Sarah Palin is a terrible governor, part 458
By [Calling for Sen. Begich’s resignation because the Bush administration employed shitty prosecutors] reinforces the notion that she isn’t a statesman or a leader, but rather focused very specifically on partisan success to the exclusion of reasonable behavior. She isn’t concerned about the dubious nature of such a move, the cost of a special election, nor the temporary denial of her state of a Senator. No, she is worried that a corrupt member of her party, who lucked out of seven convictions it would seem, should have an opportunity to return to office. Or, if we assume that Stevens wouldn’t run, she wants to give a member of her party a shot at winning back the seat.
The only logic to support such a position is partisan logic, and while I fully understand that there is a very real role for party competition for office and in party behavior in office, there does come a time when the focus should be governing.
I’d agree with this, with the proviso that Palin’s “partisanship” is not oriented toward the success of her party so much as the advancement of her own political fortunes. This is why Palin not only refrained from endorsing Stevens but went so far as to call for his resignation when a jury convicted him on corruption charges a week before the November election; for quite sensible reasons, Stevens was a pariah among Republicans outside Alaska, and in the interest of preserving her fake maverick credentials, Palin sought as much distance as possible between herself and a renowned crook whom half the state (to its national embarrassment) was willing to return to the Senate. With the DoJ’s decision to drop the charges against Stevens, Palin — who is up for re-election next year and will likely have to deal with a few primary challengers — has apparently realized that her re-election chances would be served better if she could expunge the whole not-sucking-up-to-Uncle-Ted thing.
Meantime, Palin is engaged in a less nationally-visible effort to deny a state senate appointment to a highly popular and competent state house member — Juneau Democrat Beth Kerttula — who happened to voice the uncontroversial view last August that Palin was “not ready” to be Vice President. When state Sen. Kim Elton resigned last month to take a job with the US Department of the Interior, Palin was obligated by state law to name a registered Democrat to replace him; the local party organization forwarded Kerttula’s name to Palin as its sole recommendation — a decision that was reasonable, given Kerttula’s surpassing qualifications for the job and given the near-certainty that she’ll win the seat outright next year during the fall elections. Palin, however, opted instead to nominate a conservative legislative aide, Tim Grussendorf, who had actually switched his party affiliation to qualify for the job. Palin wasn’t required by law to accept the local party’s recommendation; by the same token, the senate Democrats weren’t required to accept her choice. And so yesterday, the senate Democrats rejected Grussendorf by a majority vote in closed session.
Palin, however, is now insisting that an obscure, 22-year-old legal memo requires legislators to follow a completely different process than the one laid out by the relevant statute, and she’s rejecting the senate democrats’ rejection — a decision that not even her party colleagues in the legislature agree with. It’s an unbelievably petty dispute, for which the governor deserves the blame. While the legislature is trying to get access to federal stimulus funds that the governor stupidly rejected, Sarah Palin seems determined to provoke a court battle to defend her ongoing, grudge-driven administrative style.