Posted by
Always To The Right on Sunday, September 14, 2008 2:11:12 PM
The two don’t appear to go together if one reads the twin profiles in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
For the most part, it’s pretty easy to determine why. The press spent
the last two weeks in Wasilla, Anchorage, and Juneau and could only
find complaints from people fired by Sarah Palin during her time as
mayor and Governor. The so-called “Troopergate” scandal gets scant
mention in either article, making what’s left a series of petty
comments from the 15% of Alaskans who don’t like Palin.
Reformers usually clean house, and that’s what Palin did. Rather
than worry about resumes, why not focus on the successes and failures
of her appointments? Neither paper does that, which tends to indicate
that they couldn’t find any of the latter.
For that matter, neither the Post and the Times ever attempt to
reconcile their portrait of a “trail of bad blood” with the inescapable
fact that she has astronomical, bipartisan favorability ratings.
Alaskans have a ringside seat to the Palin administration, and they
overwhelmingly approve of her. She has an 85% favorability rating, and
even 75% of Democrats view her favorably. Reformers tend to get rid of
entrenched bureaucrats and replace them with fresh faces, and it
appears that while the people who got replaced didn’t like it, Alaskans
feel very differently.
Both articles fail to deliver anything but slanted gossip and old
grudges. After two weeks of digging, if this is all they can find, the
papers will need to write off the travel investment as a total loss.
If the only point taken from both articles is that Palin made
entrenched bureaucrats angry, that sounds like a win for Team McCain.
Update: Jazz Shaw dissents,
and his point about judgment is certainly well taken. Did Palin look
for the most qualified candidates or just her friends? That’s a
legitimate question about leadership. However, the New York Times
deliberately offered a ridiculous justification for Havemeister’s
hiring — “I like cows” — when a cursory check showed she brought more
to the job, including a background in agriculture and some leadership
experience.