I’ve lived in Alaska for almost thirty-nine years. Even though I now spend several months in Arizona every winter, my time in The Last Frontier still qualifies me as an Alaskan.
As such, with a medium like Just One Opinion available to me, I’ve felt a nagging need to put some truth out there about Governor Sarah Palin, anxious to help hang some reality onto the half-truths and outright lies about her that have flourished over the last few months.
Even now, Palin spends a considerable amount of time defending herself for things that were said months ago. Although she is getting some support by conservative media people, such as talk show host John Ziegler, she has been maligned with few opportunities to defend herself. [Ziegler's interview below.]
In my frustration, I wrote several pieces about her (which shall forever reside in my deleted file) because I had an epiphany while sitting in a waiting room this past week. I’ve decided that Sarah shouldn’t have to defend herself any longer!
My revelation came about when I picked up an old issue of Time Magazine. It was from a time last fall when Barack Obama was just a candidate, and Sarah Palin was the vice-presidential candidate on John McCain’s ill-fated run for the presidency. With nothing else to do, I skipped through the article. It was old enough that it referred to Obama as a “cosmopolitan,” as opposed to his being half-white, half-black – “a mutt” – as he self-deprecatingly referred to himself after he was elected.
Because the article hit many of the talking points surrounding his candidacy, it made me think about all of the things that had been said about the now president-elect during the campaign. Where did his money come from? He has no experience. He’s a Muslim. He’s not a U.S. citizen. Why is he making a political speech in Germany? His wife is a racist. And on and on.
It also reminded me of the many promises that reality will now force him to break. That’s when it struck me…things that were said last year are no longer important! Obama’s the President, and will be for at least the next four years!
So my message to Sarah Palin is to just let it go. She’s a young woman and if she gets another opportunity, and I hope she does, a lot of water will have run under the bridge by then. I think she knows that she needs some additional national and international exposure before she can make a serious run for higher office, and she has at least four years to do that.
Sarah Palin was an unknown governor who was shot out of a cannon in Alaska last August and deposited squarely in the middle of America’s consciousness. Many of America’s citizens outside of Alaska who were desperate for any kind of alternative to Barack Obama immediately grasped onto Sarah’s fashionable coattails in the hope that she could help carry a completely outgunned John McCain to the presidency.
Palin made a huge and positive impact with millions of Americans – people who were bright enough to see through the media driven bias that put a negative spin on every little thing they could find out about her. Being vilified, unnecessarily as it turned out, by zealous Obama followers who panicked at the immediate impact she had with millions of voters was not a surprise. It smacked of fear. Barack Obama overcame mountains of negativity, but lets face it, he became part of a political snowball that wasn’t going to be stopped, and he’s a…man.
It’s not important that people outside of Alaska don’t know that “The Bridge to Nowhere” that caused so much heartburn wasn’t a bridge to nowhere at all. It was a bridge to the airport on Gravina Island in southeastern Alaska that would have allowed the people of Ketchikan to drive to the airport, rather than take a half mile ferry boat ride across the Tongass Narrows to get there.
Try to imagine crossing the open sea in a ferry boat in January in Alaska to get on a plane to go visit grandma! As much as Sarah wanted to help the citizens of Ketchikan, she did change her mind about the bridge when she became governor. Changing your mind at the appropriate time isn’t a sign of weakness in a leader – it’s a sign of strength.
It’s also not important that people outside of Alaska don’t know that Sarah actually did put the state-owned jet (that ex-governor Murkowski insisted the state needed) on eBay. The aircraft eventually was sold, though not on eBay. Sarah never said it “sold on eBay” – she said she “put it on eBay.” In all honesty, the sale of the plane was a losing proposition for the state (reportedly a $500,000 loss). However, Sarah spent $400,000 less on travel during her first year in office than Murkowski spent in his last year in office, and the overall savings will continue.
Eventually people will forget the unimportant issues that desperate detractors dug up. There was the Walt Monegan “Troopergate” thing. Palin’s teenage daughter was pregnant and unmarried and her boyfriend’s mother had legal problems. There was also an allegation that Sarah’s newborn son, Trig, was not her baby.
The facts are that Walt Monegan had an at-will job in an at-will state. He was offered another job, which he turned down. The whole thing hurt Walt so bad that he’s now running for mayor of Anchorage.
That whole affair would have gone unnoticed in a non-election year. Sarah could have saved herself a lot of grief by simply explaining why she removed Monegan at the time she did it – but by law she wasn’t required to!
Like many other good families in America, Sarah has a daughter who had a baby out-of-wedlock. Unfortunately for Sarah, her daughter’s boyfriend has a mother with a drug problem. Forget it. That unfortunate situation has nothing to do with Sarah Palin’s abilities as a mother or a politician. Sarah has an exceptional husband, and an exceptional family, and she can’t be blamed for the family problems of Bristol’s boyfriend.
Oh, and the cry for medical records to prove that Trig is really Sarah’s son? That’s just too ridiculous for further discussion.
The $150,000 campaign wardrobe? Palin’s “you betcha,” “you can see Russia from my house,” and her winks? None of those things are part of the Sarah Palin Alaskans know.
My guess is that McCain’s advisors are partly to blame because they believed that is what America wanted to see and hear. Clearly the rest of the responsibility falls on the opposition for jumping on every little thing they could dig up about Palin, not to mention the considerable peripheral damage caused by actress Tina Fey and her unfortunate look-a-like imitations of Sarah. Oh, and by the way – Sarah’s house is six hundred miles from Russia and she knows it.
It’s a lot to hope for, but there may be a more equitable America in the future, and perhaps voters outside of Alaska will hear about the things Sarah actually has done that support the contention that she is a strong leader.
Consider the following facts:
Alaska is not a island off the west coast of the U.S. It is the largest and wealthiest state in the United States, and Sarah Palin is its Governor. Read that again. Alaska’s Permanent Fund is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Alaska is so large that hundreds of small communities can only be reached by air or water, creating huge management and logistic issues for state government.
Alaskan’s aren’t illiterate and unsophisticated. Sarah’s Anchorage office is very close to the recently opened $111 million Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, the $70 million Performing Arts Center, and the $100 million addition to the Anchorage Museum. (I’ve seen “Cats” at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, and in the Performing Arts Center in Anchorage.)
These three Alaska venues are places where educated and cultured Alaskans gather for assorted civic, arts, and entertainment events.
The largest percentage of Alaskans are descended from the same intelligent and fiercely independent people who were adventurous enough to come to Alaska from the same places outside of the state where most of you are living today.
Sarah is very bright, completely committed to making her state and her country better. She is not afraid to tackle big companies or the powerful men who make up an establishment network that survives because of who they are or what they have been.
In the primary election Palin beat Frank Murkowski, the incumbent governor and one time United States Senator. Then she beat the former governor, Democrat Tony Knowles, in the general election to become governor.
Sarah successfully pushed the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act through the legislature. In 2008 the state awarded a license to TransCanada Alaska to permit, develop, and build a 1715 mile natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to the Alberta Hub in Canada. The award included $500 million from the state to aid in the process.
The reality is that TransCanada does not own the gas, the producers do. ConocoPhillips and BP are now moving ahead with The Denali Project, which is their own plan to build a pipeline.
I’m not sure the economics are there to build one natural gas pipeline right now, let alone two, so something will obviously have to give. At the very least, after many years with nothing being done, Sarah may have forced the producers to action by her creation of AGIA.
Sarah is a quick study. Anybody who watched the hatchet job Katy Couric did on her, followed by her debate with Joe Biden shortly thereafter should realize that fact. Katy Couric was doing what she has always done - trying to sensationalize her way out of being the last place anchor of an evening news show that is two million viewers behind the other two major networks.
Come on – off the cuff – can you tell me what you think about major Supreme Court decisions and the George Bush doctrine? Then tell me how important it is for a vice-presidential candidate to be able to answer those questions.
Sarah knew the first phase of the interview went poorly, and didn’t want to complete subsequent parts of the interview, but McCain’s advisors wanted her to go ahead.
In my opinion, the real Sarah Palin is somewhere between what her supporters wanted to believe she was and what her detractors manufactured. I had a twenty minute discussion with her several years ago when she had just started her service on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. At the time, I was the manager of a major oilfield service company in Alaska, and she was gathering information about the oil industry as she was learning her new job.
I don’t pretend to be an acquaintance of Sarah’s, or that she would even remember meeting me. What I am doing here is falling back on my positive firsthand impression of her, my intimate knowledge of Alaska, and my proximity to the place where Sarah lives and works in an attempt to put a realistic evaluation on who she really is and what she may become.
After the glow from her campaign energizing introductory speech at the Republican convention faded, the defining question about Sarah’s entry into the presidential race became whether or not she was qualified to be the Vice-President, or, heaven forbid, President, in the event John McCain died after he was elected.
It is not my belief that she was ready last fall, or even that she is ready now. John McCain and his advisors should have recognized that, but they were desperate to do something that would shake the race up – desperate enough to pass over such big name possibilities as former governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. I doubt that any other Republican governor who could have run (that excludes Governor Schwarzenegger) would have been ready either. I have no doubt that Sarah Palin could be ready in just a few years.
There were clearly some basic problems with the McCain/Palin ticket, and many mistakes were made during their campaign. For me, there were two major problems, and one annoyance.
First and foremost may have been McCain’s choice of Sarah to run with him. Even though their Achilles heel was McCain himself, her level of experience was a pivotal factor in their eventual loss. There is no question that Palin won over millions of Americans - while ironic thanks should go to her detractors who made her someone who is now well known in every household. Sarah Palin will, in the coming years, prove to them all who she really is.
I like John McCain. I think he is a true American hero. But for me, during the campaign he just didn’t come off as being presidential.
About the annoyance: Even though I am a former oil guy, I didn’t like the “drill, drill, drill” mantra during the campaign. I thought it sounded reckless, sending a “drill at any cost” message to voters.
That’s not the best way to counter the false charges of the well-financed environmental and anti-development groups at a time when everyone is looking for fiscal responsibility – or to earn support from the voters who were on the fence.
Let’s face it: Alaska is arguably a man’s state, and it is so remote to the rest of the United States that it still remains a mystery to most Americans in this, its 50th Anniversary month.
Whether or not you like Sarah Palin, she’s a woman with enough of the “right stuff” to unify an unprecedented percentage of Alaska’s population. I suggest to Sarah that she should let go of all of the forgettable negativity of the last few months - and just move forward.
Read about the sexy, seamy, and mystical side of Alaska in Craig Bieber’s novel, Saylor’s Triangle, which chronicles the adventures of the wealthy Saylor family. Craig’s novel is available on Amazon.com Books through the Editor’s Picks link on the Just One Opinion side panel or through his website at www.CraigBieber.com.
PDF 
Very well written. I’m sure this will generate some severe comments from those on the left of center. The facts are the facts, and Sarah has been a breath of fresh air. The political seen needs more people like Sarah, and less of the blowhards that currently run this country….
Craig, it was a good post with lots of interesting background information about Alaska and Sarah Palin. You’re right; those of us “Outside” in the lower 48 don’t really know that much about the inner workings of your state and the governor’s role to keep it afloat.
On the other hand, and that’s just me, I get a bit testy when I hear people suggest, even the slightest hint of it, that Sarah Palin got screwed. It reminds me of hard-core Democrats who purported for eight years that their candidates, Gore and Kerrey, were screwed by Florida and then Ohio. While I believe they can make a better case, it doesn’t change reality and is the earmark of what I’ve heard you say is, “a sore loser.”
In my opinion, Sarah would show real class by accepting her duplicity and responsibility for losing the recent election. Blaming it on Katie Couric, Tina Fey, or John McCain is naïve. Palin, and Palin alone, was responsible for her decision to run as vice president. If she was blinded by the light of flattery from McCain and his advisers that she was ready for the big time, she needs to spend some alone time, thinking introspectively. Particularly if she is the kind of person you think she is. When we believe our BS and are unable to hear constructive criticism, we are destined for failure.
You win elections by winning the hearts and minds of people in the center. The hard core folks on the right and left aren’t persuaded by facts. It’s religion to them. Exit polls show Palin had her largest appeal from hard core evangelicals and conservatives, although not inclusive, as your post informs. For many in the middle, Palin, not McCain, convinced them to vote for Obama.
As you so aptly said in your “White & Black Hats” post, “Without making a political value judgment, the bottom line for me is that I don’t like sore losers. No matter which side you are on, step up like a man or a woman, and support your country. If your candidate lost, suck it up and support the winner…your country will be better off in the long run.”
If Sarah takes your advice and refuses to spend her post-election interviews pointing the finger at other people or name calling, and works diligently for the best interests of Alaska and its residents, I would be inclined to give her a second look.
Dick- I expected to get shot at over this article, but I didn’t think the bullets would come from such close range. First of all, the article is entitled Sarah Palin, Just one Alaskan’s Opinion. Sarah didn’t say she got screwed in the election. Actually, neither did I. The closest I came to being a sore loser was saying I thought Kay Couric took a cheap shot at her…and I still think so. I expressed my feelings that we should move on and support Barack Obama in my earlier White Hats and Black Hats piece on Just One Opinion. I said there was a lot of false information out there, and most of the article was about putting the truth in front of everybody. In no place did I say McCain/Palin should have won. Your hang-ups are that Sarah should have said no and she should accept duplicity. I would not argue that she should have said no. It’s an easy thing to say, and would not be an easy thing to do. This article is my opinion, so I can’t get inside Sarah’s acceptance of duplicity. As to responsibility for the loss, maybe you missed my sentence that said, “Even though their Achilles heel was McCain himself, her level of experience was a pivotal factor in their eventual loss.” I am very disappointed in your post. Not because of what you said, but because you are a very smart guy, and if I missed my goal this badly with you, it is going to be an ugly couple of weeks.
Very well said my friend. I would like to add that although I believe Governor Palin has been good for Alaska during the first two years as governor, and her popularity and accomplishments shows this, if she doesn’t leave the Washington politics in Washington and get back to Alaska’s business she will probably find herself as a one term Governor and that will make any of her future political aspirations a tuff hill to climb. Sore loser or not, popularity is a extremely hard thing to keep going and a legacy is impossible to change. Just ask W. and H.W. Bush.
So, Sarah, keep doing what you’re good at and quit the finger pointing. You were elected to run Alaska’s business in the best interest of all Alaskans and not your own. You’ve had your 15 minutes of fame, so now, put it behind you, keep you nose clean and move on and let’s see what the next two years brings.
Craig, I am very sorry for any misunderstanding I created. I read your post three times and I know what you said. At no time did you say anything that would suggest Sarah Palin should have won the election or anything that would suggest you were a poor loser. I found your post very helpful and a much needed addition to my current body of knowledge. My comments were an addendum, my personal bias, and no reflection on the information you presented.
As you must know, religion and politics are very sensitive subjects and I laud you for the courage to express your opinions about Sarah Palin. I hope that my impressions during the electioneering process were wrong. When I wrote “Corn Pone Opinions” and my review of the “God Delusion” for Just One Opinion, I received almost no feedback. Apathy is the worst kind of review. Even if people disagree, that’s okay. Tell me. It starts the conversation. That’s what I’m interested in. Unlike my mother, who believes she knows what “the truth” is, I don’t. I can appear dogmatic, but the fact is that I know very little. I am willing to show my stupidity in order to learn. I only have so many years of my life left.
And for those of you reading this comment, I admire Craig Bieber very much. He is an excellent writer, although not very patient and a bit too senstive, awaiting his time to be discovered. His book, “Saylors’ Triangle”, a story yet to be discovered by the American public, I predict will bring him significant success and fame as a fiction writer to be reckoned with.
Richard Kelly, you are a class act, as you have been since I first met you. And tit for tat…readers need to read Growing Up In Mama’s Club, Dick’s fascinating story about his family’s history in a religious lock-down, and Dick’s eventual escape to a normal life.
If Sarah follows Randy Graham’s advice (comment 4) to concentrate on doing a good job for Alaska for the next four years, she might just prove she’s ready for the national stage. I’ll give here a bit of advice too; downplay the evangelical stuff, America is tired of talk the talk, and ready for some walk the walk.
I just watched the Ziegler interview and saw how Sarah Palin handles soft balls. The whole interview was based on blaming the “mainstream media”, read liberal bias, in the far right playbook. This tactic was proven to be lacking in the last election. It won’t work Sarah. You are not the only governor with Presidential aspirations, and some of them are quite capable of cleaning your clock in a debate. Stop talking and start listening; you might learn enough to be a contender.
Bob Rogers- Your left wing is flapping so violently it has put your common sense in a tailspin.
Craig, I really enjoyed your article. Glad to read a very balanced opinion with some insightful information rather than pure praise on someone or a bashing just for the sake of pontification…which was rampant during the election on both sides. Now that the vote is over, it is good to look back at all of the tactics that the public fell prey to and how we all need to wake up and pay attention to what is between the lines. Thanks again.
Wow! Interesting reading you guys go back and forth. Media bias and a darn smart Barack Obama won this election. He was as unknown as Sarah Palin when he started but it shows what a great orator and media bias can do to the public. Let us alll support him as much as possible and hope that he can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.