Palin's Problems

Well, at least we can guess what Obama surrogate Sen. Hillary Clinton will be up to for the next two months: Demolishing Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin.

Democrats are baffled why a 72 year old presidential candidate with a pretty iffy medical history like Sen. John McCain would pick Palin as his running mate, especially since the Anchorage Daily News is reporting she has not been vetted. As Alaskan State Sen. Lyda Green, a fellow Republican and fellow native of Palin's home town of Wasilla, told the ADN, "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

It can't just be a desperate and misguided attempt to pick up some disgruntled Clinton primary voters (as one Austin Dem drily put it, "I have met Hillary Clinton, and you are no Hillary Clinton.") Because that would mean that McCain would select a veep just for the knee-jerk repsonse to immediate electoral shifts, not for the job. If that were true, then that really would make him Bush 43 part II, and a true believer in winning for the sake of winning, with no concern for governance.

So it must be her rep as a purger of corruption. Eh. Not so fast.

Being opposed to the Bridge to Nowhere and thinking Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, might not be on the up-and-up scarcely make one a radical reformer. (Editor's note: and in Palin's case, they decidedly don't.) But on a related note, can anyone expect Stevens to go quietly into the good night? Really? While Stevens has issued a press release, does anyone expect the indicted Alaskan to be happy that McCain has selected someone that built their political career on throwing the notoriously cantankerous Stevens to the wolves.

Then again, Palin's got some explaining of her own to do, since she's facing a deposition by a special investigator over whether she sacked the state's public safety commissioner for not sacking Palin's sister's ex-husband.