soapbox

It’s time for a political post…

I’ve always been sarcastic about the political system in Alaska. I mean, isn’t it great that the governor before Palin filled his senate seat with his daughter? That shows good family values if you ask me, and one Senator Murkowski is just as good as another. Throw in Senator Stevens’s “series of tubes” and recent issues accepting bribes from the oil companies and Alaska has two great senators. (Just wait if Stevens gets replaced in the senate by his son, although it looks like the younger Stevens was also accepting some improper money and gifts and may be in prison before his dad.) The lone representative, Don Young, has apparently been staying out of trouble lately but I think it’s mainly because he does nothing.

I just checked out Rep. Young’s website, he’s been in Congress for 34 years. That’s truly amazing. He also just won the “Hero of the Taxpayer” award from Americans for Tax Reform. The award praises him for voting for tax cuts that the “villains” of congress are against. Never mind the fact that if he just cut his personal pork barrel spending, taxes wouldn’t have to be as high.

Given this wonderful history of politics in Alaska though, did McCain not check on Palin’s background? Was it really a simple case of “we need a woman!”? She has three huge strikes against her:
1. Troopergate. Her sister was going through a nasty divorce after being married to a state trooper and there just may have been some pressure from the top that he should lose his job. None of it has been proven, and the guy sounds like he might be in the wrong, but there are still some huge question marks. (Plus, no one high up in the justice department actually ok’ed the firing of those lawyers for being democrats. Right? Wink Wink.)
2. The pregnant daughter issue. This might not be fighting fair, but how good of a parent is she being if she has a pregnant 17 year old daughter? Parents have a responsibility to instill values in their children and a lot of these values are also important in political leaders. If Palin never took the time to discuss the birds and the bees with her children, failed to discuss the importance of birth control, or just never expressed the importance of finishing school and taking responsibility for your life before having a child, I think that marks her as being a very poor leader.
3. Foreign policy. From what I’ve seen, most of her experience in foreign policy came when she used to do sports on the Alaska evening news and would report on hockey scores from Canada.

I have to give her husband points though for having belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party. There’s nothing quite like belonging to a political party with a platform point of “Alaska should leave the US.” For the record, I was a member of the AIP for a short period of time my freshman year of college. I was young and full of political fire after the Newt Gingrich had swept into power. I’m not sure that Palin’s husband had the same excuse.