Newsflash: Sarah Palin Is A Politician; Surprises New York Times

There was an amazing article in Saturday's New York Times. Perhaps you heard about it. Maybe you even read it.

I read it, and I found it amusing.

The story -- as if you could not have guessed -- focuses on Sarah Palin's governorship of Alaska. The portrait it paints of Alaska's beloved governor is apparently quite controversial. Here's perhaps the most damning passage, which just happens to be the lead:

Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency. [emphasis added]

The editorial slant of the Times' lead is hardly worth noting, since the Times can't help itself. The lead is really a broad and silly assertion based in pure fantasy: if you read the story to its end, you will discover nothing that justifies the Times' conclusion that Ms. Palin lives a certain way; that she follows a maxim. It's obscenely overwrought.

What we find instead of journalism is the Times damning a politician for being something apparently really bad, namely, a politician.

Only a naif would think that a governor in a small state like Alaska (demographically speaking) would not appoint some friends to decent administrative posts. That Franci Havemeister is not really sitting atop a very high position -- she's merely the director of the Division of Agriculture, which falls under the direction of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources' head Tom Irwin -- is hardly alarming. Nor is it all alarming that a high school friend might be picked by a governor for a certain post.

Let me state that I can think of at least five people from my small high-school class I could easily choose to serve the state of NH effectively were I this state's governor. One of my old classmates is the executor of my estate; I did not choose him because we are chums -- we're not really, or I should say that we definitely were not in high school. I chose him because he is excellent at what he does. I have no problem choosing good people, especially if I KNOW them. In fact, it makes sense to choose those one knows, especially if those folks are competent or excellent. Amazingly, Sarah Palin is damned for appointing people with whom she is familiar.

Note that the Times never mentions whether any appointment made by Governor Palin to any position has wreaked havoc on the political or social fabric of Alaska. No list of complaints against the head of the Division of Agriculture; no laundry list of corruption or ineptitude follows a single paragraph in the Times. No, what is apparently so appalling is that a governor would appoint a handful of friends to relatively low positions in the state bureaucracy who were GOOD at their jobs. (For perspective, there are state police patrolmen in Massachusetts who earn far more per year than Alaska's director of agriculture.)

I would note one (at least) weird bit of journalism in the Times passage quoted above, and it has to do with Ms. Havemeister's "having cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency." It's weird when set against the whole process of appointments; my understanding is that an appointment is just that, and it is not the sort of thing to which one submits an application and résumé in order to be hired. In other words, contrary to the impression given readers by the Times' abuse of language, Ms. Havemeister would not have announced to a governor that she was qualified to do anything merely because of a childhood love. Nowhere does the Times contextualize Ms. Havemeister's words, words perhaps uttered to a group of school children during a class trip to her office. Who knows? The Times doesn't care about accuracy here. Its purpose is not to inform, but to sway.

What else does the Times neglect? (Note what I've suggested in my question: the Times neglects things. How sad that what has been considered the most important paper in the country actually does neglect fundamental things.)

For example, it neglects to tell us what Ms. Havemeister's full qualifications actually are; there is not even a mention of her education. But the paper also neglects to tell us what Ms. Havemeister's job requires; I look at the Division of Agriculture's homepage and it sounds to me like someone with a background in real estate and small business might be able handle the job quite well, particularly since agriculture in Alaska is all about land and small business. At least I learn from the Times that Ms. Havemeister has a background in real estate, though what sort of background (a wildly successful one?) is too much for the paper to explore.

The Times also fails to mention whether former Alaskan governors have appointed friends; it fails to explore if any governors in America have classmates from high school in their administrations. Perhaps Governor Palin's actions are actually quite modest, with other administrations hiring far more "friends of the governor." Clearly Gov. Palin's appointments and actions have not been unwelcome or detrimental, since Governor Palin enjoys astronomical bi-partisan approval ratings.

Here's another very odd passage from the Times' report:

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

I hope you see why this is odd. First, the paragraph makes a rather odd leap. It has "Mr. Bitney," a former JUNIOR high school bandmate as somehow connected to Ms. Palin's HIGH school graduating class, and that this weird leap and dubious connection amount to proof of cronyism (or so they imply). The implication that Mr. Bitney is where he is in politics today because he played in a band with Ms. Palin in seventh grade is absurd and sophomoric. Second, the Times has already told us in paragraph 3 that

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

The Times, apparently, cannot tell how many of Gov. Palin's former classmates work in her administration, which is very odd, considering the paper has a "veritable directory of state government" at its disposal. Can a "veritable directory of state government" only have six names in it? Are there only six Wasilla High School students running the entire Alaskan government?

I admit that my questions are partly facetious, but only in part. The fact is quite overwhelming that we are witnessing the "greatest" newspaper in America at its very best, doing its very best to damn a Republican vice-presidential candidate, and yet in the process proving its profound ineptitude. Is this the best the Times can do? Is this all the dirt that's fit to print about Ms. Palin -- that she behaves like a politician, one so down and dirty most Alaskans love her? This is damning? Of Ms. Palin, or the New York Times?

And I have to say that I love this [emphasis added]:

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

Say it isn't so! A chief executive huddled with -- no! -- her husband "who is not a state employee"?! You mean she had the audacity to run Alaska's state house like, I don't know, Bill Clinton ran his White House, "huddling" with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was "not a state employee" at the time? How shameful!

Lastly, check this out:

[...]four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

That this detail is mere gossip does not ruin the fact that it is plainly funny. Why? Well, because if this is Ms. Whitstine's blog, then I would ask her to quit blogging, too. (I am surprised the Times did not tell us the name of Ms. Whitstines's blog, or provide a link to it for its online readers.)

By the way, I have a message for Ms. Frye: On behalf of bloggers everywhere, thank you! (I am sorry, Ms. Whitstine.)

The Times has proven itself once again unable to escape its current well-established legacy of mediocrity. It's still the sort of paper you read in public, but now only discreetly. It's a gossip sheet, really. And gossip is only sexy for a little while. Then it just gets old. Old, and gray, and really annoying.

(Psst! Listen to this. You know what this article is really saying? Sarah Palin is like George W. Bush! Shhh! No, no. I am not kidding you! What? How dare you suggest Ms. Havemeister has more executive experience than Barack Obama. Shame on you!)

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