[Vision2020] Skategate

[Saundra Lund]

This should be required reading for all of us because you just never know
when the national Republican party is going to swoop in on lil' ol' Moscow
looking for another unvetted candidate.  Be prepared  :-)

http://www.slate.com/id/2201443/

jurisprudence
Skategate
Sarah Palin could teach Alberto Gonzales a thing or two about avoiding
political scandal.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008, at 7:18 PM ET 
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Friday night saw the demise of Sarah Palin's dreaded "Troopergate," scandal
with the release of a lengthy legislative report finding that the Governor
had "abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110 (a) of the
Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. The ethics rule provides that "each
public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a
personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of
that trust." The report concluded that "(Palin) knowingly, as the term is
defined in the above cited statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the
governor's office and the resources of the governor's office, including
state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an
effort to find some way to get trooper (Mike) Wooten fired." (Wooten was
Palin's brother-in law, embroiled in a nasty split with her sister). But the
report goes on to conclude that Palin's dismissal of Alaska's public safety
commissioner, Walt Monegan, "was a proper and lawful exercise of her
constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch
department heads." 

Ultimately, Monegan served at Palin's pleasure. If she could fire him for
refusing to wear a light-up reindeer tie, she could fire him for almost
anything. Thus the Troopergate report giveth, and the Troopergate report
taketh away: Palin broke the state ethics laws but ultimately committed no
crime. The state legislature might still vote to sanction her but it's
unlikely to happen and cannot happen before the election. And if all that
sounds familiar it's because it echoes Attorney General Michael Mukasey,
who-in declining to prosecute Justice Department officials who broke the
civil service laws by hiring based on partisan criteria - announced in
August that "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a
crime." Sometimes the embarrassment is punishment enough.

Just ask poor Alberto Gonzales. How is it that firing folks willy-nilly in
last year's U.S. attorney firing scandal, left him disgraced, unemployable,
and the subject of ominous future investigations, while Sarah Palin will
skate right past Troopergate like a hockey mom in lipstick? How can it be
that Gonzales' life is ruined because his subordinates fired their
subordinates for selfish partisan reasons, whereas Palin will chug on
unaffected, and maybe right on into the vice president's office? You're
thinking that it's because she has better highlights. But the truth is that
Sarah Palin is smarter than Alberto Gonzales. Way. And she could teach the
poor guy a thing or two about picking your way through a firing scandal. For
starters:

1. Don't testify. When asked to testify about the U.S. attorney firings,
poor Al Gonzales cooperated. Then he cooperated again. And then (sigh)
again. Each such episode was more excruciating than its predecessor. The
lies piled up. But still he soldiered on. Whereas Palin, who had initially
agreed to cooperate with the investigation, saying "I'm happy to comply,"
promptly refused to do so. Sure it looked terrible. And yes the state
attorney general's office was chided in yesterday's report for its "failure
to substantially comply with [an] August 6, 2008 written request to Governor
Sarah Palin for information about the case in the form of emails." But so
what? Better to be suspected obstructive, elusive and guilty, than to open
your mouth and remove all doubt.

2. Disparage and discredit the investigation immediately.. Sarah Palin
looked like she was up against the wall. After all, the Troopergate report
was commissioned, unanimously, last summer by a state legislative panel
consisting of 10 Republicans and four Democrats. That's what makes her claim
that the whole thing was a partisan liberal witch hunt such a deft piece of
political jujitsu. By repeating, endlessly, that the entire inquiry was
"illegal and unconstitutional" as well as a "smear," Palin managed to
discredit a completely bipartisan inquiry. It took Gonzales, on the other
hand, weeks to figure out that Democrats were actually to blame for seeing
misconduct in his decision to fire people for partisan reasons. Instead of
blaming his tormentors, he initially acceded to their authority. Huge
mistake. By the time he got around to having his boss denounce the whole
scandal as a "partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public
servants," the hook had already been firmly lodged in his mouth and all the
flopping around in the world couldn't have changed that. 

3. Run for higher office during your scandal and take key witnesses with you
on the road: Related to No. 1, above. When Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, was
subpoenaed to testify about his own role in Troopergate, his lawyer
responded with a three-page letter laying out the reasons he wouldn't
cooperate, the crowning jewel being the claim that Todd Palin would find
testifying "unduly burdensome" in light of his many "scheduling obligations
over the next two months" as his wife was running for office. Chutzpah,thy
name is Todd. The best response to political scandal? Seek higher office.
The act of doing so instantly transforms any investigation into a partisan
enterprise, see No. 2, above. If Gov. Palin could have advised Gonzales to
run for, say governor, at the height of the U.S. attorney scandal, perhaps
bringing Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson on the road for Slurpee runs, the
explosive inspector general's report that came out late last month would
have consisted of 300+ blank pages. By staying at his job for months and
making his witnesses available to investigators, Gonzales dug his own grave.

4. Don't rough up the help. That's what Todd is for. The most devastating
findings in the IG's report were that Gonzales was napping at the switch at
Justice, letting unqualified underlings abuse others with impunity. But
Sarah Palin did a much better job in contracting out her thuggery. While
it's true that both Palin and Gonzales were savvy enough to remain at arm's
length throughout the sordid firing process, Palin picked a much better
hooligan. As the Troopergate report concludes, Palin mainly confined her
official wrongdoing to condoning her husband's ham-fisted, but unofficial,
efforts to intimidate Monegan. How is it that Palin isn't on the hook for
her husband's bad acts, while Gonzo is left holding the bag for Kyle
Sampson's shenanigans? Palin's hired hand had no official title. Better yet,
he was the wind beneath her wings. The Troopergate report reflects that
while Todd Palin spent approximately half his time in the governor's
office-at a conference table (he had no desk) -making calls on his own phone
line, he had no real job. It was, as Time magazine describes it today, "a
shadow office, the informal Department of Getting Mike Wooten Fired." The
enduring lesson for Alberto Gonzales? Next time, don't give Kyle Sampson a
desk.

5. Never stop blaming the victim. Both Palin and Gonzales provided crazily
shifting justifications for the firings initiated by their subordinates.
Gonzales, for instance, first swore the U.S. attorneys were sacked for
"job-performance reasons" that were "related to policy, priorities and
management." Later the claim became that New Mexico's David Iglesias was an
"absentee landlord" and California's Carol Lam was sacked for "not
prosecuting more firearms and border smuggling cases." That's because "not a
loyal Bushie" would have sounded terrible. Ditto for Sarah Palin, who
alternately claimed that Walt Monegan was fired for his efforts "to seek
federal money for investigating and prosecuting sexual assault cases" and/or
"egregious insubordination" and/or "budget issues and failure to fill
trooper vacancies." Neither Gonzales nor Palin ever mustered up a truly
credible complaint about the people they sought to fire. But Gonzales never
quite had the stomach to press the point. (It didn't help that most of the
fired U.S. attorneys had sterling evaluations). Credit Palin with going down
fighting. Even as it became clear that her husband and subordinates were
happy to break the law and exert pressure on Monegan, she has continued to
insist-as her campaign did just last night -that even though they did
nothing wrong, "the Palins were completely justified in their concern
regarding Trooper Wooten given his violent and rogue behavior." In other
words, Palin subordinates' illegal, impermissible and repeated contacts with
subordinates, were somehow not illegal because trooper Wooten was a really
bad guy.

So, let this be a lesson to those of you in high office with dreams of
firing others for personal or political gain. It's not what you do but the
way that you do it. Anyone can fire an employee who serves at their
pleasure. But it takes a special cocktail of panache, spin, deceit, and
denial to completely bungle the job, and still skate away unharmed.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.