[Vision2020] Skategate

[No Weatherman]

Ms. Lund:

Nothing in Slate should be required reading for anyone except those
who must feed their Palin envy.



On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Saundra Lund <sslund_2007 at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> 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.
>
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