[Vision2020] Who Wants to See Sarah Palin as the Next President?

[Tom Hansen]

Who wants to see Sarah Palin as the next president?
By Garrison Keillor
Sept. 3, 2008

The Republicans are meeting down the hill from my house, helicopters are 
pounding the air, and there are more suits on the streets and big black 
SUVs and a brownish cloud venting from the hockey arena where the 
convention is assembled. A large moment for little old St. Paul, which is 
more accustomed to visitations by conventions of morticians and foundation 
garment salesmen and the Sons of the Desert, and so we are thrilled. It 
makes no difference that the city is Democratic. What matters is that, for 
a few days, TV will show a few pictures of the big bend in the 
Mississippi, the limestone bluffs, the capitol and cathedral, and a tree-
shaded avenue or two, and some of the world will know that we exist.

Too bad that the Current Occupant and Mr. Cheney canceled their St. Paul 
appearances so they could focus on hurricane-threatened New Orleans and 
lend their expertise to rescue operations. As it turned out, they weren't 
needed, which has been generally true for a long time. Their reporting for 
duty now only served to remind everyone of what happened three years ago. 
And Mr. McCain, as of this writing, seemed torn between coming to St. Paul 
to address the convention and comforting hurricane victims in Mississippi, 
if any could be found.

Meanwhile, he posed a stark question for voters to ponder: How much would 
you like to see Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, as the next president of 
the United States? And what does the question say about Mr. McCain's love 
of the country that she might suddenly need to lead? No need to discuss 
these things at length, really. The gentleman played his card, a two of 
hearts. Make of it what you will.

The challenge for Republicans is how to change the subject from the dismal 
story of Republican triumph the past eight years and get voters to focus 
on, say, the old man's war record or Mrs. Palin's perkiness or the oddity 
of the skinny guy's last name. If they can succeed there, they can win 
this thing.

The Senate race in Minnesota is a good example. The Republican, Norm 
Coleman, has scored points by whooping up a couple tiny scandalettes -- 
some old jokes that, like a lot of old jokes, aren't so funny, and a tax 
snafu by some bookkeeper with dandruff on his shoulders -- against 
Democrat Al Franken, which may yet succeed in distracting voters from 
Coleman's important role as whistle-plugger in the $23 billion Iraq 
scandal.

>From 2003 to 2006, Coleman was chairman of the Senate Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations, which is responsible for investigating, 
among other things, "fraud, waste, and abuse in government contracting," 
and on his watch, the subcommittee held no hearings on the disappearance 
of billions of tax dollars into "reconstruction projects" in Iraq that 
didn't seem to reconstruct anything whatsoever. Bundles of newly minted 
$100 bills on pallets in Baghdad that simply vanished. No-bid contracts 
lavished on people with connections. What may be the biggest case of war 
profiteering in the history of buzzardry.

The PSI is a big hammer. It's the subcommittee Joe McCarthy used to go 
after the U.S. Army and Sen. John McClellan used to go after labor 
racketeers with the young Bobby Kennedy as chief counsel, but as the 
Coleman subcommittee it went after federal employees who were traveling 
business class instead of economy, meanwhile money was pouring out of the 
Treasury for any Republican who could write "Iraq" with fewer than two 
spelling errors, and an old Bush retainer was appointed special inspector 
general to oversee the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, but without 
authority to oversee money spent on reconstruction by the Pentagon, which 
was where most of the money went. All of this Sen. Coleman watched with a 
cool eye, and he now calculates that Minnesota voters won't have the 
attention span to read a story with a lot of dollar amounts and acronyms 
like PSI and IRRF and SIG. Maybe, maybe not.

The simple truth is that, while more than 4,000 Americans gave their lives 
in the war in Iraq, the war was an enormous financial opportunity for 
neocons and their friends, and Sen. Coleman was a passive observer of one 
of the biggest heists in history. The cynicism is staggering to the normal 
person. He was the cop who busted the hot dog vendor for obstructing the 
sidewalk while the McGurks were cleaning out the bank. This is no joke. A 
crook is walking around looking for votes. And the truth is marching on.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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