GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN -- SAUCY BUT SAD!

By Edwin Cooney

True, I would never vote for her let alone encourage her, but it’s still sad to see someone hoping for the White House stumbling instead toward the political “Out” House!

There are, after all, worse circumstances than being a one term governor or a governor who was defeated for re-election. Defeated one-term governors such as James K. Polk of Tennessee have been elected president. Polk, elected Tennessee’s Governor in 1839, was defeated for re-election in 1841 and again in 1843.

Defeated vice presidential candidates in the 20th Century:
-- have been appointed Chief Justice of the United States (Earl Warren, Thomas E. Dewey’s 1948 running mate);
-- have been nominated for President of the United States (Robert Dole, Gerald R. Ford’s running mate in 1976, and Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s losing Vice President in 1980);
-- have served as Ambassadors (as did Henry Cabot Lodge, Nixon’s 1960 running mate); -- have served as Secretary of State (as did Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey’s second in 1968);
-- or, finally, have served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Jack Kemp, Dole’s political teammate in 1996. Kemp, of course, possessed star billing even before Dole’s 1968 election to the U.S. Senate.)

Defeated vice presidential candidates have even made television commercials as did Bill Miller, Barry Goldwater’s 1964 running mate. He made a “Do You Remember Me?” commercial for American Express in the late 70’s or early 80’s. William Edward Miller the son of a Lockport, New York factory floor sweeper, also holds two other distinctions. He was among the prosecuting attorneys at the Nuremberg Nazi War Criminal Trials in the late 1940s. He also is the only Roman Catholic the GOP has ever nominated for high national office.

The point is, it’s no disgrace to be a defeated candidate for the second highest office in the land. Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, the defeated vice presidential candidate in 1876, became VP under Grover Cleveland in 1885. More dramatically, the Democrat’s vice presidential candidate who was defeated in 1920 was a dapper gentleman named Franklin Roosevelt, yet he became President four times —although most of Governor Palin’s constituency continuously disparage that happy historic reality! To have been nominated, even by the smallest party, is an honor. Think of it this way: how many people do you know who have even been considered for high national office? What a defeated vice presidential candidate can’t afford however is to add dereliction of duty to political defeat. Governor Palin’s announcement that she’s leaving her office with more than half her term to go amounts to exactly that. Even if her most devoted supporters will forgive her, it’s certain that her fellow GOP presidential candidates in 2012 won’t.

In her press conference announcing that she will be turning the affairs of the people of Alaska over to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell at the end of the month, she gave two reasons. The first was the high cost, in both time and money, to successfully defend herself against frivolous law suits filed by those not as interested as she is in the well-being of either Alaska or America. Her second reason was that her pledge of independent leadership and her decision not to seek a second term as governor would place her in a “lame duck” political category thereby diminishing her effectiveness to the people of Alaska.

Listening to her rather rambling presentation, I couldn’t decide whether she was energetic or hysterical. Even if I were to grant that she was merely energetic, her assessments still lacked specificity and she spent much of her time on ideological bromides while attacking the media and her ideological opposition. Sarah Palin, while seemingly on the offensive, was ultimately on the defensive.

As Harry Truman used to say: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Obviously, Governor Palin can’t stand the heat. Whether she’s getting out of the kitchen, however, only time will tell.

If Governor Palin is as wholesome for the people of her state and nation as her political opponents are bad for both, then it seems to me that she’s doing her current and future constituency a double disservice. Mrs. Palin wasn’t a “lame duck” and thus less effective politically until she herself started energetically or hysterically (take your choice) imposing “lame duck-dom” on herself, cinching it tighter with every word. I find her constituency politically unpalatable, but they are a legitimate and mostly honorable constituency. They only want to be led and loved -- and it’s so sad that Saucy Sarah has let them down.

For the record, it should be noted that Virginia’s John Tyler resigned his House Seat in 1821 and his Senate seat in 1836 and yet he became President of the United States. Ah! But he achieved that lofty position via the vice presidential road. That, it would seem, is Mrs. Palin’s only potential path to presidential glory. In order for her to travel that route once again, another future GOP presidential candidate would have to be as brave or foolish as John Sidney McCain III. Do you suppose there are any likely takers? If so, you’re a braver supposer than I am.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY