THE BUSH DEPRESSION: What LIES Will McGone and Falin' Tell Us?
SARAH PALIN ... LIAR in CHIEF ...
"One deeply troubling thing we're learning about Palin is that, as far
as she's concerned, unambiguous fact doesn't appear to rise even to
the level of inconvenience."
"McCain's campaign ads attacking Barack Obama have taken such
liberties that even Karl Rove says he wonders if they've gone too far.
But it's weird for a politician -- or anyone else, really -- to
maintain that an assertion is true after admitting that it isn't
true."
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"Running on a Lie"
By Eugene Robinson
Op-Ed, The Wa****ngton Post
Tuesday, September 16, 2008; A21
What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it,
admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally
claimed -- and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again
without changing a word?
Sarah Palin is beginning to seem like quite an unusual woman, and I'm
not talking about her love of guns and "snow machines," her faith, her
family or any of the presumably non-elite attributes that we in the
"elite media" are accused of savaging. Wrongly accused, I should add;
re****ters are doing nothing more sinister than trying to find out who
she is, how she thinks and what she has done in office.
One deeply troubling thing we're learning about Palin is that, as far
as she's concerned, unambiguous fact doesn't appear to rise even to
the level of inconvenience.
I'm sorry, but to explain my point I have to make another visit -- my
last, I hope -- to the never-built, $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere"
that was to join the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, with its air****t on
the other side of the Tongass Narrows.
You'll recall that in her Republican convention speech, Palin
burnished her budget-hawk credentials by claiming she had said "thanks
but no thanks" to a congressional earmark that would have paid most of
the cost. A quick check of the public record showed that Palin
sup****ted the bridge when she was running for governor, continued to
sup****t it once she took office and dropped her backing only after the
project -- by then widely ridiculed as an example of ****k-barrel
spending -- was effectively dead on Capitol Hill.
In her interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin 'fessed up. It was
"not inappropriate" for a mayor or a governor to work with members of
Congress to obtain federal money for infrastructure projects, she
argued. "What I sup****ted," she said, "was the link between a
community and its air****t."
Case closed. Except that on Saturday, days after the interview, Palin
said this to a crowd in Nevada: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks
to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that
bridge, we would build it ourselves."
That's not just a lie, but an acknowledged lie. What she actually told
Congress was more like, "Gimme the money for the bridge" -- and then
later, after the whole thing had become an embarrassment, she didn't
object to using the money for other projects.
I'm not shocked to learn that politicians sometimes lie. To cite an
example that comes immediately to mind, John McCain's campaign ads
attacking Barack Obama have taken such liberties that even Karl Rove
says he wonders if they've gone too far. But it's weird for a
politician -- or anyone else, really -- to maintain that an assertion
is true after admitting that it isn't true.
Maybe Palin cynically believes she can keep using the "no thanks" line
and manage to stay one step ahead of the truth police. Maybe she
calculates that audiences would rather believe her than their lying
eyes. Or maybe she really believes her own fantasy-based version of
events. Maybe the Legend of Sarah Palin has become, on some level,
more real to her than actual history.
And quite a legend it's turning out to be. The Post re****ted Sunday
that as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Palin pressured the town librarian to
remove controversial books from the shelves, cut funds for the town
museum but somehow found the money for a new deputy administrator slot
and told city employees not to talk to re****ters.
And the New York Times re****ted Sunday that as governor, Palin
appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to a $95,000-a-
year job as head of the State Division of Agriculture. Havemeister
"cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the
roughly $2 million agency," the Times re****ted, noting her as one of
at least five schoolmates to whom Palin has given high-paying jobs in
state government.
Nothing against cows. Nothing against high-school BFFs and being true
to your school. But a different picture of Sarah Palin is beginning to
emerge. The McCain campaign would like us to see a straight-talking,
gun-toting, moose-eviscerating, lipstick-wearing frontierswoman.
Instead, we're beginning to discern an ambitious, op****tunistic
politician who makes no bones about rewarding friends and puni****ng
those who stand in her way -- and who believes that truth is nothing
more, and nothing less, than what she says it is.
[The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today
athttp://www.wa****ngtonpost.com.
His e-mail address iseugenerobinson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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