Let's be clear about this -- Sarah Palin was found to have abused her power by not acting in the public trust (thus violating the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act), and, furthermore, the Attorney General that serves under Sarah Palin was found to have not complied with the probe by withholding pertinent emails from the investigators. These are the official findings of the investigator (see Page 8 of the document, and pages 74 - 76 for a very interesting discussion of the Rove/Gonzales-style executive branch interference into an ongoing investigation).
Here are the opening three paragraphs of James Grimaldi's story, which currently appears on the online WaPo column, "The Trail":
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin this weekend disregarded an ethics investigator's finding that she had abused her executive power as Alaska's governor and instead embraced a second finding in the report to say that she had been cleared of wrongfully firing her state public safety commissioner.Investigator Stephen Branchflower's 263-page report said Palin breached state ethic laws when she, her husband and members of her administration tried to get the ex-husband of her younger sister fired as an Alaska state trooper. A second finding determined that Palin was within her right to fire public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, even if she did so in part because he didn't bow to pressure to sack the trooper.
In a Saturday conference call with Alaska journalists, Palin said she was "pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there." She denounced the investigation, calling it "a partisan circus." The McCain-Palin campaign said that she and her family had good reason to try to get the trooper fired.
... Palin said she was "pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there."
Finding Number One of the Branchflower Report to the Legislative Council
For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides"The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action violates that trust."
Palin's statement is an obvious, blatant, and perverse lie. She was specifically found to have broken a law that mandates the ethical behavior of executive branch official, and yet she claims to have been cleared of any "legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there." Who knew that one could break a law without engaging in any legal wrongdoing? Who knew that one could violate the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, describing ethical conduct for officials, and yet be cleared of any hint of unethical activity? This is Orwellian doublespeak of the highest degree, blatant lying in the service of political ambition.
To that end, I would have liked to have seen Grimaldi hammer the point home (although perhaps not necessarily as loudly as I have done here). But he at least puts all the facts in plain view. His editors, on the other hand, have royally screwed the pooch on this one. Look again at the summarizing lede the editors have attached to this article on the front page of the WaPo website:
GOP vice presidential candidate says she is "pleased to be cleared of any wrongdoing" in the firing of Alaska official.
No mention at all is made of the fact that Palin is lying. The casual reader could reasonably be expected to conclude that the finding of the report similarly stated that Palin had done nothing wrong.
This is a large part of the reason why our politics are so dysfunctional. The elite in this country are allowed to utter lies, damned lies, mistruths, half-truths, and all manner of nonsense in between, and yet their lies are not called for what they are. This produces a confused and cynical citizenry that doesn't believe much of what anyone says, and also produces a culture in which political crimes and misdemeanors go unpunished.
As it turns out, the WaPo digital front page has already morphed into something else. My screencapture is of a page that was merely a moment in time.
But my larger point remains true. Sarah Palin engaged in a smaller form of the exact abuses of power and disregard for the rule of law that have characterized the current disastrous Presidential administration. She also impeded the investigation of said actions by further abusing her executive powers. She can truly be said to be the ideological heir to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, David Addington, et al.
Yet even when her lies are so blatantly clear, the record is muddied by the gatekeepers of the discourse of our polity. Or, the story is generally ignored completely.
After all this time, after the last eight years, public officials are still allowed to lie through their teeth with no consequences. There is no after-the-fact fact-checking that is given equal real estate on the front pages of websites and newspapers. And political reporters and editors still seem to consider their jobs to be those of glorified stenographers, slaves to the mythical 'balanced' journalism unicorn.
It will take a generation of pushback from an engaged citizenry to undo these messes. The establishment media are the ones that need reform the most.
Thanks for this article.
The WaPo headline obviously annoyed me a great amount; don't know that I would have written otherwise. Glad you liked my screed. :)
The salient issue was whether her exercise of that power was ethical, and this report clearly found that it was not. The reason was because Palin used her public powers, and her husband used his position as well, to settle a private score.
The story is not much more complicated than that.
Now, reasonable minds can differ on how serious of an ethical violation this is, and what it says in a larger sense about Palin. It certainly suggests she is petty and small-minded. Further, the way Palin and the McCain have dealt with this suggests a lack of respect for the voters. Last, but not least, Palin's lying about the matter fits into a larger pattern of dishonesty about her record and her biography in which she has engaged.
That all said, I suspect that much of this story really lies in the parochial aspects of Alaskan politics and rivalries invisible to outsiders, but of the kind that local pols feel in their bones (we have them here in Virginia, also).
At a national level, and in the annals of public corruption, getting your former brother-in-law, who you thing mistreated your sister, fired from a state job seems like pretty small potatoes to me.
But, no, she went the full "I did nothing wrong route," and then tried to shut the investigation down. Not nearly as egregious as Bush's behavior during the Plame investigation (and subsequent pardoning of Libby, which should have resulted in his immediate impeachment), but of the same character.