Sizing Up Gov. Sarah Palin

I'm still officially undecided about the Presidential race, which is great fun when push-pollsters call because the conversation usually goes like this:

"Hello?"

"Hi, I'm (name) from (partisan polling group). If the election were held today, which Presidential candidate would you vote for?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Oh, okay. Thank you for your time." Click.

I can hear the disappointment in their voices. They don't have an opportunity to hit me with partisan spin-doctored guff. But they need the independents. They need 'em badly.

Enter Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. A week and a half ago, you were thinking "who?" Now she's exploded, landing in the supermarket tabloids, talk radio, and the cable-news gabfests. Friends of mine are going crazy about her, and I can't blame them. She's got the look, the razor-sharp tongue, and the political moxie. She wants to win.

But does she have my vote? Let me go down the list.

First, the whole eruption over her daughter's pregnancy stunk to high heaven. While I agree Gov. Palin needed to come clean about what happened, this whole mess started with left-wing bloggers acting more like Hollywood gossip mavens. They raised questions about the paternity of Gov. Palin's youngest child, and then the press got in on the chase. Thankfully, the governor's handlers had the sense to avoid the John Kerry mistake of thinking some issues are unworthy of response. Kerry found out it doesn't matter once the allegations get into the 24-hour news and web cycle. (Kudos to Newsweek for debunking several rumors.)

I have sympathy for Palin after she hit that tripwire straight out of the blocks. Before she agreed to sit down with Charlie Gibson of ABC, she wasn't going to do interviews unless she was treated with "respect and deference." When I heard that phrase from John McCain's campaign manager, I thought of the scene in HBO's John Adams where the title statesman and patriot had to make three "reverences" -- low and courtly bows -- before King George III when entering the throne room. Can you imagine Charlie Gibson bending a knee before Her Alaskan Majesty?

But seriously, Palin is scoring points in her game of Beat The Press, so she has little incentive to quit. Republicans love to play the press-victim game and harp on the "liberal media," forgetting most media corporations are run by people who are anything but liberal. Dems say the media's too conservative and gripe about Fox News and talk radio rather than figuring out how to win. Both parties then complain when the press isn't tough enough on their opponents. A pox on both your houses. I'm tired of it. Bias is in the eye of the beholder. Hopefully the governor will move on before the press-bash act grows stale.

Sen. Barack Obama and Palin are now going back and forth over who's the bigger pork barrel spender. Gov. Palin claims Obama got a billion dollars in earmarks for Illinois, and Obama's people claim she's gotten millions herself. Really. If you ask a politician to abstain from earmarks, you are in for a world of disappointment. Remember that saying: "Never teach a pig to sing. It doesn't work and it annoys the pig."

So she wants to drill in Alaska. With $3 gas, a lot of us would. But I also want to see Detroit come up with the 70 mpg car so we don't have to keep having this discussion. And going back to pork again, I found this example in Time of how the colder half lives:

Alaska is, in essence, an adjunct member of OPEC. It has four different taxes on oil, which produce more than 89% of the state's unrestricted revenue. On average, three-quarters of the value of a barrel of oil is taken by the state government before that oil is permitted to leave the state. Alaska residents each get a yearly check for about $2,000 from oil revenues, plus an additional $1,200 pushed through by Palin last year to take advantage of rising oil prices. Any sympathy the governor of Alaska expresses for folks in the lower 48 who are suffering from high gas prices or can't afford to heat their homes is strictly crocodile tears.

You can feel the envy from sea to shining sea.

So she doesn't have enough foreign policy experience. Neither does Barack Obama. Neither did Dan Quayle. And George W. didn't have a lot either before he moved into the White House. Getting real again, that's why you have presidential advisers. Surely you don't expect the Chief Executive to do it all with one brain.

This takes me back to my brain and its indecision. Less than sixty days from now, I'll be ready. For the present though, I'm still undecided, with no motivation to change and every motivation to keep on digging while the partisans labor for my vote like some trophy.