Like a party guest that won't leave, the once and future maverick of the north continues to struggle to keep herself in the public eye while she keeps one eye on Washington. Who could maintain balance with such divided attention? It couldn't have helped Ms. Palin's equilibrium that a few weeks ago she finished third--behind Romney and Jindal (remember the Boy Blunder?)--in the CPAC straw poll of Republican presidential candidates. Perhaps stung by this, and in need of raising her profile with the base, Ms. Palin celebrated the first day of spring by announcing that she will reject $299 million in stimulus funds.
This is what is produced by whiling away time in your sub-arctic redoubt, scheming for significance in the Fortress of Ineptitude while rivals in the Lower 48 are cementing alliances in the cocktail circuit, and your only consolation is that wolves are in season until the end of April.
Never mind that the rejected funds means less money for special education, never mind that Sarah Palin has a special needs child, never mind that she promised to be a friend to such needs if she were vice president.
Oh, and never mind that
...her budget director, Karen Rehfeld, said the bluster over the governor's stance on the stimulus money is somewhat misplaced.
In fact, the administration hasn't yet rejected a single dollar of the stimulus funding, Rehfeld said in an interview from Juneau on Saturday.
She sent an e-mail Friday to all legislators promising that state agencies "will continue to complete the necessary paperwork and applications and meet the specific deadlines" to collect all the stimulus money pending a public debate on whether to keep it.
But while Romney, Jindal, Gingrich, and Giuliani are in and out of Washington to rail against...Washington, Ms. Palin has to content herself with ambuscades, forays and bunker retreats. The circumstances of Ms. Palin's cramped ambition (and Cabin Fever) must be responsible for the "rationale" she adduced for rejecting money, which we always thought was the I-beam infrastructure supporting the planks in the GOP:
Palin voiced concerns about accepting the money if it means swelling government programs and obligating the state to keep up the funding once the federal dollars run out in two years.
Palin raised the notion of hiring more teachers, only to lay them off later. She also said some of the federal money has strings attached, such as the state having to adopt and police uniform building codes if it accepts energy efficiency money.
Palin also mentioned the nation's multitrillion-dollar debt, saying, "We can't keep digging this hole."
To filter and parse this stale air, we must resort to liberal-biased reality, which produces this list:
- Taking the money might be bad if [insert fabricated fear of being forced to increase size of government]
- Taking the money might be bad if [insert tortuous speculation and non sequiturs.]
- Taking the money might be bad if [insert delusion of being responsible for national debt, not governor of Alaska]
The media, as usual, plays the straight man in all of this, and will continue to report her utterances with deadpan earnestness, as if they were not punchlines to reality. To drop that mask of seriousness would be to risk admitting that Ms. Palin is engaging in political posturing contorted enough to be a Cirque de Soleil spectacle.
Foolishness and the risk of ridicule are occupational hazards of the perpetual campaigns and those who would engage in them. Ms. Palin is more than ready; the woman seems genuinely incapable of self-awareness to a degree that we thought we wouldn't see so soon on the public stage in a post-Bush era. On how many occasions in public life have we seen such obviously venal and utilitarian employment of one's child, such corruption of maternal feeling?
Blithe, blank, and blundering enough to be one of her responses to a Katie Couric question, this latest segues remind us that, desperate for relevance, she won't be going away, no matter what the cost. (After all, in a winner take all contest, cost is no object.)
Still, now that spring is here, and with it spring cleaning, this should remind us, as we tidy up and perform the necessary housekeeping, that we forgot to thank Sarah for her service to our country for her part in the presidential campaign. Lovely parting gifts are de rigueur even for game show contestants who fail to win washing machines and sofas, surely Ms. Palin deserves greater recognition for having participated in the most important contest in our nation?
Since Ms. Palin's brand of density is beyond reach of reason or appeal, we might as well, like Zeus, give Ms. Palin gifts that she never requested and would rather do without:
- First of all self-awareness, which, like the Hitchhiker's point-of-view gun (which only exists in the film), would let Ms. Palin see herself as others do, so that at least she could get the jokes;
- Second, empathy, to feel the pain of parents who might actually believe what you say, and might expect you to live up to your promises;
- Finally, the Cassandra-like gift of foresight, to see the outcomes of all presidential elections in her life-time, and see that she will never be president.
For which no one will mourn.