What sort of executive is Sarah Palin?
The newly elected mayor of Wasilla has asked all the city’s top managers to resign in order to test their loyalty to her administration…. She’s also been criticized by the local semiweekly newspaper for a new policy requiring department heads to get the mayor’s approval before talking to reporters. An editorial in The Frontiersman labeled it a ‘gag order.'”
“Wasilla’s new mayor asks officials to quit,” Daily Sitka Sentinel, 10/28/96, p. 3.
Does that sound like a management style familiar to you? (What was that phrase? “Mayberry Machiavellis”?)
More to come, thanks to intrepid frontier correspondent awc….
The Edge of the American West 
57 comments
August 30, 2008 at 7:52 am
ari
awc gets the Sitka Sentinel delivered to his door? That’s awesome.
August 30, 2008 at 7:52 am
ari
Not to mention prescient.
August 30, 2008 at 7:54 am
eric
awc is aware of all newspaper traditions.
August 30, 2008 at 7:56 am
ari
Eric, I’d like to ask you and all the other members of the department to quit. Don’t worry, I promise to re-hire you. But I need to test your loyalty first.
August 30, 2008 at 8:00 am
eric
I’d like to address your request, but I’m not allowed to make a public statement without approval from the mayor.
August 30, 2008 at 8:12 am
silbey
Noun, verb, woman.
August 30, 2008 at 9:00 am
tpb
So, a campaign whose default response to gaffes, stumbles, and unpleasant fact is already Noun verb POW will now rely on Noun verb woman? I cannot really see that as a winning tactic.
August 30, 2008 at 9:20 am
ari
tpb, McCain’s not going to win. Nobody here is saying otherwise. Those who are arguing that the Palin pick was a good one are saying that: A) McCain, given that he’s in a very bad spot, needed to do something drastic. B) McCain, given that he had no good choices, well might have chosen the best of a bad a lot. C) McCain, by choosing Palin, has completely shifted the story of the election — at least for the moment — which was critical in the wake of Obama’s speech.
Beyond that, I don’t think there’s anyone here saying that Palin is Harry Truman: inexperienced, sure, but also incredibly able. We can’t know that one way or the other, though all signs point to her being a wingnut hack.
August 30, 2008 at 9:29 am
tpb
I understand the argument; I don’t agree with it. I wish that I did, because I could then stop trying to figure out wtf McCain was thinking. I have yet to read anywhere anything like a convincing explanation for this pick.
August 30, 2008 at 9:40 am
ari
Okay. But I’m pretty sure that several people here have given you a good sense of what McCain was thinking. He might have been wrong, but the calculation, as laid out here, is pretty clear.
August 30, 2008 at 11:13 am
tpb
Here is the thing, the laying out of the thinking is unconvincing. After having wandered through the whole thing and thought it over, my conclusion is that there was no thought behind the decision whatsoever. I feel better now. The pick makes no sense because it makes no sense.
August 30, 2008 at 11:57 am
silbey
Here is the thing, the laying out of the thinking is unconvincing
To you, perhaps. Are you the McCain campaign’s target?
August 30, 2008 at 12:12 pm
tpb
No perhaps about it but, as you suggest, I am not McCain’s target, except to as a potential voter, but reviewing the responses from those who are likely targets the pick looks terrible. Joe Klein, for god’s sake, is mocking the decision. So, when I suggested that there was no though behind the decision I meant that this is what the meeting looked like.
August 30, 2008 at 12:28 pm
silbey
Joe Klein, for god’s sake, is mocking the decision
Joe Klein is not McCain’s target audience, either.
Nobody writing online at the moment is part of that audience.
McCain reduced his problem with his own base, and put a fresh face (who will be difficult to attack) on a campaign that was becoming, shall we say, seen as increasingly forgetful?
The polling for Palin so far is reasonably promising for McCain:
August 30, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Matt W
The polling for Palin so far is reasonably promising for McCain:
Favorable-unfavorable: 53-26
Ready/not ready to be president: 29-44
Women are, outside the MoE, less likely to view her favorably on any of the questions polled. (As Nate says, this might be because women are more likely to be liberal.)
I think this makes it pretty clear how to proceed: Palin is a nice enough person, but a more-of-the-same conservative, and her choice reflects poorly on McCain’s judgment. Not to mention that these numbers could change wildly after the media narrative has some time to play out, the way the numbers for the Bush/Gore debate changed. So Joe Klein* may have an impact on the people McCain is trying to reach after all.
*Actually Klein turned on McCain a long time ago, but I understand that Palin has been playing poorly all across the MSM.
August 30, 2008 at 1:15 pm
tpb
“Joe Klein is not McCain’s target audience, either.”
I thought part of the “logic” of this decision is that it would change the conversation in manner helpful to McCain, no? But the conversation among the “serious” interpreters of all things campaign, as I read it, the emerging narrative is that the pick was pure politics.
As to the polling, on Friday August 29th Rassmussen reports that
August 30, 2008 at 1:15 pm
tpb
That last bit shouldn’t be blockquoted.
August 30, 2008 at 1:30 pm
awc
The only place where guys like me subscribe to the _Daily Sitka Sentinel_ is in Michael Chabon’s _Yiddish Policeman’s Union_. The paper is available though the wonderful database, NewspaperArchive.
BTW, it appears that she beat her Republican rival, John C. Stein, by calling him a babykiller and attacking his wife for having a different last name. See http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/
August 30, 2008 at 1:44 pm
silbey
Favorable-unfavorable: 53-26
Biden scored 48-34.
And her favorable includes 63% of independents.
I thought part of the “logic” of this decision is that it would change the conversation in manner helpful to McCain, no?
I think that’s surely part of the logic. Whether it will work remains to be seen. Sure, Joe Klein’s not impressed, but neither he, nor most of the rest of media, are talking about Obama’s speech, are they?
August 30, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Matt W
I’d like to see some contemporary accounts of that election before I take that post at face value.
August 30, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Matt W
Oh, and big ups for the Yiddish Policemen’s and Adam and the Ants references.
August 30, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Matt W
Biden scored 48-34.
So? My point is that, though Palin scored high on personal favorability, she scored negative on “ready to be President.” I don’t know if they even bothered to poll that for Biden.
August 30, 2008 at 1:55 pm
tpb
The numbers, as I indicated, are not particularly meaningful given that no one knows a thing about Palin, including key Republicans like Kay Bailey Hutchinson.
The press might not be talking about the speech, although it is still being discussed, instead they are discussing what a terrible pick this is. That may be a changed conversation but it is not change McCain can believe in.
From all accounts the decision to select Palin was rapid and without any real knowledge of her, McCain met her twice and spoke with her briefly on the phone and there was some kind of a surrogates meeting in AZ.
The higgledy piggledy nature of the decision, I would argue, suggests that interpreting it as resulting from some deep well of tactical forethought is to give the McCain campaign more credit than it deserves.
August 30, 2008 at 2:41 pm
silbey
My point is that, though Palin scored high on personal favorability, she scored negative on “ready to be President.”
And the Republican response will be that she’s not running for President. My point is that she was greeted with reasonably high favorable ratings. McCain is betting that they will get people to vote for the GOP ticket. Dismissing that gamble out of hand is reckless.
I don’t know if they even bothered to poll that for Biden.
They did, and he scored much higher than she did. Shall we go back and find out what Bush and Gore polled in 2000?
The numbers, as I indicated, are not particularly meaningful
The numbers are meaningful as a first draft of the reaction. We’ll know more as the campaign goes on.
some deep well of tactical forethought is to give the McCain campaign more credit than it deserves
If you’d like to bet that it had no logic behind it at all, and that it’s not going to work, fine. John Kerry used the same logic to go dark in August of 2004 when the Swift Boat attacks were starting. The Democrats haven’t won so many Presidential elections recently that they can afford to dismiss it out of hand.
August 30, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Matt W
And the Republican response will be that she’s not running for President.
No it won’t. As a self-evident substantial matter, the VP’s main official responsibility is to step in if the president is incapacitated. Saying “She’s not ready for President, but that’s OK” is saying that she can’t do the job she was picked for.
August 30, 2008 at 3:58 pm
tpb
If you’d like to bet that it had no logic behind it at all, and that it’s not going to work, fine.
As near as I can figure, this using Lexus Nexus and the Anchorage Daily News, Palin’s start in politics in Wasilla did result from her using gun control and abortion to oust here erstwhile mentor John Stein, certainly he thinks so.
It may well be that McCain’s decision to dump the central theme of his campaign, Experience Matters, and return to the tired and true Republican trinity, God, Guns, and Gays, was the plan all along.
On the other hand, it might be that the campaign Obama has waged so far totally wrong-footed McCain and the pick was the desperate act of a desperate man who will now have to deny that experience matters and will lose his unearned reputation as a “moderate” Republican by running on Gs one two and three.
You might also be right that this kind of a 180 will not give voters whiplash and the at the initial uniformed views from one poll will hold steady. It may well be the case, that McCain’s well-known rhetorical skills and Palin’s GGG cred will win the fence sitters.
I think not. But the future is so uncertain.
August 30, 2008 at 3:59 pm
tpb
I think I may give up the tags. Only the first sentence in itals.
August 30, 2008 at 4:28 pm
silbey
No it won’t.
Yes, it will
“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long.”
self-evident substantial matter
Self-evident to whom? The same voters who went with the “George Bush defending Texas is better than the Silver Star winner?”
None of this means I think that the Palin will inevitably work. But I think that dismissing out of hand is bad idea.
But the future is so uncertain
Yep.
Never go into an election or a war convinced that you’re going to win.
August 30, 2008 at 4:29 pm
silbey
Oy. So much for proofreading.
August 30, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Matt W
Self-evident to whom?
I can’t help but feel that if “A nice person who can learn on the job” were widely accepted as sufficient qualification for VP, then McCain wouldn’t have felt it necessary to claim that she was ready to be president. So I think the readiness numbers are a liability for McCain. But we’ll have to agree to disagree here.
August 30, 2008 at 5:24 pm
tpb
Never go into an election or a war convinced that you’re going to win.
Or, for that matter, never interpret the the tactical decisions of others as arising from something other than panic or good luck.
August 30, 2008 at 7:19 pm
silbey
Or, for that matter, never interpret the the tactical decisions of others as arising from something other than panic or good luck.
George? George Custer, is that you?
or
“Look! The Carthagians are running away…get them!”
–Unknown Roman consul at Cannae, 216 B.C.
August 30, 2008 at 7:23 pm
tpb
Yeah well during WWII Soviet and American analysts assumed that the Germans had sufficient oil to fight the war even though as a matter of fact they knew the Germans didn’t. The list of errors over estimating and underestimating the enemy are endless. Your assertion that this is an underestimation is no more than an assertion. Stop pretending otherwise.
August 31, 2008 at 6:53 am
silbey
Yeah well during WWII Soviet and American analysts assumed that the Germans had sufficient oil to fight the war even though as a matter of fact they knew the Germans didn’t.
Uh, the reason the Germans didn’t have sufficient oil at the end stages of the war was because the allied strategic bombing campaign went after the refineries. That was a deliberate choice and one that was factored into allied war plans. In fact, one of the reasons why the German attack at the Ardennes in December 1944 was such a surprise was because Allied intelligence knew that the Germans didn’t have enough gas to launch an effective assault. What they didn’t count on was that the Germans attacked, assuming they could capture enough oil from the allies to keep going. Your example supports my argument.
Your assertion that this is an underestimation is no more than an assertion.
Let’s be clear about the positions here: you dismissed the pick of Palin out of a hand as a desperation move that could not work. My argument is that we should be a lot more careful before we do that. Of course, the latter is an assertion, but a reasonable one.
August 31, 2008 at 2:00 pm
tpb
Uh, Adam Tooze and others beg to differ. Tooze, in particular, shows that Germany never had enough oil and never had the ability to transport the oil it needed. As Hitler noted on “June 1942, . . . ‘If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must end this war.'”*
Second, I didn’t dismiss anything out of hand; I spent some time looking into the selection, selected, selector, and the process of selection, and concluded that it was anything but a cunning plan.
I cannot find it in me to accept that the sudden shift in tactics that Palin represents a sign of in-depth thinking-things-through, that others claim. The fairly common description of the selection as a “hail mary pass” strikes me as correct. It may well work and I may well be wrong, but nothing out of hand here.
*Quoted and cited in Joel Hayward, “Too Little, Too Late: An Analysis of Hitler’s Failure in August 1942 to Damage Soviet Oil Production” The Journal of Military History, 64/3 2000, pp. 69-794, here 771
September 1, 2008 at 6:35 am
silbey
Adam Tooze and others beg to differ. Tooze, in particular, shows that Germany never had enough oil and never had the ability to transport the oil it needed.
Careful. That wasn’t your original point. Your original point was that the Germans had low oil stocks and that the allies _assumed_ that they didn’t. That was not in fact the case, as witnessed by the attack on the Germany oil refineries by strategic bombers in 1943-44-45, one of the two ‘chokepoints’ chosen by British and American commanders (ball-bearings being the other one).
Further to that, the allies got in trouble when they *did* assume that the Germans had too little fuel to do anything effective, most notably at the Battle of the Bulge (though Rommel’s early campaigns in North Africa could count as well).
Second, I didn’t dismiss anything out of hand
Saying “The pick makes no sense because it makes no sense” is dismissing it out of hand.
It may well work and I may well be wrong, but nothing out of hand here.
I’d rather the Obama campaign act as if there was a logic behind the pick than assume that it makes no sense. “May well be wrong” for them could mean McCain in the White House.
September 1, 2008 at 9:03 am
Sarah Palin’s “executive experience” round-up. « The Edge of the American West
[…] Palin asks all the city’s top managers to resign as a test of loyalty to her, imposes gag orde… […]
September 1, 2008 at 9:19 am
tpb
Careful. This was in response to your claim that fuel supplies were low because of bombing, which, my suggestion is, made a impossible situation worse.
My initial point was that American and Soviet analysts knew that the Germans had insufficient fuel stocks but assumed that no rational actor would launch a mechanized war with inadequate stocks and therefore they assumed German had more than it in fact did. In short, they made an erroneous assumption about their opponent.
Saying it makes no sense because it makes no sense is only dismissing something out of hand if the utterance arises from a lack of research, in my case it didn’t.
I’d rather the Obama campaign act as if there was a logic behind the pick than assume that it makes no sense.
I’d rather Obama and company draw the correct conclusion. As I suggested and as all available accounts indicate, McCain made this decision hastily and it has moved his campaign from its original message.
Look, just because the pick shows that McCain is not a deep strategic or tactical thinker it does not follow that he is not a dangerous political opponent. It simply means that McCain needs to be understood as a different kind of dangerous campaigner.
September 1, 2008 at 9:24 am
silbey
Saying it makes no sense because it makes no sense is only dismissing something out of hand if the utterance arises from a lack of research, in my case it didn’t.
Research in what is available for you to find and based on an unknown future. Both of those things are incomplete or speculative. As you said yourself, you could well be wrong.
’d rather Obama and company draw the correct conclusion
I’d rather they draw the conclusion that will get them elected.
Dismissing the Palin pick out of hand and being wrong could lose the election.
Not dismissing it out of hand and being wrong would not cause them the election.
September 1, 2008 at 9:51 am
tpb
As you said yourself, you could well be wrong.
And what, you cannot be? Because the you’ve overcomel imitations that affect my conclusion drawing?
I’d rather they draw the conclusion that will get them elected.
So, being wrong is the way to be right? Wasn’t it Paret who argued, in Makers of Modern Strategy, that German operational successes hindered their development of long-term strategic thinking. Defeating McCain rests, I would argue, on gauging properly his strengths and limitations. Based on the VP pick and on the evidence availble concerning the depth of research that went into it by McCain and Co, suggests to me that long term strategy is not his strong suit and that he thinks operationally.
By the way, Palin’s unmarried daughter is pregnant. This, no doubt, is somehow or another evidence of the careful vetting and long-term thinking that went into the decision.
September 1, 2008 at 9:54 am
tpb
Link to the pregnancy story.
September 1, 2008 at 12:12 pm
silbey
And what, you cannot be?
Where in G_d’s name did I say I couldn’t be wrong?
, being wrong is the way to be right?
No, not assuming that your opponent is an idiot is a good way to be right.
By the way, Palin’s unmarried daughter is pregnant. This, no doubt, is somehow or another evidence of the careful vetting and long-term thinking that went into the decision.
It would help if you would respond to the argument I’m actually making, as opposed to the argument you’d like me to be making.
September 1, 2008 at 12:27 pm
tpb
No, not assuming that your opponent is an idiot is a good way to be right.
Surely there is a difference between not engaging in long-term strategic thinking and being an idiot? McCain’s pick, I claim, shows that he is not engaging in long-term strategical thinking. My point is that trying make sense of the pick in those terms fails because in those terms the pick does not make sense. My suggestion here is that in order to take seriously the threat McCain represents requires making the correct assessment of his character. Or, as I put it earlier
In this case, however, his hasty decision-making and desire for the operational victory led him to make a bad choice, or so I see Palin. I would suggest that understanding that McCain is the kind of quy who makes these kinds of decisions, hasty that is to say, should lead to the adaptation of a different set of tactics.
Where in G_d’s name did I say I couldn’t be wrong?
Sorry if I mistook your citing my admission that I could be in error and insistence on the contingent nature of my conclusion without including your own as meaning that you were correct.
Just to clarify, when I admit that I can be in error it is not because I think that I am but rather I seek to acknowledge your point, or what I take to be your point, about the speculative nature of my conclusion; however, I would also extend that caveat to your’s.
September 1, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Matt W
Silbey is right on the practical reasoning point here — if wrongly assuming that your opponent is behaving irrationally has much greater costs than wrongly assuming your opponent is behaving rationally, then you should at least take it as a working hypothesis that he’s behaving rationally, even if there’s some evidence against it.
The calculus is different for what Obama should do and what we should do — what we assume doesn’t matter. I think that McCain isn’t thinking strategically, not least because he doesn’t seem to have vetted her thoroughly. (I mean that he should’ve known about her mixed record on the Bridge to Nowhere, and the fact that she headed Ted Stevens’s 527.) Which is not to say that she doesn’t have hidden strengths.
September 1, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Matt W
I should say, was one of three directors of Stevens’s 527.
September 1, 2008 at 12:39 pm
silbey
In this case, however, his hasty decision-making and desire for the operational victory led him to make a bad choice, or so I see Palin
I understood that, and my point was that there was some electoral logic behind the pick and that we should be aware of it, and not dismiss it out of hand.
what I take to be your point, about the speculative nature of my conclusion; however, I would also extend that caveat to your’s.
And I’ll echo something I said earlier:
Dismissing the Palin pick out of hand and being wrong could lose the election.
Not dismissing it out of hand and being wrong would not cause them the election.
Having said all of this, the gamble that McCain apparently took–that the strengths that Palin brings to the ticket would not be sabotaged by a lack of deep vetting–seems to be a losing proposition at this moment.
September 1, 2008 at 12:48 pm
ari
If she’s not off the ticket by week’s end, he’s more a maverick than I thought — which is to say, “at all.” That said, her kids, and their sex lives, are none of our business.
September 1, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Matt W
If she’s not off the ticket by week’s end
Even McCain is smart enough to know that if he drops her from the ticket at this point, Obama will get 500 electoral votes. Maybe 600.
September 1, 2008 at 3:34 pm
dana
Because we will annex Canada!
September 1, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Alexander
This item reminds me of the time that Jimmy Carter asked his entire Cabine to resign during the late ’70s; what a weird thing that was.
September 1, 2008 at 11:11 pm
ari
Matt, I wrote that before the revelation about Bristol’s pregnancy — about which I have nothing more to say — broke. I now think that McCain has absolutely no way to get rid of her, though I won’t be surprised if she bows out herself (“I need to spend more time with my family” might actually be true in this case.).
September 2, 2008 at 1:06 am
Noumenon
This post would be better if it had a link to the story for context (don’t know if that’s possible with Newspaper Archive) and if it had a link to awc (or doesn’t he/she have a blog?)
September 2, 2008 at 4:17 am
Matt Weiner
ari, I’m not sure when I wrote my comment, but I would’ve made it even before the revelation broke. Absent some really heartrending family problem, dumping your veep candidate would be disastrous for anyone, I think.
September 2, 2008 at 4:21 am
tpb
Ari (or ari) I agree that Palin’s kids ought be left alone; although, I find it reckless and incredible that McCain made the decision to subject this family to the firestorm that will follow, assuming he knew as he claims he did. The news is that McCain has hired the man would led the whispering campaign in SC in 2000 about McCain’s illegitimate daughter. This does not bode well for the Republican side leaving family out of it.
To beat the, no doubt mushy, horse one last tiime, the problem I have with the “logic” of the pick relative to the electorate is that the campaign clearly thought that Palin was going to appeal to both the Christian right and disaffected Hillary voters. In her first two appearances, Palin mentioned Hillary to resounding boos. The overlap between women who voted for Hilary and those who would vote for Palin strikes me as vanishingly small. The campaign’s apparent conviction that Palin could square this circle strikes me as magical not rational thought.
Finally, if a week ago someone or another would have predicted that McCain would pick Palin, nobody from nowhere with no relative experience and already under an ethics cloud, no one would have believed it.
My point is that when preparing to campaign against McCain one had better be aware that he is a loose cannon capable of bedbug crazy decision and plan accordingly.
September 2, 2008 at 6:02 am
silbey
To beat the, no doubt mushy, horse one last tiime
The horse is officially dead, I think: an ex-horse.
September 2, 2008 at 6:10 am
eric
This post would be better if it had a link to the story for context (don’t know if that’s possible with Newspaper Archive) and if it had a link to awc (or doesn’t he/she have a blog?)
Sorry, Newspaper Archive is pay-for-service, no links to content; and awc keeps no blog of his own.
September 2, 2008 at 10:23 am
Please stop concern trolling. « The Edge of the American West
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