Sarah Palin has ambitions for 2012:
"I am still thinking of leading this country. I am still thinking about it. I haven't made up my mind. We hired a chief of staff because Todd is getting tired of doing it for me."
When asked who else she might envision at the top of the GOP ticket Palin responded, "No one is more qualified to multi-tasking and doing all the things you need to do as a President than a woman, a mom"
She then began reciting from her resume, listing her experience as a mayor and running for Vice President.
"What I would look for in terms of character is someone who's been on the front lines, who understands how to administer, how to lead a team, how to run a business."
Well, well, well, let's have a look at Sarah Palin's qualifications as administrator, business woman, team player and multi-tasking supermom. Let's have a good look at her work ethic.
[I can't resist a bit of sarcasm regarding her remarks about Todd as her chief of staff. Does it mean that Glassner is now the official purse carrier?]
Now to the serious business.
Education:
- Wasilla High
- Several colleges, allegedly has a degree in Communications with emphasis in Journalism (she learned the famous who, what, where, when and why, which is all one needs to know..)
Sarah Palin's jobs, according to Going Rogue:
Around 1987, she worked as an intern at a couple of TV sports desks, writing copy for the anchors, covering high school and college sports. On weekends during one season she anchored the sports desk live. [There is a video of Sarah "anchoring" the sports desk and all she did was read the results trying to sound lively, with the help of an autocue (horror!)]Sarah also fished with Todd, opened fish bellies, scraped the egg and plopped the roe into packaging. She waited tables at the rowdy Bristol Inn in the summer of 1988. She earned more in tips from drunken fishing crews than she did on the water all season. Money was tight because they had to reinvest their earnings in new nets and boat motors that season.
After Sarah and Todd got married, she didn't work, just porked up, pregnant with Track. When Track was 10 weeks old, Sarah headed to Bristol Bay to work Todd's site because he was tied up with lowly job on the North Slope. They depended on the season's catch as part of their annual household income. It broke her heart to be separated from Track, but she did what she had to do.Bristol was born a year later and they bought their first house on Arnold Palmer Drive. She had left the sports desk when Track and Bristol were babies, but kept her hand in journalism, working a couple of days a week proofreading for the Frontiersman and submitting a sports column once in a while.
There are no accounts of Sarah working until she was recruited by Nick Carney to run for a seat on the six-member Wasilla City Council in 1992, where she stayed until she ran for mayor in 1998. It was during this time that her fiscal conservatism kicked in.
[I'm tired of reading through Going Rogue to paraphrase Sarah, so I'll switch to a different style]
Sarah was mayor for one complete term but quit to run her campaign for lieutenant governor before completing the second. She asked for letters of resignation from a bunch of people to test their loyalties, fired the police chief because he intimidated her, faced a recall and had to hire a city manager at $50,000 a year to do her job. Sarah also decorated her office twice at $50,000 a pop, and left Wasilla $22 million in debt.She lost the election for lieutenant governor and was at a loose end. Frank Murkowski was elected governor, which meant his senate seat was vacant and he had to appoint a replacement. Sarah wanted it, but Frank appointed his daughter Lisa.
Frank felt sorry for Sarah and offered her a couple of positions, but she didn't fancy them. In the end she settled for the public sector commissioner chair at the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, where she was ethics supervisor (gasp). The other two commissioners actually knew something about the oil industry. Sarah lasted eleven months. She hacked into the computer of a fellow commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, because she suspected he was conducting party business from his office at the AOGCC and other bits and pieces. She hated the corruption and unethical behaviour of some people so much that she quit when she was prevented from blowing the whistle on them.
Ironically, she had run her campaign for lieutenant governor from her mayor's office, exactly the same kind of unethical thing she accused Ruedrich of doing...
Murkowski wasn't a popular governor and Sarah decided to run against him in the primaries. She won and went on to win the election. As governor, Sarah appointed her high school buddies to various important positions, abused her power, fired people who didn't go along with her personal vendettas, cheated on her expenses and piled up over twenty ethics complaints against her. As we well know, she quit that job also, too, only thirty one months into her first term. Sarah also included her vice presidential run as part of her experience. That went really well, didn't it?
Recap: fisherman's wife, waitress, autocue reader, councilwoman, decorative mayor, failed Oil & Gas commissioner, failed vice presidential candidate, quitter governor.
Sarah's claims to running her own business are dodgy as well. They were Todd's businesses. She registered her own company, which went by the very sophiscated name of Rouge Cou (it never got off the ground) and was a partner in a car wash in Anchorage which went belly up.
What may be gleaned from her mediocre resume is that she never actually applied for or obtained a job where she had to compete with other candidates as people have to do in the real world. She never had to meet performance targets or gained promotions on her own merits. She was either appointed by politicians or ran for office relying on her pretty face, dirty tactics and not much else.
Sarah is not a team player. She's confrontational and divisive. She doesn't see things through.
I forgot to mention her multi-tasking as a mom. If by multi-tasking she means bringing her children up while holding her "jobs," I'm afraid it's another fail. She did such a fantastic job there that her children regularly adorn the pages of the National Enquirer and seemed fairly unhappy in her reality show. Sarah is very good at choosing the appropriate prop for different occasions, be it book tours, speeches or a locust run on places handing out freebies, I have to give her that.
Now she's thinking of leading this country based on the vast experience outlined above.
Sarah, you can't be serious!
I'll use this space to comment on the leaked Frank Bailey book. There are many, many copies circulating around the internet. The excerpts published so far are very interesting and the book looks promising. As Jeanne Devon of Mudflats is one of the co-authors and has not approved any leaks, I will refrain from publishing any further excerpts. Let's just say that Frank Bailey confirms everything written in this post about Sarah Palin's lack of experience and of any ethics in her approach to work and politics.
