I suppose it should be noted that Lyndon Johnson did much the same to his college’s student body government, turning a rather apolitical small governing body into a highly partisan affair (and crushing enemies and creating factional disputes for their own sake) — a sign of ambitions outreaching the actual office, used for the sake of staking out higher ground where these tactics will come in handy, and a sign of a thirst for blood and gamesmanship for its own sake.  But this is a rather depressing indictment on the “Culture Warrior” Mayor of Wasilla,  a veerer of some misguided national politics writ small.

But in the first major race of her career — the 1996 campaign for mayor of her hometown, Wasilla — Palin was a far more conventional politician. In fact, according to some who were involved in that fight, Palin was a highly polarizing political figure who brought partisan politics and hot-button social issues like abortion and gun control into a mayoral race that had traditionally been contested like a friendly intramural contest among neighbors.  […]

Four years later, she took on her former workout buddy in a race that quickly became contentious. In Stein’s view, Palin’s main transgression was injecting big-time politics into a small-town local race. “It was always a nonpartisan job,” he says. “But with her, the state GOP came in and started affecting the race.” While Palin often describes that race as having been a fight against the old boys’ club, Stein says she made sure the campaign hinged on issues like gun owners’ rights and her opposition to abortion (Stein is pro-choice). “It got to the extent that — I don’t remember who it was now — but some national antiabortion outfit sent little pink cards to voters in Wasilla endorsing her,” he says.

Vicki Naegele was the managing editor of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman at the time. “[Stein] figured he was just going to run your average, friendly small-town race,” she recalls, “but it turned into something much different than that.” Naegele held the same conservative Christian beliefs as Palin but didn’t think they had any place in local politics.

“I just thought, That’s ridiculous, she should concentrate on roads, not abortion,” says Naegele.

The echoes are alive and kicking at this week’s Republican National Convention, which has veered sharply right and is tonally a “Take Down the Media” and “Rally Around Palin” affair, skipping toward Fred Thompson’s comments and I see myself a little sickened.  The Republicans have staked their ground — the curious relation with John McCain over the past decade has been called off, from their end, and I start to gather that this response over news interjections into various fracuses over Palin (assembled legitimate matters included) becomes a stake to “Rally Around the Flag”, but also a sort of insulating factor.

In the meantime, this bottom lines a few things:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Oh.  So, she’s one of THOSE Small-town mayors, a particular type of noxious breed.  It is curious to compare the way the “Nanny State” imposes itself in small towns versus big cities.  Here we get these weird Stalinist advertisements in the newspaper proclaiming the joys of the coming Smoke-Bar Ban.  There, it’s an item of vindictiveness against the head Librarian over a dust-off over, like, Catcher in the Rye — leading through into a dust-off over the Rap and the Heavy Metal.  Or they   I think a bit of digging is in order to find out which books Mayor Sarah Palin wanted to ban.  Unfortunately the time-line procures the most politically potent and damaging possibility — ie, Harry Potter — what with all its wizardy and devil-worshipping, and it’ll probably be rather obscure and not terribly notable items.

The problem is always that if you give a little man a little power, they will think they are powerful.

Striding through a park en route to a bus stop early this morning, I looked over and saw that someone had stuck a sticker to the “Park Rules and Regulations” board.  I immediately unplastered it.

Most Endangered Species:
THE WHITE RACE
Help Preserve it.

And then bullet-point information on where to reach our local Neo-Nazi organization, and how you can purchase more stickers to plaster about.  They’re plenty cheap.

Now that I have posted this, I can safely throw this sticker away.  I note that my second or third most viewed entry on this blog is one noting a bit of racist Obama-related graffiti (“It’s a White House, not a Black House“).  I don’t know if that is a sign that this is going to be systematically filed into some odd “Portland neo-Nazi/Racist Activity Watch” — (I suppose there is worse activity than plastering stickers about) — but I guess the ghost of Tom Metzger hovers about here and there.

A governor of Alaska is entitled to the provincal lack of opinion on the issue of Iraq, as expressed with  “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy. I am very, very proud of the troops we have in Alaska, those fighting overseas for our freedoms, and the families here who are making so many sacrifices.”  I post the entire quote from The Alaska Business Monthly because it does suggest less of a cluelessness than the clipped quotation I see and hear running around.  But provincally what I can suggest is that your Barack Obama has been “focused on Iraq” from the get-go, indeed going back to 2003 when he made the politically necessary and expedient opinion for an Illinois State Senator in a liberal enclave at a time the rest of the nation was fully supportive of the war.  But the double-backing has to continue here, and I turn also to these blogger types I saw a few weeks’ ago shouting down “What did Obama have to say about Georgia before the invasion?  Huh?  Huh?”  I venture to say more than Palin.  This double-edged swords is sharper at the McCain end than the Obama end.

So, with this provincalism established, it seems appropriate that things are burrowing deeper and deeper into the very most definition of “Domestic Politics”.  Leave aside the rumours, and the odd circumstances of The Flight which have helped lead some circumstantial credence to the rumour, and just note that the Religious Right have seemed to take an attitude toward a variation of the old Grover Cleveland retort with the Pregnancy (Yep!  Don’t believe in contraceptions!):  “Hooray for the Kid!  Hooray for the Kid’s Kid!  I voted for Palin, and I’m glad that I did!”

Picking up a rock and seeing a bunch of crawly little things.  One shot comes with some positive words regarding Ron Paul, in and of itself not worth much mention — I could probably say the same sentiment — though, I have to suggest a hearty “Welcome to the Machine” at this juncture.  But I’ve come to be wary of these matters — it comes from seeing things with “ronpaulfanatic” stuck next to a “blogspot.com” address and scrolling down the sidebar banners to see that behind the “Ron Paul rEVOLution” bumper is the “9/11 Truth” sticker, and a plug for — say — Webster Tarpley’s new book.  It is after seeing and noting the smidgeon of Paulism that her association with the Alaska Independence Party.  Well, I’ve often thought that the United States should get rid of Alaska too.  But today this probably just serves as a two percent votinig bloc for Palin’s statewide election efforts.

It is appropriate that Hurricane Gustav blew away the Bush and Cheney speeches at the Republican Convention, seeing as Hurricane Katrina blew away much of their presidential standing three years ago.  Understand, though, the shin-dig parties by corporate and Interest lobbies were still going on — the NRA had quite a concert, for instance.  But it is also worth noting that John McCain will be giving his acceptance speech on at the same time the National Football League Season starts.  While the New York Giants are being hailed as the “Worst Superbowl Champion in history” — small comfort to the New England Patriots who were chomping at the bit to trademark “19-0” (they, um, were 18-0 and then they were, um, 18-1) — I gather it will still cut into viewership, such to compare Barack Obama’s ratings shattering speech.  (He is a celebrity, you understand.  Just like Schwarzenager — who was scheduled to speak at the RNC Convention, and may be bailing due to state budgetary issues.)  I guess this almost means that Sarah Palin becomes the big draw.  I tend to hope we can get her nominated in a hurry so that this choice can be bolted down and there can be no turning back.  McCain / Palin.  Then we brace ourselves for a McCain speech nobody will be watching.

In 1984 when Mondale selected Ferraro the internal Reagan memo shouted out, “Any slim chance Mondale might have had to beat us is now gone.”  I have to wonder what the Obama Campaign memos flying about right now are showing.  Probably the first memo upon the announcement expresses the same, “Huh?  What?” as the rest of the public.

So I took a spain through the way-back machine to take a view on how the choices of Geraldine Ferraro and Dan Quayle reverberated through into the media, and what political calculations and pressures were believed to be at play.  I cannot say I have a huge amount of new insight, as just for the heck of it I also flushed through some pre-selection Sarah Palin items — which suggested very little to me as well.

Palin is more of a Quayle than a Ferraro.  The elder Bush’s pick of Dan Quayle was meant as a salve to the Conservative Christian base, who distrusted Bush’s basic “moderation”, better thought of as Toryism, and yes indeed, Quayle was going to solve the Gender Gap of support amongst women… because… Quayle was cute?  I don’t believe that the Conservative Christian base was quite as distrustful of Bush as they are of McCain, but then again I don’t believe they were quite as enthralled of Quayle (acceptable, in the lenses of 1988 – slashes the right ‘t’s and dots the right ‘lower case j’s) as they are of Palin, but then again Sarah Palin through sheer Identity Politics has a somewhat more understandable clutch for women votes than Quayle who was… huggable — is that it?

The only thing I can say about Geraldine Ferraro was that from the vantage point of 1984, it was probably the case that she was — from the perspective of traditional presidential political criteria — about the best pick in terms of female Democratic candidates, three terms in Congress be damned.  Such was the situation that Mondale interviewed a crew of black and female mayors, and Lloyd Bentsen, and the public largely groaned at the process.  And probably not coincidentally Dukakis selected Bentsen in 1988.

Neither pick mattered one iota.  What can be said about Betsen is that he almost assuredly would have defeated Quayle in a presidential contest, and may just have defeated Bush I.  But Dukakis dragged that ticket down moreso than Quayle dragged down the Bush ticket, and what we were left with was Bush/Quayle.

The problem of Obama is in the area of gender is a suggestion that a woman probably would not be able or allowed to “jump out the gate” as he did.  Although maybe she might be plucked out and prenaturally groomed for the Big Stage, as was the case of Bush II, and now seems to be the case with Sarah Palin.  I get the feeling that the Conservative Christian base is chopping at the bit with her, not much caring what happens to McCain but hoping to push Palin’s profile to greater and greater heights — at the end of the election, even if McCain is crushed, they can start booking Sarah Palin to any and every media event they can find or influence. 

I am a little nauseated by the slimness of the resume of George W Bush in offering himself up for the presidency in 2000, Obama in 2008, and now Sarah Palin — though, circular logic that it may seem to be, there is credence in the “running a presidential campaign” argument (a larger operation than running the state of Alaska), and there is a bit of clenched teeth I have in seeing the hackneyed double-backs taking place on the grand issue of “Experience” with, for example, Newt Gingrich.

It could be worse, and at least it is not a total after-thought.  Henry Davis was the vice presidential selection for the Democrats in 1904, for Alton Parker.  Parker was a Clevelandite who William Jennings Bryan, the candidate in 1896 (when he actively displaced Clevelandism) and 1900 and again in 1908, sat aside and didn’t bother much with, viewing the Democratic nomination as useless that year.  Parker is probably the most forgettable presidential nominee in our history — and it was noted in the 1940s that he is the only major party nominee not to have had a biography written about him.  Davis was an 80 year old rich millionaire.  He was selected because the party was broke — Bryan’s anti-business populism had slowed the flow of money into the party — and it was hoped that he would fill the party’s coffers.