Inform Your Consent

We all knew that Sarah Palin, her husband and a good many of her staff had been pressuring former police commissioner Walt Monegan, literally since she took over as governor, to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten.  So, it really comes as no surprise that the bipartisan legislative investigation into the matter found on Friday that Palin improperly used her office to achieve satisfaction of a personal matter.

The real story here, as Nathan Thornburgh writes, is how very “amateurish” the Palin administration was, and so obviously in for a thorough public humiliation over its bullying and cronyist tactics.

The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor . . .

Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines.

The state’s head of personnel, Annette Kreitzer, called Monegan and had to be warned that personnel issues were confidential. The state’s attorney general, Talis Colberg, called Monegan and had to be reminded that the call was putting both men in legal jeopardy, should Wooten decide to sue. The governor’s chief of staff met with Monegan and had to be reminded by Monegan that, “This conversation is discoverable … You don’t want Wooten to own your house, do you?” 

. . . One telling exchange: Deputy Commissioner John Glass, who worked under Monegan, told Branchflower he was “livid” after a Palin staffer, Frank Bailey, went outside the chain of command and called a state trooper in far-off Ketchikan to complain about Wooten. Why had Bailey called the trooper? Because, Bailey said, this trooper had gone to church with Sarah Palin back in Wasilla, so he felt “comfortable” talking to him about Wooten. Glass, too, tried to sound the warning that continuing to pressure anyone and everyone in the matter would end in “an unbelievable amount of embarrassment for the Governor and everybody else”.

 . . . Another amateurish sign: Todd Palin’s outsize role in the mess. Branchflower said it was out of his jurisdiction to pass judgment on the First Gentleman, but his report paints an extralegal role for Todd Palin that would have made the Hillary Clinton of 1992 blush. In the report, the head of Gov. Palin’s security detail says that Todd spent about half of his time in the governor’s office — not at a desk (he didn’t have one), but at a long conference table on one side of the office, with his own phone to make and receive calls. It became a shadow office, the informal Department of Getting Mike Wooten Fired.

Shadow office.  Todd Palin’s outsize role in his wife’s administration.  Quick: what two oft-maligned pols do those characterizations make you think of?  Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton?  

Sarah Palin should count herself lucky that she was less directly involved in the harassment of Commissioner Monegan, having outsourced the job to everyone around her instead.  But Thornburgh is right that the overwhelming and truly sophomoric intimidation campaign — started within days of her term as Governor — that Sarah Palin tolerated and encouraged is the greater indictment of her short time at the helm in Alaska.  Power in office is a privilege and a responsibility, not an advantage to be exploited to settle personal vendettas, no matter how noble the cause.  

Sarah Palin has styled herself the outsider who will clean up Washington.  In truth, she is no more suited to the task than the Washington insiders she so often bludgeons with her hypocritical Youbetchas.