Running on a Lie
Roald B. Larsen
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, September 16, 2008; A21
What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits
publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed -- and
then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a
word?
Sarah Palin is beginning to seem like quite an unusual woman, and I'm not
talking about her love of guns and "snow machines," her faith, her family or
any of the presumably non-elite attributes that we in the "elite media" are
accused of savaging. Wrongly accused, I should add; reporters are doing
nothing more sinister than trying to find out who she is, how she thinks and
what she has done in office.
One deeply troubling thing we're learning about Palin is that, as far as
she's concerned, unambiguous fact doesn't appear to rise even to the level
of inconvenience.
I'm sorry, but to explain my point I have to make another visit -- my last,
I hope -- to the never-built, $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that was to
join the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, with its airport on the other side of
the Tongass Narrows.
You'll recall that in her Republican convention speech, Palin burnished her
budget-hawk credentials by claiming she had said "thanks but no thanks" to a
congressional earmark that would have paid most of the cost. A quick check
of the public record showed that Palin supported the bridge when she was
running for governor, continued to support it once she took office and
dropped her backing only after the project -- by then widely ridiculed as an
example of pork-barrel spending -- was effectively dead on Capitol Hill.
In her interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin 'fessed up. It was "not
inappropriate" for a mayor or a governor to work with members of Congress to
obtain federal money for infrastructure projects, she argued. "What I
supported," she said, "was the link between a community and its airport."
Case closed. Except that on Saturday, days after the interview, Palin said
this to a crowd in Nevada: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that
Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would
build it ourselves."
That's not just a lie, but an acknowledged lie. What she actually told
Congress was more like, "Gimme the money for the bridge" -- and then later,
after the whole thing had become an embarrassment, she didn't object to
using the money for other projects.
I'm not shocked to learn that politicians sometimes lie. To cite an example
that comes immediately to mind, John McCain's campaign ads attacking Barack
Obama have taken such liberties that even Karl Rove says he wonders if
they've gone too far. But it's weird for a politician -- or anyone else,
really -- to maintain that an assertion is true after admitting that it
isn't true.
Maybe Palin cynically believes she can keep using the "no thanks" line and
manage to stay one step ahead of the truth police. Maybe she calculates that
audiences would rather believe her lying than their eyes. Or maybe she
really believes her own fantasy-based version of events. Maybe the Legend of
Sarah Palin has become, on some level, more real to her than actual history.
And quite a legend it's turning out to be. The Post reported Sunday that as
mayor of tiny Wasilla, Palin pressured the town librarian to remove
controversial books from the shelves, cut funds for the town museum but
somehow found the money for a new deputy administrator slot and told city
employees not to talk to reporters.
And the New York Times reported Sunday that as governor, Palin appointed a
high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to a $95,000-a-year job as head
of the State Division of Agriculture. Havemeister "cited her childhood love
of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency," the
Times reported, noting her as one of at least five schoolmates to whom Palin
has given high-paying jobs in state government.
Nothing against cows. Nothing against high-school BFFs and being true to
your school. But a different picture of Sarah Palin is beginning to emerge.
The McCain campaign would like us to see a straight-talking, gun-toting,
moose-eviscerating, lipstick-wearing frontierswoman. Instead, we're
beginning to discern an ambitious, opportunistic politician who makes no
bones about rewarding friends and punishing those who stand in her way --
and who believes that truth is nothing more, and nothing less, than what she
says it is.
The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at
http://www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address is
eugener...@washpost.com.
Read more from Eugene Robinson at washingtonpost.com's new opinion blog,
PostPartisan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/15/AR2008091502471.html