Cronies and the Imperial Mayor

Here's the problem with Sarah Palin. It's not her politics, although those are wrong. It's not her lack of meaningful experience, although it is jaw-dropping how unready she is. The greatest difficulty, for me, is that she practices the same politics of cronyism and corruption and bait and switch and division and deception that George Bush has practiced for eight years. When she first ran to become mayor of Wasilla, she sought to paint her opponent as a poor candidate, because he wasn't a born again Christian, and put her opposition to abortion and support for gun rights at the center of the campaign. Keep in mind, this was for a job where those issues were irrelevant to the responsibilities of the office. She brought them up to divide people and distract them.

When the town librarian wouldn't take some books off the shelf because Palin objected to them, she fired her (although public outrage led her to be rehired). She also fired the town's police chief because he had been a loyal supporter of the previous mayor. These loyalty tests, and the tendency to inject politics into aspects of governmental affairs that had never previously been politicized, echo the last eight years in Washington.