Officials of John McCain's losing presidential campaign are trashing Sarah Palin again. And no wonder. The media let them say anything they wish about Palin while remaining anonymous, and thus not accountable. In effect, they get a free shot at her. The Washington Post, for example, identified them as "multiple former McCain officials," a group that includes at least "one former senior official." No names are attached.
This is an old--and entirely unprofessional--trick of the media. Palin is loathed by the elites of the national press corps. But rather than attack Palin on their own, reporters find folks willing to tear into her so long as they aren't named. If they were to be identified, they'd hold their tongue. Heaven forbid! In the case of Palin, the media wouldn't want that to happen.
The Post quoted from an Associated Press account of Palin's new book, Going Rogue. Then it got unnamed ex-staffers from the McCain campaign to dispute her specific claims. Palin writes that aides were delighted with her performance when interviewed by Katie Couric and urged her to tape more segments with Couric. But "one former senior McCain campaign official" disputes that. Who is this person? Is it someone who was there? Is the "official" more credible than Palin? We have no way of knowing.
One "former senior official" spoke to the Post, supposedly more in sorrow than anger. "John McCain offered her the opportunity of a lifetime, and during the campaign it seems that, for all of her mistakes, she is searching for people to blame," the official says. "We don't need to go through this again."
We sure don't. The last time un-identified aides and officials were attacking Palin in the media was in the waning days of the losing campaign and afterwards. Blame themselves for McCain's poor showing? No way. It was all Palin's fault. The wave of criticism by aides who'd worked for McCain and Palin was a political low point for them and the media.
But now, a year later, you'd think these "officials" would step forward boldly and speak in their own name. Why do they hide? Simple reason: their zingers failed and Palin has become a formidable political figure with a nationwide following, a sought-after speaker, a bestselling author, and a potential candidate for president in 2012. In contrast, her critics--insiders know who they are--are toxic. All they've got is their anonymity.
Who Promoted Major Hasan?
One of the troubling aspects of the Fort Hood massacre is the fact that military colleagues of Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington seem to have been deeply and persistently worried about his behavior. Some of his fellow Army physicians thought he was psychotic, others were convinced that he was dangerous--and all were reluctant to raise their concerns with superiors about an officer in the Medical Corps who openly admired al Qaeda, trafficked in terrorist websites, and -talked about his violent Islamist beliefs with patients and fellow doctors.
It seems fairly evident, at this -juncture, that Hasan's Army colleagues were paralyzed by political correctness: In a branch of the armed services where the uniformed chief worries publicly about "diversity" in the wake of the shooting of 43 innocents at Fort Hood, it is not difficult to understand why Hasan's fellow officers chose not to complain about his outrageous conduct. Which, of course, leads to one obvious question--Who promoted Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and why? --and one serious warning: The Army's fecklessness in the face of a jihadist officer is not only shocking in itself, but an ideal breeding ground for some contemporary equivalent of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
THE SCRAPBOOK recalls that, nearly 60 years ago, a left-wing dentist named Irving Peress was drafted into the Army and, under the provisions of the draft law at the time, automatically promoted to major. Peress was not a Communist, but when it was revealed that he had declined to answer questions about his political beliefs on a loyalty form--he was a member of the leftist American Labor party--his superiors were ordered to discharge him within three months.
At that moment Senator McCarthy swung into action: He summoned Major Peress to Washington to appear before his investigating subcommittee, and when Peress cited his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify, McCarthy demanded that he be court-martialed. Instead, Peress's commanding officer at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, Brigadier General Ralph Zwicker, a World War II combat hero, gave him an immediate honorable separation from the Army--and McCarthy exploded. McCarthy told Zwicker in a later hearing that he was "not fit to wear the uniform," and the subsequent "Who Promoted Peress?" crusade led to a prolonged public clash between McCarthy and the Army and the Eisenhower administration.
It would, indeed, be useful to know who promoted Hasan. Not because we need to persecute middle-rank officers who were following regulations to the best of their ability, but because a system and culture that retains and promotes somebody like Hasan, and discourages colleagues from identifying a potential terrorist in their midst, leads to horrific episodes like the Fort Hood massacre--and opens the door to demagogues who could easily make a bad situation in the Army even worse.
Harold Meyerson on the Filibuster
Liberal columnist Harold Meyerson has a nuanced view of the filibuster: He was for it before he was against it. As noted by Jeremy Lott at the American Spectator:
Writing in the American Prospect after the Republicans cleaned up in the 2002 off-year elections, Meyerson predicted that the nation would "suffer" under united Republican rule. He worried about "all the right-wing judicial appointments that will be ratified, for the Supreme Court on down, now that the Republicans control the Senate" and about the "lack of scrutiny" that the Bush administration could expect "now that the Democrats control no committees." "Only the filibuster," he warned, "now stands between the nation and the unchecked rule of the most right-wing xenophobic and belligerent administration in the nation's history."
Last week in the Washington Post, Meyerson sang a different tune:
Now health care goes to the Senate. The world's greatest deliberative body. The other side of Capitol Hill. Dithering Heights. A catastrophic change has overtaken the Senate in recent years. Initially conceived as the body that would cool the passions of the House and consider legislation with a more Olympian perspective, the Senate has become a body that shuns debate, avoids legislative give-and-take, proceeds glacially and produces next to nothing. The problem, in part, is that Republicans have routinized the filibuster.
In other words, you might say, only the filibuster now stands between the nation and the unchecked rule of the most left-wing administration in the nation's history.
More on the Persecution of Palin
WEEKLY STANDARD readers will be glad to know that the date has arrived--the publication date of our colleague Matthew Continetti's The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star, from Sentinel/Penguin. It's available in bookstores and online--the always thrifty SCRAPBOOK notes a particular bargain if you order it on Amazon.com in combination with Palin's own Going Rogue.
Continetti lays out, with the clear and elegant prose WEEKLY STANDARD readers have come to expect, what happened in the campaign, and the implications of what happened for Palin and for our political culture--and he suggests what might be next for Palin and her party.
The book is what our literary editor, Philip Terzian, would call a real book--256 carefully crafted pages--but it's also what our executive editor, Fred Barnes, would call a readable book--a manageable length, and one moves through it at a brisk pace. The best of both worlds!
Enjoy it over Thanksgiving, and give it for Christmas.
A Dysfunctional GOP?
A front page article in the November 10 Washington Post blithely asserted that the Republican party is in "dysfunction." The evidence? The "Grand Old Purging" of New York state assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava in the race for the state's 23rd congressional district.
To review: Scozzafava, a liberal Republican, was put on the ballot in a backroom deal by a handful of county chairmen without a primary, and dropped out of the race when Doug Hoffman, running on the Conservative party line, proved far more popular. Some purge. And while Hoffman narrowly lost after Scozzafava endorsed his Democratic opponent, Republicans won huge victories that same night in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. Some dysfunction.
The Post was hardly alone in its assertion: A supposed civil war in the Republican party has been a theme of mainstream coverage of the recent elections. Evidence on the ground is thin. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York noted the following day:
After years of trailing far behind Democrats, Republicans have now surpassed Democrats as the public's choice in the 2010 congressional elections. In response to the latest so-called "generic ballot" question from the Gallup organization--"If elections for Congress were being held today, which party's candidate would you vote for in your congressional district?"--the new results are 48 percent for Republicans versus 44 percent for Democrats among registered voters, and 46 percent for Republicans versus 44 percent for Democrats among adults nationwide. It's an extraordinary turnaround for the GOP. Last July, Democrats held a six-point lead. Last December, Democrats held a 15-point lead. At one point in 2007, Democrats held a 23-point lead, and for all of that year, 2007, Democrats held a double-digit lead.
THE SCRAPBOOK's advice to the GOP: If this be dysfunction, then make the most of it.