From allen.webb@wmich.edu Sun Sep 21 10:52:37 2008 Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:51:50 -0400 From: Allen Webb To: allen Webb Subject: Sarah Pallin Friends, There have been many powerful articles about Sarah Pallin. I attach two of the best I have seen below, one from the NY Times and one from Newsweek. They make absolutely critical points in my opinion and are important reads. At the same time, what most concerns me about Sarah Pallin is not her governing style or her lack of preparation -- those these greatly scare me -- it is her position on the most important issues before us, the Iraq War, relations with Russia and the Middle East, the economy, the environment, health care, education, civil rights, etc. How pathetic and disturbing that the American media so consistently refuses to address issues. I am sure, like me, you have had your fill. Here, I guess, is the best the media can do. Allen ________________________________________ Article from the Times with caps added by a friend for speed reading. ____________________________ The New York Times Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By September 14, 2008 Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL POWELL This article is by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell. WASILLA, Alaska - Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal. So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, SHE APPOINTED A HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE, FRANCI HAVEMEISTER, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency. Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages. WHEN MS. PALIN HAD TO CUT HER FIRST STATE BUDGET, SHE AVOIDED THE LEGION OF FRUSTRATED LEGISLATORS AND MAYORS. INSTEAD, SHE HUDDLED WITH HER BUDGET DIRECTOR AND HER HUSBAND, TODD, AN OIL FIELD WORKER WHO IS NOT A STATE EMPLOYEE, AND VETOED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF LEGISLATIVE PROJECTS. And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor's career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said. "You should be ashamed!" Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. "Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!" Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of "good old boy" politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything. But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics - she sometimes calls local opponents "haters" - contrasts with her carefully crafted public image. THROUGHOUT HER POLITICAL CAREER, SHE HAS PURSUED VENDETTAS, FIRED OFFICIALS WHO CROSSED HER AND SOMETIMES BLURRED THE LINE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND PERSONAL GRIEVANCE, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials. Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state's economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering "our Sarah" and hissing at her critics. "She is bright and has unfailing political instincts," said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. "She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future." "But," he added, "her governing style raises a lot of hard questions." Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor's spokespeople, who did not respond. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public's interest. "Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska," he said. In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney's firing. Interviews show THAT MS. PALIN RUNS AN ADMINISTRATION THAT PUTS A PREMIUM ON LOYALTY AND SECRECY. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records. Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process. When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages - through a federal records request - he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show. "Their secrecy is off the charts," Mr. Steiner said. State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear THAT THE PALINS DRAW FEW DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL. Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin's voice. The governor's husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend. "I understood from the call that Todd wasn't happy with me hiring John and he'd like to see him not there," Mr. Harris said. "The Palin family gets upset at personal issues," he added. "And at our level, they want to strike back." Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he "did not recall" referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation. Hometown Mayor Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin's first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions. "I said, `You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,' " Ms. Chase recalled. "She replied, `I want to be president.' " Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader's outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century. IN THE PAST THREE DECADES, SOCIALLY CONSERVATIVE OKLAHOMANS AND TEXANS HAVE FLOCKED NORTH TO THE OIL FIELDS OF ALASKA. THEY FILLED EVANGELICAL CHURCHES AROUND WASILLA AND REVIVED THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. MANY OF THESE WORKING-CLASS RESIDENTS FORMED THE ELECTORAL BACKBONE FOR MS. PALIN, WHO RAN FOR MAYOR ON A PLATFORM OF GUNRIGHTS, OPPOSITION TO ABORTION AND THE OUTSTER OF THE "COMPLACENT" OLD GUARD. After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, CUT PROPERTY TAXES BUT RAISED THE SALES TAX. And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. "She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently," said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time. But careers were turned upside down. THE MAYOR QUICKLY FIRED THE TOWN'S MUSEUM DIRECTOR, JOHN COOPER. LATER, SHE SENT AN AIDE TO THE MUSEUM TO TALK TO THE THREE REMAINING EMPLOYEES. "HE TOLD US THEY ONLY WANTED TWO," RECALLED ESTHER WALTERS, ONE OF THE THREE, "AD WE HAD TO PICK WHO WAS GOING TO BE LAID OFF." THE THREE QUIT AS ONE. Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. "It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn't want that," he said. Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. "He said: `Gotcha, Cooper,' " Mr. Cooper said. Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin's campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper. In 1997, MS. PALIN FIRED THE LONGTIME CITY ATTORNEY, RICHARD DEUSER, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters. Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money. "She told me she'd like to see him fired," Mr. Showers recalled. "But she couldn't do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney." Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain. Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. "She started the ball rolling," said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party's general counsel. "PROFESSIONALS WERE EITHER FORCED OUT OR FIRED," Mr. Deuser said. MS. PALIN ORDERED CITY EMPLOYEES NOT TO TALK TO THE PRESS. AND SHE USED CITY MONEY TO BUY A WHITE SUBURBAN FOR THE MAYOR'S USE -- EMPLOYEES SARCASTJICALLY CALLED IT THE MAYOR-MOBILE. The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral. "People would bring books back censored," recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin's predecessor. "Pages would get marked up or torn out." Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say MS. PALIN ASKEDTHE LIBRARIAN ABOUT REMOVING BOOKS FROM THE SHELVES. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship. But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it. "Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it." "I'm still proud of Sarah," she added, "but she scares the bejeebers out of me." Reform Crucible Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor. Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling. Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public. The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen's club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye. "She was honest and forthright," said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer. Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate. In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor's office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter's guile. "I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did," Mr. Jenkins recalled. "And she said, `Yeah, what I did was wrong.' " Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after. Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was "smearing" her. "Now I look at her and think: `Man, you're slick,' " he said. Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent. Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate. Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman's instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions. "She was fresh, and she was tomorrow," said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. "She just floated along like Mary Poppins." Government Half a century after Alaska became a state, MS. PALIN WAS INAUGURATED AS GOVERNOR in Fairbanks and took up the reformer's sword. As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. SHE SURROUNDED HERSELF WITH PEOPLE SHE HAS KNOWN SINCE GRADE SCHOOL AND MEMBERS OF HER CHURCH. Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin's appointments. "The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people," he said. Ms. Palin chose TALIS COLBERG, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: "Who?" Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people. "I called him and asked, `Do you know how to supervise people?' " said a family friend, Kathy Wells. "He said, `No, but I think I'll get some help.' " The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed MR. BITNEY, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, JOE AUSTERMAN, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc. To her supporters - and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty - Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds. "Does anybody doubt that she's a tough negotiator?" said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer. Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin's reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of IMPROPERLY CULLING THOUSANDS OF E-MAIL ADDRESSES FROM A STATE DATABASE for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative. While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, HER ADMINISTRATION HAS BATTLED TO KEEP INFORMATION SECRET. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a "personal device" like a BlackBerry "would be confidential and not subject to subpoena." Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account "when there was significant state business." On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin's state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: "Frank, this is not the governor's personal account." Mr. Bailey responded: "Whoops~!" Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin's campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation. Another confidante of Ms. Palin's is MS. FRYE, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin's campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin's children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as "the babysitter," a title that Ms. Frye disavows. Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss. "YOU ARE SO AWESOME!" Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March. Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is OVERTLY RELIANT ON A SMALL INNER CIRCLE that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as OFTEN MISSING IN ACTION. Since taking office in 2007, MS. PALIN HAS SPENT 312 NIGHTS AT HER WASILLA HOME, SOME 600 MILES TO THE NORTH OF THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION IN JUNEAU, records show. During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing "Where's Sarah?" pins. MANY POLITICIANS SAY THEY TYPICALLY LEARN OF HER INITIATIVES -- AND VETOES -- FROM NEWS RELEASES. MAYORS ACROSS THE STATE, FROM THE LARGER CITIES TO TINY MUNICIPALITIES ALONG THE SOUTHEASTERN FIORDS, ARE EVEN MORE FRUSTATED. OFTEN, THEIR LETTERS GO UNANSWERED AND THEIR PLEAS IGNORED, records and interviews show. Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials. At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor's remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally. The administration's e-mail correspondence reveals A SIEGE-LIKE ATMOSPHERE. TOP AIDES KEEP SCORE, DEMEAN ENEMIES AND GLOAT OVER SUCCESSES. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath. Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, HE FOUND HIMSELF BRANDED A "HATER." It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as "bad people who are anti-Alaska." As Ms. Palin's star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. HER MOTHER-IN-LAW, FAYE PALIN, HAS BEEN ASKED NOT TO SPEAK TO REPORTERS, AND AIDES SIT IN ON INTERVIEWS WITH OLD FRIENDS. At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor's office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head. "I was thinking, I don't remember giving up my First Amendment rights," Ms. Woodruff said. "Just because you're not going gaga over Sarah doesn't mean you can't speak your mind." ----------------------------- A couple of letters to the Times responding to this article: The New York Times September 16, 2008 Letters Sarah Palin, in Alaska and Beyond To the Editor: Re "Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes" (front page, Sept. 14): What struck me most in your article about Sarah Palin is how much her governing style resembles that of George W. Bush. She conducts the business of the state in secret, appoints friends and cronies to positions of power and authority regardless of their credentials, surrounds herself with supporters and refuses to listen to those who disagree with her, and makes decisions based on gut instinct instead of knowledge and thoughtful consideration. It is helpful to have this glimpse into Ms. Palin's "executive experience," so Americans can see that it is the same management style that brought us the Iraq war, the tragic lack of response to Hurricane Katrina, a decimated Justice Department and an economy in shambles. Our country cannot afford to have such a leader a heartbeat away from the presidency. Mary Humstone Fort Collins, Colo. Sept. 15, 2008 · To the Editor: Let's see. Gov. Sarah Palin runs an intensely secretive administration, surrounds herself with unqualified, sycophantic cronies while firing competent subordinates, hides scientific facts from the public when they contradict her policies, believes she's doing God's will, viciously attacks the press when it legitimately questions her decisions, polarizes the electorate and abuses her power to lash out at perceived foes. Sound familiar? After the catastrophe of eight years of this kind of leadership, the American people are hurting too much, and are too smart, to let that happen to them again. Larry Geni ------------------- Evanston, Ill., Sept. 14, 2008 ------------------------------------------- Article from Newsweek A noted provocateur defends elitism Sam Harris NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008 Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who-being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy-could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could. Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune-and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal. The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story-but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history. The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary. We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security ... the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them. Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know-or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth. I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with millions of Americans-but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country-even the welfare of our species-as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House. In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing-as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"? You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"? It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"? Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planning-or, indeed, of the 21st century. We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment. What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents-and her supporters celebrate-the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth: "Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?" "Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter." "But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind." "That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink." The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth-in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated. I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex-and dangerous-with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization. Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." His Web site is samharris.org.