Blog
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Sarah Palin the Quitter
When Senator John McCain asked Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign, I begged people not to judge her too quickly. Many people told me I was nuts, but I'm still glad I did it. But her recent resignation as Alaska's governor changed my views of her. Her contorted logic and political maneuvering represents the worst of politics as usual.
You probably recall when McCain
picked Palin. She revved up America's
conservative political base and even drew
bigger crowds at campaign rallies than McCain.
Sometimes the campaign had her flown in for his
rallies to gin up crowds. Now, some Republican
operatives, like Grover Norquist, president of
Americans for Tax Reform, and conservative
columnists, such William Kristol, tout her as
genuine 2012 presidential timber. Maybe so.
My goal isn't to make political hay over Palin. Rather, my chief concern is her resignation and its meaning. Here is a first term governor who left the state to run for the vice presidency, only to lose, then to return home, only to say she was committed to Alaska, only now to resign. Her reason: She says she didn't want to become a "lame duck" governor. But she had some 16 months left, or roughly 35% of her term.
So Lt. Governor Sean Parnell was sworn in this past weekend as Alaska's new governor. I kept wondering whether he is lame duck, too, or is he somehow intrinsically different from Palin? Based on her reasoning, we should now be calling on all sitting governors whose terms end in the next year or so to resign. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been facing record state deficits, would fall into this category. According to Palin's logic, he should walk away from his state's historic fiscal crisis because he's also a lame-duck governor. But Schwarzenegger has been busy negotiating day-and-night a way out of his state's fiscal mess.
Meanwhile, some people in New York State are praying that Governor David Patterson will resign, arguing that he's been an utter disaster since becoming governor after Eliot Spitzer was forced from office amid a sex scandal (remember that?). Spitzer now has higher approval ratings than Patterson! But Patterson soldiers on.
A handful of years ago I wrote a piece on “Devotion” in public life, which remains one of my all-time favorites. In it, I wrote that:"…genuine devotion is rooted in a sense of love for public life so deep that it calls us to search for what is good and right, especially when the path is the hardest to walk...Blind acceptance, resignation, falling into lockstep -- these are the enemies of devotion. Indeed, it is too easy for each of us to hear the whispers in our ears that tell us to turn our backs and walk away."
When asked, Schwarzenegger had this to say about Palin's resignation: "I would never give up." No, if nothing else, Schwarzenegger has been a model of devotion to his state since becoming governor. You may disagree with his positions, but it's clear he will stay in the game.
Another example of devotion came this past week when South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, John McCain's most ardent advocate, said he would vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. While he does not support many of her past decisions, he said that "elections matter," and President Obama has the right to nominate people who represent his views so long as they are within the mainstream of American jurisprudence. Graham could have taken the easy way out and opposed her; he didn't.
All this is to say that unlike Schwarzenegger, Graham and others, Palin has turned away from her responsibilities. She bailed. She searched for what she could get for herself, and then she cut and run. We can debate her positions and even her qualifications for national office. I won't, at least not here. But what I will assert is that making the argument that she should leave office early simply because she may be a "lame duck" represents a self-serving lack of devotion. This is no time for quitters. -
A Reminder of What's Important in Life
Every so often something comes across your desk that reminds you about the basics of life. I don't mean about how much money you make, or your most recent promotion, or even how you're going to make next month's budget given these hard economic times. I'm talking about your sense of humanity -- what it means to be alive and the choices we make. Watch this video, and you'll see what I mean.
The video was sent to me by my wife's friend because she knows I have coached boys and girls soccer for years. You may have seen it already. The video tells the story of a group of girls playing competitive softball, and what happens when they realize there's more to the game than simply winning. Or, put another way: You should always do all you can to win, but still make good choices.
When a player from Western Oregon
hit a home run during the conference
championship, she tore a ligament while
rounding first base, and couldn’t get up to
finish running the bases. Her opponents, from
Central Washington, who desperately wanted to
win, faced a fundamental choice. The rules said
that the girl's team could substitute a runner
for her, but her hit would count only as a
single. And the team would give up the extra
run. Her teammates asked the umpire if they
could help her run around the bases; the answer
was no. So, two members of the opposing team
stepped forward and did the unthinkable: could
they help her? This time the answer was yes,
and so the two opposing players picked her up
and carried her around the bases, at each stop
helping her tag the base so she could make it
home.
Over the years, my own soccer teams won numerous annual sportsmanship awards. Sometimes my players would say that they won the awards as a consolation for not winning a championship. But I always told them that wasn't the case. You can be a great player, a great team, and still have character. If fact, they go hand in hand. One of the times I was happiest coaching was when other teams had to play us short, and we always decided to pull our own players off the field so the teams would play even. Never once did one of my players complain. Indeed, over the years, my players would be the ones to alert me that our opponents didn’t have enough players, or if a player went off the field injured or was ill or simply out of gas. It was my players who ultimately kept the promise of the kind of team we wanted to become -- and the type of people they should be.
Myself, I watched this video when I was exhausted from work, and when I'd had more than my fill of stuff. I was wondering why certain people wouldn't return phone calls, why certain funders can make life so difficult, and why making progress can seem so hard at times. I was wondering whether all the effort is worth it. And then I watched this video, and I was reminded in an instant: Keep focused on the essence of what we’re doing -- and why.
It reminded me of the many people who made some of the biggest contributions in my own life: coaches from my childhood. Just last week I got a call from my high school tennis coach who remembered my birthday, who himself just won a national award for his character-building coaching style. His teams consistently win championships. And in a call this week I found myself telling folks from another organization how some of my coaches had led me to start the Institute: my involvement in politics and some other nonprofits didn't fit with what they taught me about making a REAL difference -- about what it means to step forward and make choices.
This video and the memories it prompted in me aren't about being nostalgic, hoping for some nicer world, or wanting to return to simpler times. The world is what it is -- what's at issue is how we engage with it. -
The Sotomayor Hearings: Are We Hearing Anything Real?
In this week's video blog Rich asks, if the nomination hearings for Judge Sotomayor are as important as everyone says, why is there so much pretending from our political leaders. What question could possibly take 8 minutes to ask? Are we hearing anything real?