I had high hopes for Palin. I really did.

And I won’t diminish the difficulty of running a state.. especially one as unique as is Alaska.

But that experience did not translate well onto the national stage. And, her lack of understanding of international issues was uncomfortably demonstrated in her debate with Biden. She reads from a script quite well, but she has no depth.. no understanding.. or, if she does, does not have the ability to express it.

I’m sorry. If Palin is the best we can do, we’re screwed.

So.. just to be clear. I am not slamming her. I don’t hate her. I just don’t think she is ready as a leader of a national party.. not even close. Our party needs new faces.. but first off, it needs new leadership.

What was it she got done during her brief visit to the Governor’s office? Frank Murkowski had a deal with the producers and leaseholders to develop a natural gas line. Palin was almost singlehandedly responsible for killing it so there could be an in-state line and a spur to Railbelt Alaska. That’s what got her the support of a lot of Republicans, notably Walter Hickel and those who follow him. Immediately upon taking office, she hired a bunch of malcontents and holdover Democrats with ties to TransCanada who’d left the Murkowski Administration over FM’s gas line deal. She shucked the in-state line, made a sweetheart deal with TransCanada that gave them a half-billion dollars of Alaska’s money with which they have produced NOTHING. Palin’s vaunted gas line is vaporware and will never be built at foreseeable gas prices.

Likewise her vaunted clean-up consisted of firing most of Murkowski’s REPUBLICAN appointees, the only experienced Republican public managers in the State. Only two of Murkowski’s appointees have ever been charged with Ethics violations, one by Palin herself, and one by the FBI. FM demanded Randy Ruedrich’s resignation though Palin story is definitively NOT what happened. Jim Clark pleaded guilty to a campaign finance charge, but frankly he was just collateral damage in the FBI’s now discredited investigations in Alaska and hadn’t done anything that practically everyone in politics hadn’t done; he accepted the results of a poll done by someone else and didn’t report it as a contribution. The Ethics Act “reforms” she like to talk about were largely done by the Legislature in response to the FBI investigation. She just happened to be there at the right time.

And lastly, her ACES revenue scheme has completely alienated the oil industry who must have an expectation of a stable taxation scheme in order to justify further development of Alaska’s very expensive to develop oil. Alaska is one of the few states in the black these days, but she just happened to be Governor when World oil prices peaked. Her last budget was based on totally unrealistic revenue so she could avoid saying no to anyone, force the Legislature to make the cuts, and then she had the audacity to grandstand with line item cuts in the districts of Legislators who didn’t love her enough.

The day that woman left office was one of the happier days in Alaska’s history. Sean Parnell is stuck with her administration composed of holdover Democrats and Wasilla high school buddies and can’t repudiate her programs. This late in an administration your only choice is whether you have them inside the tent peeing out or outside the tent peeing in, so if he makes changes, they just go out and start working for his opposition. Lots of Republicans are starting to apologize outloud to Frank Murkowski for listening to her siren song and maybe we’ll once again have a Republican governor of Alaska who acts like a Republican rather than a pandering populist.