Frank Rich has a pretty thorough destruction of McCain’s Palin pick in today’s Times. It’s worth a read – especially since, as Matt Yglesias often points out, Rich actually includes hyperlinks to the articles that he discusses. It’s amazing the extent to which something as simple as that can help make an editorial so much more readable. One of the great features of the Internet is the ease with which you can send people to all sorts of information. I’m glad to see at least one writer from the Times following up on this potential. It makes his editorial a great round of on just why McCain’s pick is so disturbing.
She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.In the original piece, this paragraph is chockablock with links to relevant articles so that one my inform oneself as to what Rich is talking about (I’m too lazy to put them all back in, so you’ll just have to head over there). I really can’t understand why the NY Times doesn’t simply make this standard for their articles and (especially) their editorials and opinion columns. If nothing else, it should make William Kristol’s columns a bit more entertaining. But good for Frank Rich for going the extra mile.
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