Sarah Palin Week

Sarah Palin has been in the news even more than normal this week with the release of her much-anticipated book Going Rogue along with related televised interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters.

Therefore it seems timely to present a summary of Palin's public statements as evaluated by non-partisan fact-check website Politifact.com. Politifact rated 13 of Palin's claims "True" or "Mostly True," 6 "Half True," and 11 either "Barely True" or "False." Three of her statements were rated "Pants on Fire" including her famous "death panel" claim about health care reform, her claim that Obama would "experiment with socialism" and her claim that she was cleared of ethical violations by the state of Alaska in the "trooper-gate" scandal. The only public figures with more of the coveted "Pants on Fire" ratings were Senator John McCain (R-AZ) with seven (mostly from the '08 Presidential campaign) and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) with four.

Therefore, it seems appropriate that Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish blames the Sarah Palin phenomenon on McCain who begat her in a national political sense.

But what I didn't fully come to terms with, until the Palin farce, was the full extent of John McCain's recklessness and cynicism. This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain. He picked her so carelessly, and his thought process was so cynical, that he should stand in the dock of public opinion before Palin does. Her vanity led her to say yes to his crazy offer. But he gave her that chance. And in the end, she is his responsibility.

And that's why in fact the pushback has been almost milquetoast. How do Steve Schmidt and John McCain reveal the truth about Palin when that truth only further proves their fantastic incompetence, nihilism and unseriousness with respect to government? And what's truly telling about Washington is that a man like McCain, who perpetrated this nonsense and even now refuses to take an ounce of responsibility for it, is nonetheless invited on countless talk shows and treated like the hero he always was. And no one demands he account for this train-wreck outside his tested cant about Palin "exciting the base."

--Ballard Burgher