Palin at City Hall

In my minor contribution to the national debate on Sarah Palin, I have argued that her tenure as governor has been too short to serve as useful experience. Acquiring experience means making and learning from mistakes, and that takes time.

Her experience, then, depends on her tenure as a mayor and city council member in Wasila, Alaska -- in other words, probably less relevant experience for president than, say, Chuck Tooley has (not that I think Tooley would be a bad president). I also suggested that those approving her selection hadn't done enough research into her work in city government to know how effective it was.

Now, of course, people are doing that research, and it isn't looking so good. Most troubling to me is the story that she fired the city librarian and police chief shortly after taking office, purportedly because they supported her opponent. That's pretty lousy in itself, in my book. Good mayors in small towns don't dump good people because they don't like their politics. Good people aren't that easy to find.

What makes it worse is that she initially denied the firings to the Anchorage Daily News, whose reporter went back to the police chief in search of evidence. He produced the letter she had sent him, which contained the phrase, "I intend to terminate your employment."

"If that's not a letter of termination, I don't know what is," he told the reporter.

Obviously, Mayor Palin had not yet acquired the lying skills that are required of a top executive. And the evidence that she supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it indicates that she still is a pretty poor liar.

What happened to the great Republican liars of the past? Where is Richard Nixon when we need him?