"She wasn't as outgoing and I just
didn't see the spark in her eyes about being the governor anymore,"
said Johnston, who lived with his then-fiance Bristol Palin and the Palin family at the time. "She became quiet, she would come home and just hang out in a
room, you could tell something was wrong."
Johnston's conclusion: "The fame got to her head."
Admittedly, the 19-year-old Johnston is hardly the kind of character
witness anyone would summon to their cause. An aspiring model who posed bare-chested with his infant son Tripp for GQ magazine, Johnston is routinely derided by Palin spokesmen for exploiting his 15 minutes of fame.
But Johnston may be on to something when he says Palin's sudden
resignation on July 3 was fueled by a desire to
cash in on her fame -- and to end the stress that her sudden catapult to national fame had created, complete with myriad ethics charges she has derided as bogus and a Legislature no longer enchanted.
Philandering politicians Mark Sanford and John Ensign have much in common: conservative beliefs, dashed presidential ambitions -- and now screeds they likely wish they had whispered, not written.
Sanford, the South Carolina governor, attracted worldwide ridicule with his not-clandestine-enough visit to Argentina and the purple prose he e-mailed to his mistress, Maria (she of the curvy hips and "magnificent parts").
Today, the Las Vegas Sun posted a handwritten letter purportedly from Sen, Ensign to Cynthia Hampton, his family friend turned staffer turned mistress (whom he allegedly paid $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for him):
"I used you for my own pleasure.... Plain and simple, it was wrong; it was sin," the letter says. "God never intended for us to do this."
The letter is dated February 2008. The affair lasted until August, despite attempts by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to persuade his Nevada colleague to end things, Coburn's spokesman said. He did not address accusations that Coburn and others encouraged Ensign to give Cynthia and her husband, Doug, enough money to pay off their more than $1-million mortgage and leave Las Vegas.
Perhaps that's why Cynthia Hampton's husband wrote his own letter to Fox News, begging for "justice, help and restitution." When Ensign got word of it, he rushed back from to Las Vegas and announced the affair.
Today, Doug Hampton, a former top Ensign aide, apparently tired of the written word. He made all sorts of accusations against Ensign -- on television.
[Updated at 7:45 p.m.: "In response to today's television interview, Sen. Ensign said Doug Hampton was consistently inaccurate in his statements," said Tory Mazzola, Sen. John Ensign's spokesman.]
-- Ashley Powers
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The governor of Alaska went fishing Monday, wearing those waders with suspenders that fishermen fancy, accompanied by her baby, Trig, daughter Piper and her husband, First Dude for a Few More Weeks Todd Palin. Oh, and she alerted the media.
What a spectacle -- the stars of America's cable news personalities from Fox, NBC, CNN, ABC meeting the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the shores of Kanakanak Beach in Dillingham, Alaska, while the governor brushed salmon slime off her suspenders and blasted the media, bloggers and anyone who would dare question her politically bizarre decision to quit in the middle of her first term.
To Fox, she expressed bitterness at those who peppered her with ethics accusations, saying that their ridiculous charges had nearly bankrupted her family and brought Alaska's government to a grinding halt. "The critics want to put you on a course of personal bankruptcy so you can't afford to serve," she said, calling the attacks "bull crap."
She was coy about her plans for 2012, musing that it was difficult to know what the political future would hold, let alone the next salmon run. But she was quick to criticize President Obama. As she led reporters in a boat across Bristol Bay, she opined, "Average, hard-working Americans need to be able to get out there, unrestrained, and fight for what is right. Fight for energy independence and national security, fight for a smaller government instead of this big government overgrowth that Obama is ushering in."
As the Ticket noted over the weekend, Palin has a tendency to sound like former President Richard Nixon, who intoned in the middle of the Watergate scandal, "I am not a crook." Three days after resigning as governor of Alaska, effective at month's end, Palin told CNN, "I am not a quitter. I am a fighter."
She told ABC she's pleased with her decision, damn the consequences. “I’m extremely happy," she said. "Politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it.”
And when NBC's Andrea Mitchell said that some would say she didn't finish the job, Palin's voice rose. "You're not listening to me as to why I wouldn't be able to finish that final year in office without it costing the state millions of dollars and countless hours of wasted time," she snapped.
Noting that "everything changed" last August when Republican presidential candidate John McCain asked her to be his running mate, Palin said she had no regrets about accepting the nomination. "Not in the least," she said. "It was a great honor to stand by a great American hero. I would have done all that again in a heartbeat."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: A previous Palin fishing trip. Credit: Associated Press
Statement and News Release by Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, Wasilla, July 3, 2009
NO SECOND TERM; NO LAME DUCK SESSION EITHER
July 3, 2009, Anchorage, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today that she will not seek a second term as Governor of the State of Alaska and will relegate the power of governor to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell in order to serve Alaska’s best interests. Lieutenant General Craig Campbell will move into Parnell’s current role.
“People who know me know that besides faith and family, nothing's more important to me than our beloved Alaska,” said Governor Palin. “Serving her people is the greatest honor I could imagine.”
Standing outside her home in Wasilla, Alaska, Governor Palin reflected upon some of the administration’s accomplishments for Alaska as she approaches her final year in office.
I am determined to take the right path for Alaska even though it is not the easiest path,” said Governor Palin after the announcement.
Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional ‘Lame Duck’ status in this particular climate would just be another dose of ‘politics as usual,’ something I campaigned against and will always oppose.
It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is....
These are different, changing times in U.S. politics.
The last three presidents each emerged from nowhere and achieved the White House on their first bid, though Bill Clinton and George W. Bush each had governor’s terms and reelections under their belts.
But what had Barack Obama ever accomplished as a freshman senator before announcing and achieving his desire for promotion? (And not finishing his first term either.)
The emergence of social media and online networking have created a whole new political environment beneath traditional media radar with untapped and unknown opportunities for unconventional politicians.
Sarah Palin is just such an unconventional politician, with surprising upsets in her past, a down-to-earth manner so different from the tired old suits you’ll see jabbering on morning TV this Sunday. And she has an astounding approval rate among her conservative base.
Most expected Palin not to run next year for reelection, like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who now has the time and option to gear up for a 2012 presidential run.
Hardly anyone expected her to quit the governor’s office and turn it over to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell on July 26, despite Palin’s slipped popularity at home. (Full Palin text here.)
Professionals watching a withdrawal like this conventionally and immediately wonder, what bad news don't we know about her that's about to come out? Is there some scandal, indictment or personal revelation that would cause her to step down even before its announcement? Friday, especially a pre-holiday Friday, is usually a time to announce what you don't want heard much.
But here’s why friends say she’s really doing it:
Palin is genuinely sick of, as she calls it, “the crap” that comes with national politics, especially the....
Sarah Palin picked a slow news day before a holiday to shake up the political world, saying she will step down as governor of Alaska but leaving open the question of her political future.
“We've got to put first things first. I love my job and I love Alaska. I am doing what’s best for Alaska,” Palin said at a televised news conference in her hometown of Wasilla.
Palin said she hoped people were not disappointed by the decision, which she said had been in the works for some time. She said she was taking “my fight for what’s right in a new direction.” She said she could be more effective and better serve Alaska and the country from outside the governor's office.
At a news conference before the Fourth of July weekend, Palin said she would step aside and be replaced by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell on July 26. She said the transition of power would be smooth and took no questions.
Palin, who is very popular with the GOP’s conservative base, was considered a possibility for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Not being governor would free her to concentrate on accumulating resources for a national race. Palin did not say that’s what she intended to do.
Palin said she was willing to transfer power so that the current Alaska administration can continue.
“My choice is to take a stand and effect change and not just hit our head against the wall,” Palin said. She was surrounded by her family and top state officials.
“Millions of dollars go down the drain in this new political environment,” she said.
“Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government,” she continued and “actually make a difference.”
Palin criticized recent political attacks, including one from former campaign aides of Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was the top of the GOP ticket.
“You are naive if you don’t see a full-court press from the national level picking away a good point guard,” she said, referring to criticism of her campaigning style. The most recent attack was in a magazine article in Vanity Fair magazine.
[Update: Palin was in her first term as governor, elected in 2006. Despite bickering with the state Legislature, she would probably have been reelected next year, and may have done serious damage to her political aspirations by stepping down now, according to Ivan Moore, an independent pollster in Anchorage.
"I don’t minimize how she is revered by the Republican right, nationally,” Moore said. “But at the end of the day, to become president she’s going to have to convince that 5% or 10% of people in the middle, ideologically, that she and McCain didn’t convince last year, and those people are not going to be impressed that in her first four years sitting in high office she quit halfway through."
Moore said Palin would have been a strong favorite to win a second term, even though her popularity has fallen from past heights. Her approval rating is still in the 50% to 55% range, he said.
The betting in Alaska was that she would not seek a second term, but would likely wait until next spring to make her announcement to stave off being a lame duck.
Today’s announcement came out of the blue. "It’s a gobsmacking, jaw-hit-the-ground, total kind of surprise," Moore said.
Stuart Rothenberg, an independent analyst and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, said Palin’s announcement won’t help her end the portrayal of her as a lightweight.
"It’s very, very curious,” he said. “There almost has to be more to this because people don’t just step down from a state’s top office in the middle of a term.”
"I always thought after the [2008] race, the thing she needed to do was go back to Alaska and be substantive, show she’s got a grasp of government and work for the folks back home. This seems to be the exact opposite," he said.
But Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, unaffiliated for 2012, said today’s announcement could be a good thing because it allows Palin to turn the page and start rebuilding her image.
He described the Vanity Fair piece as a “hit job” that showed her she had to shake things up. Stepping down “allows her to begin to draw a new narrative on herself,” he said.
“If anything,” this “allows her to have a brand new day, a fresh start and she can shake all these cobwebs from the last campaign and her term as governor and start over,” he said.]
Sarah Palin, the GOP’s embattled former vice presidential candidate, will not run again for governor of Alaska, prompting speculation that she is considering a presidential race in 2012.
Palin made the announcement at her hometown of Wasilla.
[Update: At a news conference before the Fourth of July weekend, Palin said she would step aside as governor and be replaced by Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, according to local television reports. Palin took no questions.]
Didja hear the story of the teenager who approaches his mother with a small cut on his finger?
Well, how'd you get that? she asks, reaching for the disinfectant.
From the glass, he says.
What glass? she asks calmly.
From the windshield.
The what?! says the startled mother.
It shattered.
What? Why?
In the big traffic accident.
What big traffic accident?
The one with all the cars and trucks. At the fire.
At what? Where?
The big explosion.
Wait, I don't....
We were all trying to avoid the stampeding elephants.
And on and on. Does this remind anyone of a particular governor in recent days?
The basic rule of political damage control is: Get it all out yourself fast and accurately. No loose ends. No stretchers, as Mark Twain would say. Take your hard hit one, maybe....
Longtime friends and campaign workers for Arizona Sen. John McCain have been talking to Vanity Fair about what Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's candidacy as vice president did for the GOP ticket in 2008.
"A Little Shop of Horrors," said one unnamed aide.
Perhaps they want to keep the governor -- still a hot-button favorite among social conservatives -- off the ticket in 2012?
"They can't quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be," Purdam writes.
She
maintained "only the barest level of civil discourse" with Tucker
Eskew, the operative assigned to be her chief minder, Purdam reports. Mark McKinnon, a longtime McCain admirer and a former Democrat who told insiders he would never work against Barack Obama in the general election, signed on to be Palin's "whisperer," the calming influence. And Obama, on learning of Palin's selection, said Palin would never have time to get up to speed. "I don't care how talented she is, this is really a leap," said Obama, telling aides it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate.
But for the most, the piece reads more like juicy political speculation than news. Many of the quotes are from aides who would rather not be named. And it's hard to read the title -- "It Came From Wasilla" -- as anything but an insult, at least to anyone who's a person who came from somewhere.
Palin refused to talk to Vanity Fair for the piece. At work on her own book about her life -- to be published jointly by HarperCollins and the Bible-publishing house Zondervan -- the self-described pit bull-with-lipstick from Alaska will get plenty of ink for her rebuttal.
Well, here we go again on theBarack Obama birth certificate controversy that just won't die because it's one of those zombie issues like who really killed JFK.
No less an authority on politics, history and government archives than thePat Boone is now raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the entire Obama administration and everything it has done since those 21 guns went off shortly after noon on Jan. 20.
This is because a lot of people, including firebrand conservative Alan Keyes (as The Ticket described here in February) and now Boone, insist or suggest or imply that Obama cannot be president of these United States because they insist, suggest or imply he wasn't really born in Hawaii but was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland.
(Helpful Ticket Political Reminder: Obama thoroughly thumped Keyes, a last-minute hopeless fill-in GOP candidate, in his initial 2004 U.S. Senate run in Illinois. So there may be a lingering issue there in the mind of Keyes, wherever that is.)
Now, none of this should actually matter because Obama's mother was an American, if you consider Kansas America. So she could have been on Mars when wee Barry emerged and he'd still be American. All the courts have consistently thrown out challenges to the first African American president's legality. And Obama's spending, golfing and official POTUS Air Force One jacket sure don't indicate he's got any doubts about his legitimacy.
Anyway, the latest development is that Pat Boone, in an article headlined "Mr Obama, Show Us Your Birth Certificate," goes on a long while about the hassle of non-terrorists trying to board commercial American flights nowadays. Which is so true, isn't it?
It's gotten so bad, Pat reports, that he's actually turned down some gigs just to avoid the airport hassle. Which must be a nice position to be in, even with the hassle.
Pat -- we call him that because we've never met -- questions the validity of the certificate of live birth published on The Ticket. He raises dramatic fears about what will happen if years down the road Obama is actually proven to be legally barred from holding the Oval Office as is, say, California's Austrian-born Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But then PB gets to his main point:
If I have to produce my passport, my driver’s license, my birth certificate, for things like leaving the country and returning, buying and selling and leasing and renting — all the things ordinary citizens are required to do all the time — why then, in the name of decency and equality, and, in the “open” and “transparent” approach to government Obama promised, should our elected leader not do the same?
Now, some might say, who is this Pat Boone to question the legitimacy of the president of the United States? Well, he's a lifelong conservative who had a very nice voice and made so many popular hits for your parents that for many years he was second only to a singer who died of drug issues (that would be Elvis).
Pat's qualifications also include popularizing the wearing of white suede shoes about a century or so ago, even though such foot gear is impossible to keep unscuffed for more than 27 seconds..
Pat says Obama is dismantling America’s free markets, taxing the higher-earning middle class into despondency, spending and taxing the nation into bankruptcy, imposing socialistic, government-run healthcare, seriously weakening our military and encouraging our enemies and enacting crippling and fraudulent “global warming” laws, among other nefarious things.
And, he asks, what if "he wasn’t even legally entitled to be president at all. Yes, it is important, crucially and everlastingly important. America’s very future depends on the defense of, and obedience to, our basic constitutional laws."
So while it seems unlikely Pat will be invited to perform at the next White House lesbian gay pride celebration, this birth certificate thing doesn't seem to be going away as quickly as white suede shoes.
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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