Palin v. Obama

Frank Rich in the New York Times does his baffled best to analyze the phenomenon of Sarah Palin:

What might bring down other politicians only seems to make her stronger: the malapropisms and gaffes, the cut-and-run half-term governorship, family scandals, shameless lying and rapacious self-merchandising. In an angry time when America’s experts and elites all seem to have failed, her amateurism and liabilities are badges of honor. She has turned fallibility into a formula for success.

What particularly astonishes Mr. Rich is that the premiere of Sarah Palin's Alaska on the telly got twice the number of viewer's as the season finale of Mad Men! (Since we don't ordinarily watch the telly, hence don't have any of the specialty channels, Sally and I crouch in front of the computer monitor to watch Mad Men, which I buy off Amazon at $1.99 the episode, the day after it airs ... or creeps through the cable, or whatever it does to get to more sophisticated homes.)

But here's the thing: if you take away the snark, everything Mr. Rich says about Ms. Palin applies equally to Barack Obama. They are, in my judgment, two empty suits, each with his or her besotted demographic. If they are candidates in 2012, then as far as I'm concerned it will be a reprise of 1968. That was the year I voted for the Farmer-Labor candidate. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Another multi-millionaire politician

Sarah Palin is working full time to pack in $12 million (see below). But Barack Obama, who has a day job paying $400,000 a year (plus an expenses of up to $169,000) just filed his Form 1040 showing $5.5 million in income for 2009. This does not include his million-dollar Nobel Peace Prize, which he donated to charity and did not report on his tax form. How does that work? He didn't claim it, but instead directed it to certain charities. Isn't that the same as claiming it?

To be sure, presidents have always received perks unavailable to the rest of us, and the Form 1040 is no exception. I recall when the IRS deemed Dwight Eisenhower's best-seller as income spread over several years because it was based on his WWII service. No other writer of the time was able to succeed in that argument. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The money-bag is THIS big!

John Fund does a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the riches taken in by Sarah Palin since she quit her $125,000-a-year job as Alaska’s governor. Her book Going Rogue has earned $7 million. Fox News is paying her up to $2 million. The Learning Channel (whatever that is!) will pay $2 million for a series about Alaska. And of course there are the speaking gigs, which Mr. Fund estimates have brought in at least $1 million for Ms. Palin’s personal account despite the fact that many of them are charitable outings or fund-raisers for organizations she believes in. That’s a grand total of $12 million, if you’re keeping track, and doesn’t include the $400,000 that her Political Action Committee has raised.

Mr. Fund argues that Ms. Palin's money machine is so attractive that she won’t be running for president in 2012, but instead will still be “securing her financial future [and] repairing cracks in her credibility from the 2008 campaign.” This is, of course, to bet that Mr. Obama will beat whichever candidate the Republicans put up against him in 2012. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are the leading contenders, and it's true that neither seems a slam dunk against our transformational president. On the other hand, the Rasmussen poll shows Mr. Obama leading Ron Paul--Ron Paul!--by only one percentage point, 42 to 41, with 6 percent undecided and 11 percent of us holding out for a better choice. Blue skies! – Dan Ford