President Obama is refusing to allow serving police, military, or intelligence officials to testify before the Senate investigation into the Fort Hood massacre.

The first public congressional hearing on the Fort Hood attack will not include testimony from any current federal law enforcement, military or intelligence officials because the Obama administration “declined to provide any” such witnesses, according to a Senate committee source.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has released the witness list for its hearing “The Fort Hood Attack: A Preliminary Assessment,” scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. The list includes four experts on terrorism and intelligence issues: retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former U.S. Army vice chief of staff; Brian Jenkins, a senior advisor at the Rand Corp.; Mitchell Silber, the director of analysis for the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence Division; and Juan Zarate, a senior advisor for the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But the list does not include anyone actively involved in investigating the Fort Hood attack, or anyone who might have been responsible for decisions made by various government agencies before the attack about whether to investigate the shooting suspect, Nidal Hasan. The Senate committee source said HSGAC Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) had hoped to have witnesses from the FBI and the U.S. Army, but was rebuffed in his requests.

Asked for comment Monday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said: “Tomorrow morning, an inter-agency briefing team will go to the Hill to brief House and Senate leaders and committee chairs and ranking members. This is the latest in a series of engagements with the Hill since the horrific events at Fort Hood, and further evidence of the Administration’s commitment to appropriately inform Congress without interfering in the prosecution of this case.” Vietor did not address the specific question of why witnesses would not be provided for Thursday’s hearing.

President Obama has already ordered a federal review of the circumstances that led up to the Fort Hood attack, and how government agencies handled intelligence related to Hasan. But in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama urged caution on Capitol Hill. “I know there will also be inquiries by Congress, and there should,” Obama said. “But all of us should resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater that sometimes dominates the discussion here in Washington. The stakes are far too high.”

I agree with the president that it would be better for Congress to stay out of this until the internal investigations are complete.  The incident just occurred and there’s no evidence of which I’m aware that the executive agencies in question aren’t doing their job appropriately and expeditiously.  And, let’s face it, these sorts of Congressional hearings usually turn into occasions for grandstanding.

All that said, there’s simply no question but that the Senate has every right to conduct a circus if it so desires.  It’s a co-equal branch of government and has the power to exercise oversight over executive agencies.  The president can deny polite requests.  If it wishes, however, the Senate can simply issue subpoenas and force the testimony of any government employee aside from select members of the president’s personal staff.

The ball’s in Lieberman’s court.

Hat tips:  Dan Spencer and Bill Dupray

Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim who killed 14 people. Does that make him a terrorist? Some think so.

Sen. Joe Lieberman called the Fort Hood massacre an act of “Islamist extremism” – even as top Army brass warned Sunday against guessing at a motive, fearing backlash against Muslim soldiers. “There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act,” Lieberman (I-Conn) told Fox News on Sunday.  “If the reports that we’re receiving of various statements he made, acts he took are valid, he had turned to Islamist extremism.”

Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, chairs the Senate Homeland Security committee.

Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30 more on Thursday, reportedly expressed moral concerns about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lieberman’s comments were in stark contrast to U.S. Army chief of staff George Casey, who told CNN he’s deeply worried “that the speculation could cause something that we don’t want to see happen.” “It would be a shame – as great a tragedy as this was – it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well,” Casey said.

The fact that outrage over Hasan’s villainy could spark a backlash against innocents has no bearing on this question.  It’s a separate issue entirely.

Whether Hasan is a “terrorist” depends entirely on his motivation.   To qualify as “terrorism,” the act has to be committed to instill fear for the purpose of achieving political goals.   If he’s just an angry Muslim who went nuts and started shooting people, he’s a psychopath and a killer but not a terrorist.  Even if he was trying to send an “I’ll show them” message, he’s no more a terrorist than the Columbine killers, the lunatic who shot up Virginia Tech, or one of those postal workers who go on a rampage.

Now, evidence is still pouring in. Hasan reportedly “once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats” and actually “was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda.” That, combined with various Internet postings and other rants, at very least makes him a terrorist sympathizer.  And Jim Lindgren sees some matchup of Hasan with the typical psychology of a terrorist.

But even if Hasan was an al Qaeda wannabe who was trying to restore the Caliphate with his evil deeds, I’m not sure that he’s a “terrorist” in any sense that really matters.  If he’s just a lone fanatic rather than part of an organized group, the difference between him and any other mass murderer is academic.  Indeed, Charles Manson was politically motivated and actually had a group of followers but he’s never referred to as a “terrorist.”

UPDATE:  Some commenters are apparently under the impression that, unless we call Hasan a “terrorist,” we’re somehow excusing his crimes.  My argument is not that he’s merely some poor soul who needs help and deserves our compassion.  Or that there’s no such thing as Islamist terrorism.

Rather clearly, Hasan willfully committed criminal acts that were at least partly motivated by radical Islamist ideology.  I simply think “terrorism” is more than that.

UPDATE II:  A commenter points to the case of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, who was almost universally judged a terrorist, a label with which I would concur.  Like Hasan, McVeigh was ideologically motivated.  So, what’s the difference?  Aside from the fact that McVeigh formed a criminal conspiracy with a likeminded group and carefully plotted his attack for months, he was clearly trying to send a political message to his government.   It’s not clear what Hasan’s intent was at this juncture.

Ben Smith quotes lawyer A.B. Culvahouse explaining legal obstacles to Joe Lieberman’s having been John McCain’s running mate.

“Five states have sore loser statutes … [making] it very difficult for someone who’s not a member of the Republican Party to become the vice presidential nominee if they only switch parties to become a Republican shortly before the convention,’ Culvahouse said in public remarks at the Republican National Lawyers Association annual meeting aired on C-SPAN.

Culvahouse specifically noted the example of West Virginia, a state Republicans have relied on in recent elections, saying “the constitutionality of that statute has already been litigated in West Virginia.”

“So you were looking at going to the Supreme Court, which is not particularly appetizing,” he said.

I can’t find the West Virginia statute with a quick Google search but none of the sore loser laws I’m aware of would apply.   What they’re designed to do is prevent what Lieberman did in his most recent Senate bid and John Anderson did in 1980 and Pat Buchanan did in 1996:  run in one party’s primary, lose, and then run in the general election with another party.   Lieberman was not a candidate for president in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning, Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman make the case for pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan:

Loose rhetoric about a minimal commitment in Afghanistan is counterproductive for another reason: It exacerbates suspicions, already widespread in South Asia, that the United States will tire of this war and retreat. These doubts about our staying power deter ordinary Afghans from siding with our coalition against the insurgency. Also important is that these suspicions are a major reason some in Pakistan are reluctant to break decisively with insurgent groups, which, in a hedging strategy, they view as integral to positioning Pakistan for influence “the day after” the United States gives up and leaves Afghanistan. That is why it is so important for the president to reject the temptations of minimalism in Afghanistan and instead adopt a fully resourced, comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy, backed by an unambiguous American commitment to success over the long term. In doing so, he must invest the political capital to remind Americans why this fight is necessary for our national security, speak openly and frankly to our nation about the difficult path ahead, and — most of all — explain clearly to our fellow citizens why he is confident that we can prevail.

Not too long ago Pat Lang, who certainly should know, made a similar argument for pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan even while doubting that the American people would accept such a thing:

I did COIN. I did it in South America. I did it in SE Asia. I did it in Arabia. I did it.

It works. It worked in Iraq. It has been very expensive in Iraq, expensive in money, expensive in political capital, and very expensive in blood if some of that is yours.

Was it necessary to do COIN in Iraq? Yes. It was. The ground was ripe in Iraq for irregular warfare against the US occupation. The “human terrain” was perfect for it. The illusions that accompanied the occupation made the US occupying force a perfect target for irregular warfare. Having made so many mistakes in Iraq, COIN was the only method that would bring the US success in Iraq other than mass murder. The Republican and neocon slogan word “Surge” is just code for COIN. The additional US troops were just part of that COIN effort.

Afghanistan is another place where COIN can work. The ground in Afghanistan is even more fertile for long term irregular warfare against the foreign other than was Iraq. Irregular warfare in Afghanistan is an age-old way of life. In Afghanistan, the people in the next valley are often one’s tribal enemy.

Nevertheless, COIN can work in Afghanistan. The question is not if COIN will work in Afghanistan. The question is whether or not we should pay the exorbitant price that COIN will exact from us for the privilegege of using this methodology in that country.

There are several questions at hand. The first is whether a counterinsurgency strategy can work at all in Afghanistan. Frankly, I’m skeptical given the particular conditions there. Clearly, Col. Lang and Sens. McCain and Lieberman believe it can. That isn’t dispositive but it is testimony that deserves to be taken seriously.

The second is that we need a serious evaluation of the costs of a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan that can be successful. Make no mistake: it will be more expensive, possibly many times more expensive, both in dollars and American lives than such a strategy has been in Iraq and we haven’t reached the end of the road in Iraq yet. Like Col. Lang, I’m skeptical that Americans are willing to shoulder such a burden.

There’s an even more serious question: should we be willing to shoulder such a burden? We are not the British or the Russians. We long for no empires in far-away countries. The insurgents we would be fighting don’t plan on leaving but we do.

The situation in Afghanistan presents us with a terrible dilemma. We can’t just walk away from Afghanistan. On that I’m in complete agreement with Sens. Lieberman and McCain. The downside risk is too great. I doubt that we’re willing to expend the billions of dollars, the thousands of lives, and the years of devotion that a successful counter-insurgency strategy of the sort advocated by Sens. McCain and Lieberman would require but that’s the only way we can leave Afghanistan without taking very serious risks. And the only other approach available that I can envision leaves us with forces stuck in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, possibly forever.

Joe Lieberman is going to keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee after all but, in a stunning rebuke over years of constant disloyalty to the Democratic Party, he’s being stripped of his Environment and Public Works subcommittee.

Ouch.  That’s gotta sting.

Glenn Greenwald, reacting to reports that Barack Obama has told Harry Reid that Joe Lieberman should not be stripped of his committee chairmanship and thus making it very difficult for him to do so, has written a long and passionate plea for a return to vigorous separation of powers with strong institutional jealousies.

[W]hatever the outcome here is, it’s vital that it be the Senate’s decision, not Barack Obama’s.  How the Senate organizes itself and which members chair its Committees is about as purely within the legislative domain as it gets.  It makes sense that Senate Democrats want to cooperate with Obama and that they have good feelings towards him in light of his election victory.  Still, if the Senate has any sense of its own institutional integrity and any intention to defend its constitutionally assigned prerogatives, the last thing Senators would be doing is allowing Obama to interfere with, let alone dictate to them, how they proceed in deciding what to do about Lieberman.  If they don’t jealously safeguard that arena from executive intrusion, what do they safeguard?

[...]

That is what “separation of powers” means, and it’s at least as vital — probably more so — for it to be honored when the same party controls the White House and both houses of Congress.  What fueled the abuses of the last eight years as much as anything else was the ongoing (and severely accelerated) abdication of power by Congress to a bordering-on-omnipotent presidency.  It’s critically important that an Obama administration reverse the substantive transgressions of the Bush era — closing Guantanamo, ending torture and rendition, restoring habeas corpus, rejuvenating surveillance oversight, withdrawing from Iraq, applying the rule of law to political leaders past and present — but it’s at least as important that this be accomplished in the right way, that our constitutional framework be restored.  That means restricting the President’s role to what the Constitution prescribes and having Congress fulfill its assigned duties and perform its core functions.

This is anything but an abstract concern.  Central to the design of the republic is the power of the citizenry to remove all members of the House and 1/3 of the Senate every two years.  That’s the central mechanism by which the people, through their representatives in Congress, keep the Government responsive.  But none of that matters — it’s all just illusory — if Congress has no real power and exists as little more than a passive and obedient vassal of the President.  We shouldn’t want that arrangement even if, at a given moment, we are lucky enough to have a magnanimous President who makes good decisions and wants to do good things with his centralized, unchecked and imbalanced power.

Greenwald makes clear that he’s not blaming Obama for the advent of the imperial presidency, merely calling on the Congress to push back.

While I think he overstates things a bit, he’s right on the principles here. Indeed, I’ve made similar calls over the years, including calling on a Republican Congress to carry out its oversight duties much more vigorously against a Republican president.

As a practical matter, political parties create a cross-branch bridge that simultaneously makes it easier to govern and yet weakens the individual character of the institutions.   Reid’s free to do whatever he wants within the limits of his considerable power, as will be Obama.  Yet, while Reid theoretically answers only to his delegation in the Senate and the people of Nevada, Obama is the effective head of his party.

Since at least Franklin Roosevelt, presidents have taken on many roles clearly delegated to the Congress in the Constitution.  They submit budgets, propose legislation, and otherwise have significant a priori sway over the workings of Congress rather than serving in the reactive role — sign or veto — envisioned by the Framers.

More significantly still, the expansion of government is not so much a function of the passage of more laws but rather the creation of permanent regulatory bureaucracies.  These institutions carry out virtually all of the Enumerated Powers:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;

All but a handful of these things are run by federal agencies and bureaus through the quasi-legislative processes of rule making and regulation rather than by Acts of Congress. The president and his designated representatives run these bureaucracies on a day-to-day basis with Congress acting only in reactive mode — if at all — through the oversight process.  In other words, we’ve stood the Constitution on its head.

While I agree with Glenn that Paul Begala’s statement “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool” is antithetical to the way our government is supposed to operate, it’s actually a pretty apt description of how it has come to operate.

Furthermore, while Congress can and should do more to reclaim its prerogatives, the only practical way for them to shift the balance of power very far back in their direction — there’s simply no question but that the Framers intended the legislature to be the dominant branch, schoolboy lessons about co-equality notwithstanding — is to radically decrease the number of federal bureaucratic agencies and the scope of their power. We’ve seen very little of that with any Republican president going back at least to Richard Nixon — and the GOP is supposed to be the small government party. I have zero hope that we’ll see it happen under a Democratic president with commanding Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.

Harry Reid, not unreasonably, is strongly considering stripping Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship after he campaigned vigorously for the Republican nominee for president.

Reid, in a sternly worded statement after the 45-minute meeting, said no official decisions have been made. But an aide to the Nevada Democrat said Reid was leaning toward removing Lieberman as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential. “While I understand that Sen. Lieberman has voted with Democrats a majority of the time, his comments and actions have raised serious concerns among many in our caucus,” Reid said.

[...]

“I want to spend some time in the next few days thinking about what Sen. Reid and I discussed what my options are at this point,” Lieberman said. “He promised me that he would do the same and we would continue these conversations.”

Republicans have said they would welcome Lieberman to their caucus.

Democrats in the past had tolerated Lieberman’s political straddling because he held their slim 51-49 majority in his hands. Now that Democrats have strengthened their hold in the Senate to at least 55 seats as a result of Tuesday’s election, Lieberman no longer is vital to their majority control. Despite splitting with most Democrats on the war in Iraq, Lieberman tends to vote with them on domestic issues such as health care, education and the environment.

One suspects that, in the incredibly unlikely event the Minnesota recount, Georgia run-off, and Alaska inquiry all go the Democrats’ way, Reid will see fit to keep Lieberman around and, otherwise, won’t.

The irony is that the Iraq War, the issue which most divides Lieberman from the Democrats, is going to wind down.  It would have even under a President McCain but it’ll happen slightly faster under President Obama and a solid Democratic majority in both Houses.

Lieberman is simply in the uncomfortable spot of being a bad fit for either party.  He’s a liberal on social issues but a hawk on foreign policy.  He’s every Republicans’ favorite Democrat but, if he switched parties, he’d soon be about as beloved as Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe, widely dismissed as a RINO.

John McCain is getting some guff for his assertion on the Don Imus show that Sarah Palin is “the most qualified of anyone recently who has run for vice president to tell you the truth.”  And, no, not for the syntax but the point itself.

Steve Benen is incredulous:

Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, Al Gore, Lloyd Bentsen, and George H.W. Bush? No, Sarah Palin is “the most qualified.”

Wow.

Actually, though, this is easy.  Aside from Bush, none of them had … wait for it … executive experience.  And even Bush had, in 1980, less of it than Palin.   She was a city mayor for eight years and governor for two years, making her a perfect 10.

As noted here numerous times, Americans seem to count only three offices as meaningful “experience” when voting for president:  State Governor, Vice President, and President.  No one without one of those lines on his resume has been elected president since John Kennedy did it in 1960.  Obviously, that’ll change in less than two weeks, since two U.S. Senators are the only viable candidates (some would argue, only one is).   So, while I don’t personally buy it, one could argue that Palin is indeed “the most qualified.”

The foregoing, of couse, is an odd argument to make if you’ve been in the Senate since the Reagan administration.

I caught a bit of the Republican Convention last evening, including the Ronald Reagan tribute and as much of the Fred Thompson speech as I could take before shutting it off. I TiVo’d Joe Lieberman but it’s iffy as to whether I’ll get to it.

Matt Yglesias points to a sound byte that I first heard on NPR this morning: President Bush’s line from his video address from the White House: “If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will.”

Says Matt,

The analogy between American liberals and Vietnamese Communists is extremely offensive. As is the analogy between criticizing McCain’s policy ideas and subjecting him to physical torture and imprisonment.

I’m presuming Matt’s outrage here is faux, given that this is rather standard convention red meat.  Bush is saying nothing more offensive than “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

It is, however, a rather odd line.  Aside from reminding Americans — in case they’d somehow forgotten — that McCain had been tortured as a prisoner of war, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to accomplish. 

Is the base supposed to be fired up because people on the other side are 1) angry and 2) saying unkind things about McCain?  

Are undecided moderates supposed to say to themselves, “You know, he’s right: Those lefties sure seem to be angry all the time.  I’m going to vote for McCain!  At least he’s always got a smile on his face!  Oh, wait….”

Most of the time, it seems like speeches at party conventions are aimed only at people in the room.

BREAKING: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been tabbed as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, CNBC reports.

________________________

Earlier this morning, all signs were pointing to Tim Pawlenty as John McCain’s running mate.  He even had issued the requisite “I’m not the guy” statement.

His name has been on the short list all along and, while he’s not an exciting choice, he doesn’t bring the liability of the other names that we’ve been hearing.

Mitt Romney is the obvious choice.  Despite Mike Huckabee ultimately getting a few more votes by hanging in long after it was over, Romney was easily the second choice of Republican primary voters.   He’s attractive, relatively young, and has a strong resume.   But he and McCain seem to genuinely dislike each other and there are plenty of negative sound bytes from the primaries for the Democrats to use in their ads.  And then there’s the “he owns more than one house” problem.  And the Mormon problem.

Huckabee would be the best choice if the election were going to be decided by Evangelicals.  It won’t be, however.

Joe Lieberman would be the guy if it McCain had his druthers.  The two are good friends and would work well together.  It would also be the boldest serious choice available and a strong play in the contest to attract moderates and even conservative Democrats.   But it’s too risky.  McCain has enough trouble with the base that he’s not going to be able to pull the trigger on a pro-choice fellow who, despite being hated by the Democrats, votes with his former party 80 percent of the time.

Condi Rice, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and other longshot choices would liven up the race.  They’d also undercut key parts of McCain’s message.  Neither Palin nor Jindal are more experienced than Obama and it’s hard to run as a maverick who’s not a third Bush term running with  Bush’s chief foreign policy advisor.

UPDATE:  ABC reports that Palin in still in Alaska, seeming to rule her out logistically.  They also report that Pawlenty has received a call saying he’s not the guy.  Which means, as it did with Biden, he’s either 1) actually not the guy or 2) telling a little white lie to keep the suspense going a little longer.

UPDATE II:   Now AP says, “Two GOP strategists close to the McCain campaign said all indications pointed to Palin.”  Drudge has had a McCain-Palin logo atop his site most of the morning, despite no links to stories (until this one) indicating Palin was a likely choice.

Aside from being young and hot-for-a-politician, though, Palin undercuts McCain’s entire campaign theme. She’s got less political experience and less foreign policy experience than Obama.

UPDATE:  More from CNBC, which seems to be the first to go on the record with Palin as the choice.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a self-styled “hockey mom” who has only been governor for a little over a year, is GOP Presidential candidate John McCain’s choice for Vice President, CNBC has learned. According to a Republican strategist, Palin is the nominee, though McCain’s campaign has not comfirmed this. [But have they confirmed it? -ed.]

[...]

At 44, Palin is younger than Obama and, like McCain, she calls herself a maverick.

I’d never heard of Palin before the VP buzz started on the blogs a while back. She’s supposedly an excellent campaigner. And, obviously, her youth and gender make her a bold pick. Ultimately, though, I think she doesn’t make sense. If you’re running on “the country’s security is too important to be run by neophytes,” you can’t have one as next in line.

While Joe Biden was, twice, an awful presidential candidate, he’s a plausible president. Sarah Palin is not.

I hope CNBC is wrong.

UPDATE:  AP is running with the story, too.

UPDATE:  They’ve gone from qualifiers to a bold statement that Palin’s the one:

UPDATE: CNN’s on board, too:

Palin, 44, who’s in her first term as governor, is a pioneering figure in Alaska, the first woman and the youngest person to hold the state’s top political job.

She catapulted to the post with a strong reputation as a political outsider, forged during her stint in local politics. She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasilla and was chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska’s oil and gas resources, in 2003 and 2004.

The conservative Palin defeated two so-called political insiders to win the governor’s job — incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and former two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in the 2006 general election.

Palin made her name in part by backing tough ethical standards for politicians. During the first legislative session after her election, her administration passed a state ethics law overhaul.

Palin’s term has not been without controversy. A legislative investigation is looking into allegations that Palin fired Alaska’s public safety commissioner because he refused to fire the governor’s former brother-in-law, a state trooper.  Palin acknowledged that a member of her staff made a call to a trooper in which the staffer suggested he was speaking for the governor. Palin has admitted that the call could be interpreted as pressure to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who was locked in a child-custody battle with Palin’s sister. “I am truly disappointed and disturbed to learn that a member of this administration contacted the Department of Public Safety regarding Trooper Wooten,” Palin said. “At no time did I authorize any member of my staff to do so.”

She’s going to make us pine for the days of Dan Quayle, methinks.

TIME, at least, is happy with the boldness of the pick, going with the headline: “McCain’s Surprise Pick: Sarah Palin.”  The text, thus far, is just AP wire copy.

WSJ is hailing the pick.

The move is the most dramatic in a series of efforts to appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters still disappointed that she didn’t capture the Democratic nomination. Gov. Palin also reinforces Sen. McCain’s reformer image. She took on her state’s political establishment that had been rocked by an FBI corruption investigation.

[...]

At the same time, her thin resume runs the risk of undercutting a central attack by Sen. McCain against Sen. Obama: That he isn’t ready to serve as president. The ability of Sen. McCain’s vice president to step into the top job is seen as particularly important given his age: He turns 72 today and would be the oldest person ever to enter the White House.

Even as Alaska governor, Gov. Palin has been criticized for her sparse experience. “Sarah is a small town mayor running Alaska as if it’s a small town,” says Frank Smith, a former union and Democratic Party activist in Alaska. “McCain is out of his mind. He has no foreign policy experience and she’ll help because she’s been fishing in Canada.”

[...]

The Republican Party’s conservative base — long wary of Sen. McCain and angry in recent weeks about hints he may pick a pro-choice running mate — hailed the move.

“Conservatives will be thrilled with this pick. Gov. Palin is a down the line mainstream conservative who will energize the base and reach across party lines attracting women voters, independents and blue collar Democrats,” Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist, and former aide to Republican presidential candidates Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan, said in a blast email. “Governor Palin is a terrific contrast to the all Washington ticket of Obama-Biden. She is a wonderful contrast to Biden, and a truly outside the beltway pick.”

We’ll see what the reaction turns out to be.  I’m certainly not the target audience.  But McCain’s first big decision is, in my mind, a truly awful one.   Obama went traditional but steady in Biden.  It wasn’t a bold pick but it was one that butressed his claim that he has judgment even though he lacks experience.   McCain has done the opposite here.

Update:  I’ll have more on Palin in subsequent threads as I get to know her a bit better and have time to digest it.  Since my take has been so negative, though, I thought I’d add some praise from an unlikely source, Charles Homans, a new editor at Washington Monthly who “lived in and reported on Alaska for the entirety of Sarah Palin’s tenure as governor.”

Palin can legitimately claim the maverick reformist credentials that McCain himself has long since lost. Her pro-life record helps McCain with the Republican base, her gender might lure away a few Hillary bitter-enders, and her youth goes a little way towards compensating one of McCain’s major weaknesses. Palin also manages the Obama-esque feat of commanding a great deal of popularity among people who don’t really know what she stands for–Dave Dittman, an Anchorage-based pollster, who has done a lot of polling and thinking about this, pointed out to me several months ago that Palin was maintaining a 85 percent approval rating among Alaskan voters even when her policies (particularly a natural gas line deal that has been a signature ambition of her administration) polled far short of that, and even when voters had trouble accurately describing her political leanings. She also pretty much guarantees a McCain victory in her home state, where Obama has been polling astoundingly well (Alaska hasn’t gone for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson).

It’s not much, to be sure, but useful in an admission against interests sort of way.  That Mark Levin and the like are stoked is, by contrast, decidedly less comforting.

All indications are that Barack Obama has made his choice for running mate and will announce it today. Through some combination of clever public manipulation to throw people off the scent and wishful thinking on the part of those with a stake in the outcome, the guesses as to who it’ll be are all over the map.

Obama’s stated criteria:

“I want somebody who’s independent, somebody who can push against my preconceived notions and challenge me so we have got a robust debate in the White House.”

This prompted one wag to guess that Dick Cheney has been tabbed.

John Amato thinks Obama’s slide in the polls will cause him to rethink things and land on the obvious choice, Hillary Clinton.   Mark Halperin examines the Hillary speculation and finds the evidence that she’s being seriously considered rather thin.

For his part, David Brooks hopes it’s Joe Biden because he’s a serious, decent guy who’d give Obama what he needs:  working-class roots, honest, loyalty, and experience.

Matt Yglesias guesses it’s Kathleen Sebelius.

Meanwhile, “several advisers close to his campaign” are telling Elisabeth Bumiler that John McCain has ended his flirtation with the likes of Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman and will almost certainly go with an abortion opponent, probably either Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty. These same sources, though, say “it was not beyond the realm of possibility” that McCain will go with “a wild-card choice,” General David Petraueus.  Then again, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that aliens from another galaxy will land on the White House lawn this morning.

Mark Halperin has “two sources” saying it’s “apparently” Romney but that “no offer has been made.”  If so, Sean at FiveThirtyEight says that it would be a choice of “Demographics Over Narrative,” going with a guy who could help in Colorado and Michigan while hurting the ticket on the “regular guy” front since Romney owns a lot of homes, too.  John Cole thinks the Romney choice would explain “why they are now completely freaking out over the first real punch Obama has thrown at them [i.e. the attack on McCain's "seven houses" -ed. ] despite their having been running attack ads for months.”

The guys at Electoral-vote.com weigh in on the concept of “fusion tickets” — picking a running mate of the other party, as would be the case if Obama picked Chuck Hegel or McCain picked Lieberman — noting that they’ve been losers historically.

UPDATE: Politico’s Mike Allen reports, in a piece titled “Hillary gets stiffed,” that Clinton wasn’t even considered.

“She was never vetted,” a Democratic official reported. “She was not asked for a single piece of paper. She and Senator Obama have never had a single conversation about it. How would he know if she’d take it?”

The official also said Clinton never met with Obama’s vetting team of Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy. And the official said she was never asked for medical records or for any financial 2008 information about her or former President Bill Clinton. The last information the couple has disclosed about taxes and financial holdings was for 2007.  The Clintons also were not asked about donors to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.   “This would be the biggest leap of faith ever,” the official said. “She’s waiting for the text message like everyone else.”

An Obama aide said “absolutely exhaustive research was done on her over the course of the 16 month primary. She was researched more closely than any candidate in history.”

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that there are embarrassing secret revelations of the Clintons that we’re not already privy to.  Certainly, none would be more embarrassing than the ones we already know.

Meanwhile, Obama is apparently calling all those people who he vetted and didn’t select.  So far, Congressman Chet Edwards, of whom I’d never previously heard, has not received a call.  In the spirit of full disclosure, neither have I.

John McCain is taking advantage of Barack Obama’s “foreign vacation” in Hawaii and using the crisis in Georgia to showcase his foreign policy prowess.

He’s dispatched his minions, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, to Georgia.  TPM’s Greg Sargent figures,

The idea is to showcase himself as a man of action during a time of international crisis and to remind people that the world is a dangerous place that’s still filled with aggressive actors, something that the McCain camp presumably thinks will play in his favor.

McCain’s announcement of his key campaign allies’ trip abroad also seems designed to shoulder Bush aside as the primary GOP leadership figure here.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin agress and observes, “McCain’s declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he’s sending his own emissaries into the war zone.” Over at News Hounds, Melanie finds that FOX News — or at least Neil Cavato — is treating McCain like he’s already president.  Why, they’re even covering McCain’s foreign policy speeches!

Andrew Sullivan thinks we’re getting a preview of what a President McCain would look like and he’s less than impressed:

He’s giving press conferences. He’s warning of a new Tsarist empire. You can tell what sends him into high-energy zones: a clear enemy abroad. He knows black and white; and he knows war. It gives him clarity and strength. Up next: Iran and China. Oh, the conflicts we can have …

Various comment sections have the inevitable jokes about McCain being “presumptuous” and “uppity” for acting like he’s already president, an allusion to recent controveries over Barack Obama’s overseas adventures and various campaign logos.

Even AllahPundit thinks this is a bad idea.

Do Committee members really need to conduct their own fact-finding missions in the middle of a hot war? State and Defense briefings could probably get them up to speed. And what would the reaction have been if The One had made this move first with Bayh and Webb in the surrogate roles? Would have seemed to me like a transparent attempt to squeeze a photo op from a crisis that the administration’s already straining to manage without needing any extra distractions.

Foreign policy isn’t golf.  One doesn’t get to shush the galleries.  Presidents have to juggle multiple international crises, make domestic policy decisions, and deal with political campaigns all at the same time.

I say:  More of this, please.  After months of campaigning about nothing, we’re seeing how the two men who could plausibly get elected president less than three months from now are reacting to a big time foreign policy situation.  While I’m frankly not sure what Lieberman and Graham could possibly accomplish by going to Georgia, at least we see that McCain gets how important this is.

Interestingly, as Dave Schuler and I discussed on last night’s installment of OTB Radio, there’s very little light between McCaina and Obama on this issue, at least on substance.  Obama is more low key and McCain is more emphatic about Russia’s outrageous conduct but they’re landing in pretty much the same place: work with our NATO Allies, use the G8 and WTO for leverage, and otherwise engage in diplomacy; military force is decidedly not an option.

McCain’s more visible on the issue, to be sure, which points to both his being behind in the race and thinking foreign affairs is his long suit.   Aside from Obama surrogate Bill Richardson’s bizarre suggestion of having the UN Security Council — where Russia has a veto! — solve this and McCain’s rather humorous suggestion that “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations,” both teams are playing this rather well.

Photo: Shakesville

The gang behind Newsweek’s Ruckus blog is asking its contributors to answer the following question: “What would be the boldest vice presidential choice John McCain and Barack Obama could make?”

If we leave aside the silly and absurd, for McCain, the answer seems obvious:  Joe Lieberman.

This would double down on his foreign policy experience as well as reinforcing his cultivated image as a maverick who’s not bound by party lines.  It would reach out to moderates, strengthen his appeal to Jewish voters, and conceivably pull in some Hillary Clinton dead-enders and DLC Democrats.   It would also risk further alienating conservatives, which probably means he won’t do it.

For Obama, I’ll go in a similar direction:  Chuck Hagel or Colin Powell.

Picking a moderate Republican with serious foreign policy credentials would seriously undercut McCain’s chief argument, that Obama is too unseasoned to be commander-in-chief.  Powell would be especially intriguing in that you’d have two African Americans, neither of whom have familial ties to the traditional civil rights/legacy of slavery heritage of the community.  That might be more risk than Obama can bear, however, and I rather doubt Powell would take the offer.  Hagel, though, just might.

Update (Dave Schuler)

Right picks, wrong tickets.

First off, Sen. Obama doesn’t need to make a “bold choice” and IMO would be imprudent if he did. His candidacy is already a bold choice. What he needs to do is make a choice that’s viewed as safe by moderates and independents. Who better for that than Joe Lieberman? Yes, it would aggravate the progressive wing of his own party And that would be bad how?

Sen. McCain could do a lot worse than talking Colin Powell into being his running mate. Downside: he’s too old. That overrules him as a running mate for Sen. Obama, too. I think McCain really needs to pick a woman as a running mate.

Photo credit: AP Photo/CBS Face the Nation, Karin Cooper

In the long months between now and the conventions, one recurring theme we’ll see in the press and the punditocracy is speculation of who Barack Obama and John McCain will chose as running mates. None of us have any idea, of course, other than that Dick Cheney is not on anybody’s list. But it’s still fun to speculate.

For Obama, the most prominent names I’ve seen, aside from Hillary Clinton of course, are former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (Motto: He did so well in 2004), Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius (a white woman who’s much less annoying than Hillary), former NATO commander and Marine Commandant Jim Jones (my boss’ boss at the Atlantic Council), former NATO commander and 2004 also-ran Wesley Clark and, now, former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn. Former Reagan SECNAV and current Virginia Senator Jim Webb, widely touted by myself and others, seems to have fallen out of favor. Also, since Jim Johnson has been ousted, we’re pretty sure that Obama won’t pull a Dick Cheney and pick his selection committee chairman.

Clinton, Edwards, and Sebelius would be traditional choices made for standard political reasons. Jones, Clark, or Nunn would be an admission that national security is a huge issue and that Obama needs help there. Frankly, unless he puts Jeremiah Wright on the ticket, I’m not sure it much matters.

The conventional wisdom is probably right that McCain’s VP choice matters more than Obama’s simply because of McCain’s age. At 72, it’s hard to see him running for a second term and, let’s face it, he’s more likely than his 45-year-old opponent to die in office.

Speculation centers on former 2008 challengers Mitt Romney (less conservative than McCain but more favored among conservatives), Mike Huckabee (reducing the Republican Party to its essential element), Louisiana governor and boy wonder Bobby Jindal (half McCain’s age and “of color”), Florida Governor Charlie Crist (who’s from Florida), Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (who’s a woman), and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (who’s not only a woman but good looking by VP candidate standards). Nobody’s much talking about Condi Rice anymore, given that distancing himself from President Bush is a key McCain priority. Former Democrat Joe Lieberman is a Hail Mary dark horse, creating a possible RINO-DINO* ticket.

Frankly, I’m not particularly enthusiastic with any of the above options. Palin and Jindal are interesting choices but make no sense for a candidate betting the ranch on national security expertise. Huckabee is simply a non-starter, since he alienates pretty much everyone who isn’t a die hard Evangelical. Hutchinson and Crist are safe but boring. Lieberman is the boldest choice, simultaneously doubling down on the Iraq bet and appealing to moderates, but he also energizes a large part of the Democratic base and irritates McCain’s conservative critics on domestic issues.

Is there someone out there that can simultaneously 1) help McCain carry a swing state, 2) bolster his conservative credentials, 3) complement the “Ready on Day One” message?

Image via HuffPo

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*Technically, Lieberman’s no longer a Democrat in name but there’s no cute acronym for “Caucusing With the Democrats But Poking them in the Eye with a Sharp Stick Whenever Possible” — much less one which rhymes with RINO.

The Hill has a breaking news story headlined “Lieberman willing to star at Republican convention.”

Gee, ya think?

via Memeorandum