troopergate

The continued salience of the financial market meltdown may mean that the intensity of the media's spotlight will not burn quite as bright, or be as probing, as in previous weeks; nor does the nature of the crime appear sufficiently severe to force John McCain to make a potentially disastrous last-minute change to the Republican presidential ticket. However, there is no doubt that the findings yesterday of the Alaskan legislature into the 'Troopergate' affair hold pronounced political repercussions that will stretch far beyond the boundaries of the Land of the Midnight Sun - and which may ultimately serve as the final death-knell of a presidential campaign that in recent days has looked increasingly frustrated and bereft of ideas.

The damage the Troopergate report has already done to the Republican presidential bid and will prove to do in the days to come is multi-faceted: first, since her unveiling as the Republican vice presidential nominee, one of the central strategies of the McCain camp in assuaging concerns over Palin's obvious inexperience has been to portray her as a Washington outsider who would repeat the same sweeping, take-no-prisoners style of executive reform she achieved during her time as mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska.

That the Republicans have struggled to elaborate how Palin would "bring change to Washington" has proven largely inconsequential: as the success of Barack Obama's campaign illustrated so vividly in the primaries, such a message holds strong resonance with an electorate that has bestowed upon the current Congress the worst right track/wrong track poll ratings in American history. However, now tainted with the charge of impropriety, the McCain-Palin ticket has had the credibility of this proposition seriously undermined, and now faces an uphill struggle in selling the Alaskan native as the implacable and unyielding purifying force that the American bureaucracy badly needs to purge it of its excesses.

Moreover, while the campaign has been eager to highlight some of Palin's accomplishments in executive office (reigning in budgetary deficits, energy legislation) and exaggerate others (foreign policy experience), the most thorough investigation into the inner-workings of a Palin administration has produced a portrait of an executive characterized by Time's Michael Scherer as "shockingly amateurish" in its conduct throughout the affair. It raises serious questions about the Alaskan's ability to effectively manage her own executive, let alone the highest in the land.

A 263-page report released yesterday by the Alaskan legislature has concluded that Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin personally exerted pressure in her capacity as Governor of Alaska to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, while at the same time allowing both her husband and aides to press for his firing, based on his attitude and previous disciplinary problems.

Concluding that Palin's lobbying was a clear violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, the committee's report stated that "such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of that displeasure."

While the Legislature may choose to subsequently censure Palin for her behaviour, or impose a fine of up to $5,000, the political fallout from the report's findings could prove far more damaging - particularly given the amount of political capital spent by the Republican party in a failed attempt to delay the report's release until after the general election.