The Ambinder amendment (Updated)

Over at The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder is using Governor Palin's oped in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal (see TR's post below) to make the case for an Ambinder amendment to the constitution:

Anyone with policy credential problems (as defined by Marc Ambinder) should not be treated as a legitimate and influential voice in public debate.

Ambinder magnanimously concedes that Gov. Palin does have "every right to submit an opinion piece on health care to the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, and they've got every right to print it." The media, however, don't have the right to take her seriously. Why not? Because Ambinder says so, that's why not:

[I]f the media treats her as as a legitimate and influential voice today, she won't need to do the hard work that will result in her learning more about policy and actually becoming conversant in the issues that she, as a potential presidential candidate, will deal with.

One day, perhaps, in the distant future, Ambinder might change his mind. Provided she has "done the hard work" of course. But for now, no full first amendment rights for the Governor.

Question to Ambinder: who the hell died and made you Obama's new public debate czar? Last time I checked the First Amendment, it didn't mention anything about it being limited by a Government power to decide who should or shouldn't be taken seriously - let alone about a blogger at Atlantic.com to be invested with the power to decide what the press should or shouldn't be writing about.

I'll leave aside for now the condescending rubbish about Gov. Palin not deserving to be taken seriously because she hasn't done enough thinking or studying. Surely it can't have escaped his notice that as governor, Palin would have dealt with healthcare issues on a regular basis? Or that since stepping down as governor, she has been writing about the healthcare bill virtually non-stop for the past month and a half? How much longer does she have to go on writing about it before she finally gains the right to be taken seriously under the Ambinder amendment? A month? A year? Ten years?

If all her efforts up to now escaped Ambinder's notice, they surely didn't escape everybody else's. In fact, according to Google officials, Gov. Palin's discussion of "death panels" in her first Facebook post caused a huge surge of interest in H.R. 3200:

A peak in public interest occurred in mid-August, after Palin first warned of "Obama death panels." The phrases "Section 1233" and "H.R. 3200," which were part of the "death panels'' discussion, were surging to high spots on the hot trends list--competing with searches for the latest racy photos of actresses Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Greene.

Healthcare policy: better than sex? Apparently it was once Gov. Palin started getting involved in the debate. Maybe Ambinder regrets this sudden surge in public interest in one of the costliest and most far-reaching pieces of legislation ever proposed? Would he rather the bill was rushed through without proper public debate (or even legislative scrutiny)? Or does he perhaps also believe that the great American public are somehow not qualified to discuss such "complicated" issues? Shall we just leave it to 'experts' like Ezekiel Emanuel from now on to decide what's best for us? Or even better: to the all-knowing Ambinder himself?

One more thing before I chuck his sorry behind into my spam filter: cut the cr*p about Palin's use of speechwriters somehow being evidence that the ideas in her pieces aren't truly hers. As a former speechwriter (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) I think I'm reasonably qualified to tell him that this is total baloney. Any speechwriter worth his salt will have read every scrap of paper ever produced by his boss, as well as every biographical sketch ever written about him/her. That way, he is able to write with confidence from the politician's perspective, using their ideas and - where possible - even their language. Any speechwriter that doesn't do this, will be an ex-speechwriter before he knows it.

If Ambinder wants to suggest that in Gov. Palin's case the speechwriters are secretly telling her what to think and say, it'd be great if he could produce some actual evidence to back up his claim. There is no such evidence of course. Ambinder is merely recycling an Obama campaign talking point introduced on the night of her RNC speech on the 3rd of September of last year:

“The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years,” the campaign said in a statement.

Within minutes of her finishing her speech, Democratic talking heads on all the major channels were making the exact same point. Like Mort Kondrake at Fox News: "She didn't write it of course." Or Eugene Robinson at MSNBC. While conceding she may have written the biographical part herself, he goes on to suggest the other part was "written by McCain speechwriters". At the time, the remark mainly served to tie Gov. Palin to the Bush White House. At a deeper level, it was also meant as a sexist put-down. The reference to Palin requiring a speechwriter tapped into the preconceived idea about beauty versus brains - that you can have one or the other, but not both. It was the same sentiment that inspired liberal radio host Ed Schultz to issue a "bimbo alert" when discussing the Governor, and that made the LA Times describe Palin as McCain's "political trophy" (as in: 'trophy wife').

As far as I'm concerned, such attacks are an unfortunate but inevitable part of the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign. But Ambinder isn't campaigning for anything (or at least, he shouldn't be). As a professional blogger, he's supposed to combine a sense of decency with a hard-nosed reporter's love for uncovering the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. In this post, he does neither. What his message boils down to is "First, we ask Sarah Palin to leave the room." It's been tried before. It didn't work then, it won't work now.

Update by JL: Reader Greg links to a K-Lo post over at National Review's The Corner called 'The Huffington Post exposes the next big political scandal'. It refers to a HuffPo piece by a conspiracy theorist called Geoffrey Dunn who, much like our friend Marc Ambinder, makes a lot of the fact that Palin may be using one or more speechwriters ('Palin no longer writing her own script').

Memo to Dunn: all national political figures use speechwriters. Why? Because in a single year, they may have up to a hundred speaking engagements of various kinds. The more ambitious among them will also try to write at least one op-ed every other week. And write the odd article for a magazine. Or publish a study for a think tank. Or even a book or two. All that comes on top of the other work they do: legislative work, campaigning, fund raising etc. Does Dunn really believe politicians should always be writing their own speeches, op-eds, articles, books etc? Or does this new rule only apply to one particular politician, namely the one he loves to hate?

Maybe CNN's Anderson Cooper was right after all when, in a discussion about Gov. Palin's RNC speech, he observed:

ANDERSON COOPER: I will also say I didn't hear people talking about who was the speech writer for any of the Democrats' speeches.

GLORIA BORGER: Right.

COOPER: It seem we're only highlighting who the speech writer is for her speech.

No kidding.



(H/t: Mel)

Update by JR: The first liberal hack who actually debates the governor's argument should get a prize. Dunn is simply a hack, writing a book, that nobody outside of the Keith Olbermann demographic will read. So, that makes about five people.