The Return of the Mayberry Machiavellis

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THE RETURN OF THE MAYBERRY MACHIAVELLIS….Marc Ambinder reports this morning about the vetting — or, rather, lack of vetting — that John McCain and his team carried out on Sarah Palin before announcing her to the world on Friday. Despite the fact that legions of bloggers figured this stuff out within 48 hours, apparently they didn’t know that Palin had actually supported, not opposed, the Bridge to Nowhere; that the true scope of the “Troopergate” scandal she’s enmeshed in is a wee bit larger than she fessed up to; that she raised taxes and public debt substantially as mayor of Wasilla; that she supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies as governor of Alaska; and that she’s skeptical about human contributions to global warming. McCain’s team talked to very few people in Alaska who knew Palin, didn’t do much (any?) archival research on her, and McCain himself had barely even met her before he offered her the job.

So why did she get the nod? Hard to say. George Bush met with Vladimir Putin for a couple of hours back in 2001 and immediately announced that “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” McCain, likewise, after campaigning with Sarah Palin for a few hours on Saturday, went on TV the next day to announce, “She’s a partner and a soulmate.”

So sure: this is vintage McCain at work. His choice of Palin was naive, cynical, reckless, and impulsive. But what about his staff? Why did they go along?

Well, in case you’ve ever wondered what John DiIulio meant when he described the Bush White House as “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis,” I think this is it. DiIulio was talking about an executive staff that cared almost nothing for substantive policy, and was instead obsessed with junior high school levels of political cleverness. How will this play with the base? How will it put Democrats into a corner? How can we twist the real intent of legislation so that nobody knows what’s really going on? What are the political angles? What congressional districts will this put in play?

I’d guess that the same thing is going on here. You can almost hear the McCain staff cackling in the background, can’t you? Palin will draw off disaffected Hillary supporters! Her Down syndrome baby will totally sucker the base into falling in love with McCain! Joe Biden is going to have to walk on eggshells to avoid looking like a bully during the vice presidential debate! If anyone even remotely close to the Obama campaign says anything we can even remotely pretend is sexist, we’ll trumpet it to the skies and the press will eat it up! Sure, maybe Palin isn’t prepared for the actual job itself, but just look at the box it puts Democrats in! Politically it’s genius!

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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