Andrew's Balloon Boy, Trig

Andrew Sullivan has never admitted that he erred in lending early credibility to the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign: The fabricated story that Gov. Palin and her minor daughter, Bristol, and countless others in Alaska government and private life, had entered into a massive conspiracy to trick the public into thinking that she rather than Bristol was Trig Palin's mother.

Even six-year-old Piper Palin would have had to have been in on the coverup, subject to such ruthless family discipline that Sarah could let her go on national TV without risking that she'd tell what she knew about Trig's real mommy and when she knew it.

Here's how the balloon boy, same age as Trig, went on TV and blew the buttons off a real hoax:

[The Fort Collins, Colorado sheriff] said the "a-ha moment" came when the 6-year-old boy, Falcon Heene, said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he thought "we did this for a show."

Trig Palin 1, Andrew Sullivan 0

Andrew Sullivan’s modified limited hang-out on the Palin pass-the-baby story. Having let his adjutant rebut him last week on his own site, “The Daily Dish,” he has announced a suspension of the distasteful campaign he has been waging to get Gov. Palin to prove she is Trig’s mother.

It’s a relief he won’t be harrassing Trig anymore. It’s a shame he wasn’t accountable for having republished a lie on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site without checking the facts. No other “Atlantic” journalist would have, and he shouldn’t have, either. Ever since, Sullivan says he’s just been trying to get the truth. It’s actually looked as though he’s been trying to get Palin or Sen. McCain to provide records or some other official response so that he would be able to say he had posed a legitimate question. In this effort, he has failed.

Whenever he insists, as he does yet again in his last (we hope) post, that by republishing a lie and then defending his behavior for months, he was just asking questions or expressing opinions, he underscores how desperately we need newspapers, or at least professionally-trained newspaper reporters. The Hackosphere — though not Sullivan; this was a bizarre aberration — is still too prone to sophomoric and poorly-formed content, and blatant lies carefully disguised as fact (what first fooled Sullivan). Bloggers also go to bed too early. Last week no “Atlantic” blogger had anything on the failure of the auto bailout until the next morning.

The Trig story was the most effective libel of the ‘08 campaign, and Sullivan will always be complicit in it. He gets some credit for letting a contrarian colleague say his piece and using it as a means of making a passably graceful exit from a disgraceful episode in the history of the so-called new media.

Forget Trig; Pass The Locusts And Honey

A promising if inconclusive post by Andrew Sullivan about Sarah Palin's memoir. While he has done yeoman service holding her accountable on other matters, what has burned at the heart of his anti-Palin prophecy (for surely he has adopted a John the Baptist-like posture towards her; make as torturous as possible her path to political success) is his own unacknowledged original sin of republishing a fabricated story about Trig Palin's birth without checking the facts.

I have it on good authority that until very recently Sullivan had really hoped to find definitive evidence of the impossible-to-believe "Desperate Housewives" pass-the-baby fiction. It would've vindicated him, destroyed Palin politically, and perhaps even put a stake through the angry and possibly dangerous movement of which she is the de facto leader. Richard Nixon's scandal, after all, helped discredit pragmatic Republicanism for a third of a century and counting.

In today's post, though, he appears to be saying that he's found no smoking gun or 8.5-pound gap. First:

I tried to write a fair account of Palin's various stories of her incredible fifth pregnancy, labor and delivery and to reconcile all the various facts we know and the various versions of the story she has told. Just for the record and because we have aired the public record on this before. I honestly however cannot make total sense of them in a way that I'm completely convinced by and so simply do not feel comfortable making any judgment on them in any way at this point. That's fair to her, my readers, my colleagues, and the innocent private people caught up in this circus.

That's progress. There were times he put "pregnancy" in quotes when talking about Trig. And then:

[F]or those things we cannot prove objectively, we just have to leave alone at this point. I believe nothing she says is true unless I can verify it. But if I can't disprove her accounts of things only she and her family can know about, I should shut up.

He should also apologize to the Palins. It was wrong of him to lend his considerable prestige to a damaging lie and then try to keep it alive for over year.

He won't, I'm sure. At this point, really shutting up would be a considerable blessing. Sullivan has promised to leave the Trig story alone before. But if he does no more than once and for all back off the ridiculous claim that a woman is not the mother of her beloved child -- if he not only stops hinting at it but stops needing it to be true for his own sake -- he can at least do his down-by-the-Jordan bit with authenticity, saving the republic from Palinism with unmixed motives.

Yglesias To Sullivan (Implicitly): Drop Trig

In August 2008 Andrew Sullivan published a fabricated story about Trig Palin's parentage before checking the facts, doing more than anyone else to make it the most effective libel of the campaign. Now the U.S.'s most respected progressive blogger, Matthew Yglesias, has checked the evidence and written:

Sarah Palin is Trig Palin’s mother and nobody has any business claiming otherwise.

Sullivan personally mainstreamed Trig birtherism, an annoying distraction to the country and injustice to the Palin family. Time for him to examine the evidence himself, end his crusade, and apologize. If he doesn't, then on this issue, he'll be the moral equivalent of Donald Trump, who ignored this evidence while leveraging himself into the 2012 campaign.

A Blogging Fool's Paradise

Earlier in the year, Matthew Yglesias left the Atlantic Monthly blogpen, settling under the wing of the progressive (I always want to write "self-styled" in front of that word; where does it leave the rest of us?) Center for American Progress Action Fund. If you click here, never again will you see such a group of highly qualified and earnest-looking young people.

At about 10:30 last night, a Fund official posted this on Yglesias's blog:

This is Jennifer Palmieri, acting CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

That's because on Dec. 19, Yglesias had written:

[Third Way's] domestic policy agenda is hyper-timid incrementalist [BS].

The brass at Third Way, another think tank, must've asked their friends at CAPAF why they were being trashed on a Center web site. After Palmieri's post, over 500 comments on Yglesias's site ensued, but none as ironic as when Sullivan, back at Yglesias' old hang at the Atlantic, said today that Palmieri's comment is:

What happens when someone mistakes a journalist for a member of some dumb-ass Politburo.

So now the blogger is a journalist again. When Sullivan was defending himself for having republished a lie about Gov. Palin, her minor daughter, and Trig on his own site, he took pains to make distinctions between the rules for journalists and bloggers. For instance, he didn't have to check the Trig Palin story out first, he said. By republishing it before checking the facts and then keeping it alive for months, he was just asking questions (which jounalists do, of course, before they run their stories).

Defending Yglesias against his web site's host's inteference, Sullivan reverts to yet another pillar of the old journalistic paradigm whereby a newpaper publisher was expected to keep his or her hands off the newsroom.

So in Sullivan's blogger's paradise, writers have it both ways. They can publish whatever they want without abiding by old-school notions about accuracy and due diligence. If by their actions they expose their publishers to libel suits (as Sullivan may have by republishing the Trig story at the Atlantic Monthly Group) or interfere with a business or collegial relationship being enjoyed by those paying the bills (as Yglesias evidently did), too bad. We'll have to see how long before paradise is lost in a courtroom.

Single-Source Grist And Mill

Andrew Sullivan, Sarah Palin's most relentless critic, was inveighed upon by friends to watch the superb HBO movie "Game Change," which amply demonstrates, if anyone had any doubt, that she was an abysmal choice as John McCain's running mate. He was especially pleased to find grist for the Trig Palin birther mill. He writes, "[T]he movie shows the press actually asking questions about it -- something that never came through in the mainstream media at the time."

Praised by McCain aide Steve Schmidt for its accuracy, "Game Change" indeed reminds us that the Trig story had a profound impact on the messaging and trajectory of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I'm not sure Sullivan fully grasps is that the main reason reporters pestered her with questions about Trig's birth was that Sullivan himself had republished lies about it on his highly influential blog without checking the facts first, an irresponsible act for which he's yet to apologize.

Sullivan Still Trying To Evade The Trigonometry

Responding to Matt Labash at "The Weekly Standard," Andrew Sullivan denies that "I have 'advance[d] conspiracy theories that [Sarah Palin] is not the biological mother of Trig.' I would ask Labash to explain what conspiracy theory I have advanced."

That's easy: Right here. Does he really think no one remembers? In August 2008 a blog that evidently got the idea from an episode of "Desperate Housewives" claimed that Palin wasn't really the mother of her son Trig. Without checking the facts, Sullivan used his Atlantic Monthly Group-published blog to advance, or, rather, catapult the story into national prominence.

The originating site retracted the story almost immediately, but it was too late. By conferring respectability on the lie, Sullivan single-handedly made it the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. His continuing demand that Palin provide proof that she is the mother of her child is the moral equivalent of the absurd, harassing demands of the Obama birthers. His flagrant journalistic lapse will mar his reputation forever.

Covered "Dish": Andrew and Trig

Last Friday, before taking a post-election break from his blog “The Daily Dish,” Andrew Sullivan unloaded with another ridiculous attack against Gov. Palin, keeping alive the lie that she and her minor daughter Bristol conspired in a massive coverup of her son Trig’s parentage. Today Patrick Appel, subbing for the boss, wrote at the “Dish”:

I strongly believe that there is nothing to this story….

The easiest way to disprove these conspiracy theories is to consider what would be required for them to be true. Palin’s doctor, along with a good number of Mat-Su Regional’s doctors, nurses, and administrators would need to be in on the cover-up. On multiple occasions Palin would have had to pad her belly to make herself look pregnant. She would have needed to get friends to lie about seeing her breast feed. She would have had to silence an entire community – including two 17-year-olds and their friends – while the national media and the National Enquirer snooped around. Implausible to say the least.

I don’t believe Sarah Palin is capable of pulling off such a cover-up. And, like Alex Massie and John Schwenkler, I don’t understand what is being accomplished by continued investigation.

Hallelujah and amen. Good for Sullivan for letting Appel rebut him on his own site. Better if he had just dropped it weeks ago. Best if we never hear about it again — but Andrew will be back by the weekend!

The Palin Birther

Andrew Sullivan wants Oprah to ask Sarah Palin why she refuses to account for her whereabouts on November 22, 1963. Plus whether she and her minor daughter and untold others engaged in a massive coverup of her son Trig's true parentage -- the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign.

Sullivan links to a site that calls him a Palin birther, which you would think he would find embarrassing, but he doesn't. Sure, Palin's behavior in the New York 23rd congressional district race demonstrates that she's becoming toxic when it comes to rebuilding a GOP that can compete at the national level. All hope is gone that she would parlay her political capital into the makings of a mature, party-strengthening 2012 or 2016 candidacy. But rather than implying that other media figures are wrong for failing to indulge the fantasy about Trig, Sullivan should just admit that he erred in giving the false, "Desperate Housewives"-inspired pass-the-baby story a vital boost by repeating it before checking the facts. Nothing Palin could ever do will erase his shame.

Verging Birthers

Trig birtherism gets some rare mainstream attention from "Slate," though the writer, Rachael Larimore, is finally "inclined to believe" that Sarah Palin is the natural mother of her youngest child. Meanwhile the godfather of the TBs, Andrew Sullivan, who published the fabricated story during the 2008 campaign without checking the facts, says Palin's assertion that she's Trig's mother is "literally incredible," which sounds like another way to say she's lying.

Sullivan On Trig: "None Of It Makes Sense"

I sent a post to Andrew Sullivan and heard back from him tonight:

This is wrong.

I have never stated that Trig is anyone's but Sarah Palin's.

What I have done is ask questions that can be factually verified by Palin to confirm it, given the bizarre account of her pregnancy and labor. I asked the campaign privately and publicly, and we still have no evidence except Palin's own conflicting accounts.

Any reasonable person reading what Palin did in those eight months would be befuddled by the illogic or insanity. None of it makes sense, and it is not libel to ask the subject to prove it.

Trump Plays The Birther Card

Donald Trump, on The View today, said that the president's "probably" a U.S. citizen, then added:

There's something on that birth certificate he doesn't like.

Trump's absolutely right. Barack Obama's birth certificate contains irrefutable evidence that he was born in Honolulu. That's why we'll never see it. Refusing to provide additional proof that Trig Palin is Sarah's son (Oops! Wrong conspiracy) he's a citizen is Obama's smartest move, guaranteeing that some likely Republican candidates (such as Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee and now, it appears, Trump) will continue to maneuver for the birther majority among likely GOP voters. Listening to a birther nominee try to defend (or back away from) the broadly unpopular birther position during the first presidential debate in the fall of 2012 would be the Obama campaign's happiest moment.

Nixon political confidante Roger Stone (above right) has been advising Trump for 25 years, so it's safe to assume he's helping with the talking points. Adding a dollop of birther cred to Trump's good-natured, tolerant populism is the kind of move that enabled Stone to outmaneuver Nixon in-law Ed Cox and engineer the GOP nomination of another plain-spoken loose cannon of a tycoon, Carl Paladino, to run for governor of New York in 2008.

Punk Me Twice, Shame On Me

In which Steve Clemons, a big-hearted, level-headed foreign policy realist who was the first executive director of the Nixon Center, cheerfully acknowledges he got punk'd by a transcript of an imaginary conversation between White House chief of staff-designate Rahm Emanuel and his fellow Chicago pol Gov. Blagojevich.

Notwithstanding the f-bombs, it's someone's fantasy script of what they earnestly hope Emanuel would've said if Blagojevich put the squeeze on him. Wishful thinking (and I join in their wish, for the sake of the new administration's coherence) from the same left-wing web site that published the lie, later republished by a credulous Andrew Sullivan, that Gov. Palin and her minor daughter covered up Trig Palin's true parentage. In this new-media age, more than ever before, consider the source.

Palin Had Wanted To Serve The "Dish"

Sarah Palin considered suing the Atlantic Monthly's "Daily Dish" blog because its writer, Andrew Sullivan, republished a false story about her fifth pregnancy before checking the facts. The original story, concocted by a left-wing blog based on an episode of "Desperate Housewives," accused Palin and her minor daughter of a massive coverup of Trig Palin's true parentage. Ultimately the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign, it would barely have been noticed if Sullivan hadn't given it credence by lending it his considerable reputation.

Sullivan is right that a lawsuit probably would've failed, although not for the bogus reason he offers in his post, which is basically that he should be allowed to publish lies in order to get the facts. He's still making the claim that he repeated the story only "to get at the truth of the matter." Of course a journalist does that work before running his story, not after. Still, to win against the Atlantic Monthly and Sullivan, Palin would have had to prove that his running an unverified and ultimately unverifiable story was the result of malice, which is almost impossible for a plaintiff to do.

So her decision not to sue doesn't remove Sullivan's shame. In the months since his original publication, Sullivan has assiduously kept the story alive, evidently hoping for some form of expiation, all the while arguing that bloggers operate according to different rules than reporters (except when they don't, such as when Sullivan defended a fellow blogger and called him a journalist). Whether his theory would have helped his publisher defeat a libel lawsuit will have to be tested another time an influential blogger republishes a flagrant lie without doing his job and damages the reputation of innocent people as a result.

Palin's Going On Hiatus, Too

In her press conference, Gov. Palin said that one reason she announced her resignation was the attacks related to her son Trig. But as of Friday evening, Andrew Sullivan -- who joined in the attacks repeatedly -- hasn't even mentioned it, except in quotes from other bloggers. He may well be gloating, or just relieved. But the shame of Sullivan's original journalistic fault persists.

Whelan Dealin'

Andrew Sullivan apologizes twice -- the second time, abjectly -- to a constitutional scholar and high-powered lawyer, Edward Whelan, over an error in a post on torture. The second apology includes this touchingly empathetic note:

It must be distressing to deal with this while attending a family funeral (something I was unaware of), and I am indeed sorry for causing Mr Whelan any distress at this time.

Sullivan never apologized to Gov. Palin for repeating and amplifying the fabricated story that she and her minor daughter had engaged in a massive fraud to cover up the her infant son Trig's true parentage -- the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. Mr. Whelan (or his lawyer) must've written one heck of a letter.

Sullivan Seeking Redemption

Though he hides it behind a sneer, Andrew Sullivan can't conceal his hope that Gov. Palin resigned because last fall's fictionalized pass-the-baby story, the most effective libel of the '08 campaign, which he shamefully repeated and amplified before checking the facts and personally kept alive for all the months since, is really true. He writes:

Is Trig really Tina Fey's child?

Hoaxis Pocus

Andrew Sullivan is appropriately vigilant in questioning whether an NBC News producer was the victim of a right-wing hoax. We're still waiting for Sullivan to own up about the Trig Palin hoax in which he was complicit and for which he has stubbornly refused to apologize.

In-Trigged

Andrew Sullivan can't quite let go of his fascination with the idea that Gov. Palin and her minor daughter engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up the true parentage of her son Trig -- the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign.

How Palin Becomes The New Nixon

I was sort of hoping someone would notice this, from Nov. 14 on The New Nixon. Even less chance that someone will notice it over here, huh? (Hi again, Valerie!)

A friend asked what I meant suggesting that Gov. Palin could be the new Nixon instead of the new Reagan. Here are the two scenarios:

New Reagan: Several weeks before the election, GOP insider Ed Rollins said, somewhat chillingly, that some didn't think Sen. McCain was the right candidate to rebuild the party, an echo of those who felt the same about President Ford in 1976. During 1977-80, Jimmy Carter made such a muck of the economy and foreign policy that a Republican victory was almost inevitable. Having challenged and weakened Ford in the '76 primaries, Ronald Reagan earned the '80 nomination, which was tantamount to winning the election.

Palin and her advisers can't help but have grasped the possibility that Obama will falter or that the sheer magnitude of our economic and international challenges will overwhelm him. Every leading Republican has as well. The internecine sniping at Palin has nothing to do with '08 postmortems and everything to do with '12 prepositioning.

The fallacy is that the party needs a new Reagan -- a candidate with special appeal to social conservatives -- to beat the new Carter. The moderate, pro-choice John Connally or George H. W. Bush would almost certainly have beaten Carter had one of them been nominated. For '12, the GOP doesn't need a far-right champion. It needs an agonized reappraisal of what makes it necessary and viable. Delaying that work in order to coalesce around the present Palin would be a disastrous mistake, as would her hurling herself against an Obama juggernaut in '12 unless she had a reasonable chance of success. From the moment Lehman Bros. failed in mid-September, she and McCain became sacrificial lambs. One self-sacrifice per career is sufficient.

New Nixon: RN would begin with the assumption that Obama will probably not fail. An incumbent is likely to be reelected, and Obama will probably not make Carter's mistakes. Because circumstances may nonetheless hobble him, however, Mr. Nixon would advise Palin to keep her '12 options open, but he'd urge her to fix her attention on '16.

As for the present Palin, he would have enormous respect for the potential she embodies. She has an astonishing reservoir of political capital. But he would have some significant concerns. And so he would almost certainly write her a "Dear Governor Palin" letter beginning, "I am sure you are receiving a great deal of free advice from well-meaning fans and self-appointed advisers around the country. While you are of course under no obligation to give it any consideration whatsoever, I have taken the liberty of enclosing a memorandum containing just a few..." In such circumstances, his insights were usually based in the reliability of his own experience. He would make points such as this:

Take some time off the national stage. The temptation will be to accept too many of the invitations that are flowing in and to go out and challenge her critics. We've probably seen too much of her already just this week. Better to be a little scarce and mysterious. As RN liked to say, it never hurts to leave them wanting more.

Get back to work. Her critics say she's a lightweight fashion plate. Confound them by being an effective governor (or senator).

See the world and meet leaders. RN would consider this crucial -- first, because she's justifiably seen as weak in foreign policy, and second, because it would help her prepare to be in power.

Do favors. Some of RN's most important political work was done in 1964, when he campaigned loyally for the hopeless Goldwater candidacy, and in the midterm elections of 1966, doing favors that were repaid in 1968. In 2012, assuming she doesn't run, Palin should be the most loyal and committed advocate of whomever does. Purely in terms of her own political interests, the worst than could happen is that he would win and she'd have her pick of jobs.

Don't let your enemies define you. Palin provoked panic among abortion rights advocates. The weekend after she was named to the ticket, Andrew Sullivan republished a lie about her son Trig's parentage on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site that obviously still rankles. Yet Palin would close herself off from growth as a leader by taking it personally. If some people despise her because of her pro-life views, what might she learn from their passion? Some women experience the possibility of restrictions on abortion as an existential challenge. She is comfortable seeing the issue almost solely in terms of the rights of the unborn. What about the rights of the half of the population that wasn't permitted to vote until 1920? Hillary Clinton did herself a tremendous favor three years ago with a speech in which she spoke respectfully of those who hate abortion. Palin should consider making an analogous gesture, both on the abortion and the gay rights fronts.

Read and think. At least from afar, Palin doesn't seem curious or self-critical. Confidence is good in a leader; smugness is not. Mr. Nixon read hungrily all his life and spent long hours in Socratic dialogs with experts, advisers, and aides. While his core principles didn't waiver, his approach to great issues changed with the times. The anti-communist of the 1940s became the internationalist of the 1950s, the course-changing peacemaker of the 1960s and '70s, and the elder statesman of the '80s, respected by all his Democratic and Republican successors in spite of the circumstances of his administration's end.

As Palin matures as a potential national leader, her views will, one hopes, become more moderate and nuanced. Her New Reagan advisers will caution her against permitting this to happen. Lost in the fantasy that Reagan's conservative bona fides (rather than the "R" after his name) won him the '80 election, they'll urge her not to tamper with the time-tested Palin brand. But if she thinks she's fully formed and ready to be President, she'll never make it. She'll fade away prematurely or, at best, squander her potential on a quixotic '12 bid that would probably relegate her to oblivion and her party to another generation in the wilderness. If she uses the next eight years wisely, focused more on substance than on politics, she could truly be the new Nixon, and a winner.