It is hard to think of anything of value Trump has done since returning to the White House. In a pinch, if I had to pick something, it has been his supremely satisfying decision to deny Sarah Palin a position of authority in his administration and thus deprive her of the kind of public profile she has for so long craved. And to spare us the same. Thank you, Mr. President.
If you are like me, you hadn’t thought much about the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential nominee until you scanned the morning news stories today to find that a federal jury had just ruled against Palin in a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The case involved a 2017 story in which The Times published and then “swiftly corrected and apologized for an editorial that wrongly suggested she had incited a deadly shooting in Arizona years earlier.”
The case, and its implications for future legal action, is fascinating, relying as it does on a 1964 landmark Supreme Court decision The New York Times Company v. Sullivan that requires public officials to prove “actual malice” or “disregard for the truth.” Some legal experts are suggesting this ruling against Palin will create momentum to ultimately overturn the precedent because it showed how hard it was for plaintiffs to clear the actual malice threshold.
All very interesting, but as I read the story, I kept thinking about Palin herself and how much bandwidth she once took up in American political discourse. She was, as she once called herself, “the mama of the Tea Party Movement,” which was itself a big part of what gave us Trump. One would have expected that with the second coming of Donald J., Palin would herself have been given a second act. That has not happened.
Remarkably, Palin complained in February that she couldn’t even get credentials to the GOP presidential nominating convention last summer despite her vocal support for Trump. When Trump was putting his cabinet together she indicated publicly she would be honoured to serve but, as we know, nothing came of that.
She has made hopeful noises about the likelihood that some in the current administration who are not sufficiently supportive of Trump’s agenda may leave early creating an opportunity for her. Perhaps she has forgotten that Trump’s first term was full of personnel churn and yet her phone never rang.
It seems it’s not going to happen for Sarah Palin and the reason is not hard to figure. Though we all say Trump values loyalty above all else, he appears to value humility just as much – or at least humility when it comes to one’s place in the Trump orbit. If we know one thing about Sarah Palin it is that she loves nothing more than she loves herself, and that just won’t do for the president.
Caricature: DonkeyHotey/Flickr
Retired political staffer/civil servant. Dual U.S./Canadian citizen writing about politics and the arts on both sides of the border.