For shame, Washington Post

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Washington Post has decided to take the initiative in sullying its already questionable reputation by publishing an op-ed by noted climate scholar failed vice presidential candidate and one-term governor Sarah Palin:

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage. [Emphasis mine]

I bolded these sentences for two hilarious – but very different – reasons.  The first sentence is simply unbelievable; I’m genuinely shocked that Palin could write that without the slightest hint of irony.  After all, her entire career was built on exactly what she criticizes – the “personality-driven political gossip” of the nation’s chattering classes.  As Dahlia Lithwick astutely noted a few days ago, Sarah Palin the national figure wouldn’t exist absent the media’s enthusiasm for her.

The second sentence, however, is just another reminder that Sarah Palin is – even at her most coherent – a complete policy lightweight.  In an editorial opposing cap and trade, Palin completely failed to mention global warming, emissions, pollution or carbon.  Indeed, reading the editorial, you get the sense that she doesn’t quite understand the costs of inaction, or what exactly is at stake: namely, global disaster on a catastrophic scale (the dead rising from the earth, cats and dogs living together, etc.).  But that doesn’t surprise me; what surprises me is that the Washington Post thought this was a good idea and not something which makes a (further) mockery out of their once respectable editorial page.