Todd Palin: As a power behind the throne, First Dude abides

Last week, the release of the Branchflower Report added another ring to the Palin Family Circus. The investigation, commissioned in August by a bipartisan legislative council, concluded that while the Alaskan governor and Republican vice presidential candidate acted within the scope of her constitutional authority by firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan earlier this summer, she had violated the state’s ethics statutes by allowing state personnel and state resources to be used to settle a private grudge against Mike Wooten, a trooper who’d formerly been married to Sarah Palin’s sister.
The report devoted particular attention to the governor’s husband, Todd Palin, who repeatedly urged Monegan and other state officials to revisit a closed investigation into Wooten’s conduct. Given the acute national interest in the story, the results of the “Troopergate” probe obviously touched on, and further undermined, Sarah Palin’s image as a maverick reformer. But they also introduced non-Alaskans to questions that have long been raised about the so-called “First Dude” and the unusual role he’s played in his wife’s administration.

Shortly after the report’s release, as the governor’s supporters peddled the dubious claim that it had somehow vindicated Sarah Palin, McCain campaign spokesperson Taylor Griffin addressed the report’s strong criticism of Todd Palin’s efforts to have Wooten removed from his job. With a straight face, Griffin argued that Palin’s involvement in his wife’s work was, broadly speaking, comparable to Eleanor Roosevelt’s commitment to civil rights or Hillary Clinton’s work on health care reform. (There was no word on Palin’s resemblance to Mamie Eisenhower, who drew national praise in the mid-1950s for her “million dollar fudge” recipe.)

But Alaskan political observers have been pointing out for some time that no one can quite figure out what Todd Palin’s precise duties include. As Mike Madden wrote in a Salon profile last month, Todd Palin “lurks around the capitol if he doesn’t have anything better to do, which, since he works seasonal jobs in oil and fishing, is fairly often.” Business owner and blogger Andrew Halcro, who was the first to allege an unseemly motivation for Monegan’s firing, has been less charitable, describing Todd Palin as a “shadow governor.”

Though he is not officially a member of the executive branch, Palin is renowned for attending meetings with the governor and legislators or other public officials, many of whom have described his (almost totally silent) presence as odd or even discomfiting. Todd Palin, for example, has been copied on e-mails related to policy and personnel matters, and he’s taken numerous trips — with and without his wife — as a representative of the state.

By his own account, Palin regards none of this as inappropriate. In his deposition with the legislative investigators, Palin insisted that he and his wife were being subjected to “double standards,” since few questions had ever been raised about the involvement of spouses in previous administrations. Though Palin’s objection bore a kernel of truth, he had nevertheless overlooked the fact that gubernatorial spouses traditionally did not involve themselves directly in budgetary decisions, nor did they lobby legislators — as Palin did — regarding tax policies.