Don't Be California's Sarah Palin

I found this pretty interesting… both a conservative newspaper editorial board and a progressive organization have now asked the same question: “Is Meg Whitman California’s Sarah Palin?”

The Orange County Register recently complained that the Register’s conservative editorial board has not been given access to Whitman (now a common complaint among the state’s shrinking pool of political reporters): “During the 2008 presidential election many critics blamed Sarah Palin’s handlers for sheltering Palin from the press and keeping her bottled up. It seems like Meg Whitman’s campaign is doing the same thing in California.”

(Read more at the Orange County Register: http://orangepunch.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/17/is-meg-whitman-califor...

And a couple of weeks ago, the progressive Courage Campaign announced and then ran radio advertisements that called Whitman out for her Palin-like threat to suspend California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32. “Whitman, like Sarah Palin, believes that action to stop global warming is somehow detrimental to the state’s economy, despite the fact that it not only saves us from costly disasters in the near future, but that such action also spurs the development of green jobs that will put Californians back to work.”

(Read more at Courage Campaign's Web site: http://www.couragecampaign.org/success/417/-california-s-sarah-palin-rad...)

Although there is certainly political disagreement over the approach to implementing AB 32 at this time (because one side ignores these inconvenient things called facts), it seems to me that both conservatives and progressives agree that Whitman should be more accessible to the press and engage in more frequent, less scheduled conversations with reporters.

And, she should agree to debate her primary opponent, Steve Poizner, sooner rather than later. (One wonders if she hopes he’ll give up and drop out before she has to finally give in and debate him).

Otherwise, how will we as voters know if she has a grasp of the complex issues, including environmental issues, she will have to tackle if elected governor?

Don’t be like Sarah, Meg. Talk to us! And drop the anti-AB 32 rhetoric. Californians overwhelmingly support the move to a clean energy future, and AB 32 helps us get there.