(this was the #1 "Most Popular" story on the FT front page)
By Edward Luce in Washington Published: February 7 2010 20:55 | Last updated: February 7 2010 20:55
Sarah Palin, the former US presidential running-mate, on Sunday hinted strongly she was preparing a 2012 presidential bid and suggested that Barack Obama needed to take radical steps, such as going to war with Iran, to boost his chance of winning a re-election.
Ms Palin’s comments to Fox News Sunday followed a provocative speech on Saturday to the Tea Party Convention in Nashville.
Amid chants of “Run, Sarah, run”, Ms Palin told the Nashville audience: “America is ready for another revolution and you are part of this.”
The former governor of Alaska also mocked the president as a “charismatic guy with a tele-prompter” and accused him of being a “professor of law at a lecture” rather than the US commander-in-chief.
However, it was Ms Palin’s comments about Mr Obama on Sunday that are likely to cause most controversy. “Things would dramatically change if he [Mr Obama] decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies,” she told Fox.
“Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do.”
Pressed on whether she would run in 2012, she said: “I would if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family.”
However, Ms Palin, who took a fee of $100,000 (€71,400, £62,500) for the speech, which she said she would donate to the “cause”, has also hinted that her association with the Tea Party movement, a large chunk of which boycotted the Nashville convention because it charged $549 a ticket, could open the way to a third-party candidacy along the lines of Ross Perot’s 1992 and 1996 presidential bids. “You’ve got both party machines running scared,” she said.
She also promised to support primary challenges to unseat sitting Republican office-holders who were part of the “establishment”.
Ms Palin’s advice for Mr Obama to attack Iran grew out of strong criticisms of the president’s handling of the “war on terror” and, in particular, the decision to bring Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian alleged to have attempted to blow up an aircraft on Christmas day, into civilian detention, which gave him the right to remain silent.
Many other conservatives, including Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, attacked the decision as showing weakness and forgoing an opportunity to get more information out of Mr Adbulmutallab. However, officials say that Mr Abdulmutallab has been co-operating with interrogators. John Brennan, Mr Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said on Sunday that he had informed four senior Republican lawmakers of the decision on Christmas day and none had objected.
In an article in this week’s New Yorker magazine, Jane Mayer writes that of the 153 terrorists convicted in the US since September 11 2001, 150 were convicted in civilian criminal courts, almost all under George W. Bush, the former president.
Bradford Berenson, a White House lawyer for Mr Bush, told Ms Mayer: “From the perspective of a hawkish Bush national security person, the glass is 85 per cent full in terms of continuity [between Obama and Bush].”
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