Schweizer: Gov. Palin Schools Washington Post on History

Palin is right: Bigger government is not the solution to our problems
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Peter Schweizer, Editor in Chief of Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace watchdog blog, caught Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post in the act of getting schooled by Sarah Palin:

The Washington Post, which never passes up an opportunity to attack Sarah Palin, has gone after her for criticizing President Barack Obama’s “Sputnik” reference in the State of the Union Address. Palin noted accurately that what Obama was calling for was to our problems. She further pointed out big government socialistic solutions are what in part did the Soviet empire in. Those comments sent Steve Stromberg at the Washington Post into a hyperbolic fit, declaring that her analysis is “weird.” But his response indicates that he knows as little about the Soviet Union and Sputnik as President Obama’s speechwriters.

Stromberg says that Palin misconstrues Obama’s main point that “the Americans who responded to early Soviet success in space exploration by educating themselves and out-innovating the Soviets.” But Stromberg misses Palin’s larger and more important point about history: Sputnik was really meaningless in the larger scheme of things. It was all hype, and it was basically used by people in Washington to advance their own political agenda. Perhaps Stromberg should have consulted the Post’s own archives before he went after her. As Newsweek (which the Post used to own) wrote on the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik:

Less than a week after Sputnik began orbiting Earth once every 96 minutes, politicians and the press had spun it into a shocking symbol of Soviet superiority that could soon lead to nukes falling on American cities. But far from being alarmed by Sputnik, newly released archives show, Eisenhower and his military and intelligence advisers welcomed it. The terror triggered by the uninstrumented, 184-pound silvery satellite, roughly the size and shape of a blue-ribbon watermelon and emitting an A-flat beep from its rudimentary radio transmitter, had little basis in reality.

Newsweek goes on: “With Sputnik’s 50th anniversary this week, we’re in danger of getting it wrong yet again, for the supposed lessons of Sputnik are ones we should actually unlearn.” Ouch. Memo to Stromberg: Read some history next time. Memo to President Obama: quit the myth-making.

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- JP