The Atlantic Wire - Dana Milbank on the Tour We Should Be Watching. While Sarah Palin rides a bus "emblazoned with her name in three-foot letters," Dana Milbank writes that "there is a tour underway that highlights the great things about America, but it isn’t Palin’s." Robert Gates, defense secretary to presidents George W. Bush and Obama, whose work over the past four years "has dramatically improved the state of the U.S. military," is on a tour of Asia and Europe where he "is receiving the gratitude of soldiers and the acclaim of allies." Compare Gates and Palin. "Gates... took on sacred weapons programs at the Pentagon, fired ineffective generals, won the surge in Iraq, revived a crumbling war effort in Afghanistan and got Osama bin Laden. During that same time, Palin quit midway through her term as Alaska governor, then went on to a life of $100,000 speaking fees, reality TV shows and incendiary political speech." While both call themselves Republican, the "dueling tours of Gates and Palin show the best and worst in American public life... It says something about the infirmity of our politics that Gates can’t wait to go home while Palin is again being taken seriously as a prospective presidential candidate."
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