David

Karki

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September 2, 2008

Palin Gets the Call, and the Tide Turns

Sen. John McCain changed the entire dynamic of the presidential campaign with his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. For the first time, there is an excitement about the Republican ticket. And judging by the most telling barometer – how much Democrats hate the choice – he could not have chosen better.

Tactically, Palin is the perfect help for the three constituencies McCain needed to reach out to the most – women, conservatives and rural blue-collar men.

Women. Many supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton are still very unhappy she didn't wind up on the Democratic ticket, and Palin made a direct appeal to these folks in her speech on Saturday, all but inviting them across the aisle. Her experience of handling the jobs of mayor and governor while raising five children will appeal strongly to them.

While I'm sure that many liberal women will ultimately put their liberalism ahead of their gender wishes come Election Day, any money and votes that McCain and Palin get from this group will come right out of Obama's hide. That makes it doubly painful for him.

Conservatives. McCain had a very hard sell to pull off with his own base, given how frequently he crossed them over the last eight years. He mended that bridge as much as he possibly could have and ensured that both money and turnout on the right will be as plentiful as he could have hoped for. Palin has impeccable credentials on the pro-life issue, having given birth to her son Trig, who has Down Syndrome. And she's an NRA member. She's strong on energy and can effectively take on the radical environmentalist lobby.

She can also credibly speak to tax cutting, controlling spending and perhaps most importantly, self-sufficiency. To conservatives, President Bush's “compassionate conservative” spiel has only cemented the liberal principle of looking to big government first and only to solve problems, if not to be taken care of outright. Palin, who along with her husband Todd, fed her family on the game they hunted and fished and who fired the staff chef upon becoming governor so her kids wouldn't get used to having meals cooked for them, is the epitome of the rugged individualism that built and made America. And which we need to get back to in order to keep it, according to many conservatives – this one included.

Rural blue-collar men. Sen. Obama already stumbled badly on this one, with his comments about them being “bitter” and “clinging to their guns.” As Palin is married to a union steelworker who has also worked on a salmon fishing boat and is a snowmobile racing champion, and both handle firearms well and hunt regularly, this demographic is there for taking. Of the five husbands of female governors, Alaska's “First Dude” is the only blue-collar one of the bunch. That fact should appeal very strongly to this group.

Palin also is difficult for Obama to attack. Trying to question her experience only boomerangs back on him twice as hard. However little experience he wants to claim she has, he has even less. However unqualified he claims she is, he's even more so. The last thing the Obama campaign should want is to have the experience angle highlighted any more than it already has been, when it doesn't serve him at all given his complete absence of accomplishments.

Nor does attacking her help him with the women voters he badly needs to hold on to after denying Hillary. Iraq is tougher to bring up when her son is deployed there as an infantryman in the Army. And the mantle of “change” has lost its bite, when Palin is compared against Obama's selection of a 30-year incumbent senator as a running mate.

Lastly, she is the vice-presidential candidate. The more he stays on her as an issue, the more he equates himself with the number two slot in people's eyes. He needs to focus on McCain alone.

But all the political gauging aside, Palin's biggest asset and strength is simply that she's a true citizen legislator and public servant, in the tradition the Founders had in mind. (Or is at least as close to one as we'll ever see again in an era of politicians-for-life.) She's not a lawyer, hasn’t been running for office ever since graduating college and hasn't been planning such a career since her childhood. She instead spent her time working, coaching basketball on the side, getting married and raising a family.

Or as we used to call it, living the American dream, to which politics was entirely incidental. And in an election where there have been no fewer than four U.S. senators trying at some point – each in more laughable fashion than the next – to claim the label of “outsider” and “reformer,” I daresay there is nowhere more outside than Wasilla, Alaska.

I may look the fool come November for saying this, but I really believe that history will mark Friday, August 29 as the day the tide turned in this election. And possibly not just for this one, but given the status of vice president as de facto logical successor, for four or eight years from now when more history could be made.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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