Reading is a trap. Reading is indoctrination. Knowing the difference between North Korea and South Korea, which she apparently did not , is for eggheads. I have a friend who is basically a liberal Democrat but was a great admirer of John McCain.
Then it was all over. But he let himself get talked into this idea that he had to woo the hard-right base. It was the worst decision McCain ever made. The second worst was refusing to apologize for it for the rest of his life. I drove up to St. Louisiana was still enduring the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina, which President Bush had botched so horribly. The Republicans basically canceled or minimized the first two nights of their convention.
Palin spoke the third night. I was standing along the concourse at the top of the lower level of seats. I have to say, she was really good. She knows how to give a speech. She and Rudy Giuliani spoke the same night. They both gave terrific speeches. Really fired up the crowd. But the speech had no actual content at all. Way back before the hoopla, and way before she endorsed Donald Trump , she made sense as a politician here.
But back in the day, I liked her — and so did many in my community. She was a kind of regular person I recognized as of this place. Tough, funny, pragmatic. She loved Alaska like I did. One day, during her time as governor, my editor pointed out a picture of her in our newspaper.
Palin was wearing a kuspuk an Alaska Native-style jacket , holding her newborn, talking to a woman in a grocery store about the high price of food.
The image had exactly the this-is-Alaska-life realness that resonates deeply here, where voters prize authenticity most of all.
If the grocery store photo-op was planned, my boss said, she was brilliant. Democrats liked her. She had no problem with taxing oil companies or handing out money to help people with fuel costs. She believed in climate change.
As for the word-salad syntax problem everybody makes fun of? Up north, nobody cared. Maybe it even added to her regular-person cred our long-serving representative Don Young suffers from the same affliction. Above all, Palin was nice. She was fuzzy on policy details, but only insiders noticed. She made a big deal about government corruption. I interviewed her right after she announced she was pregnant. She laughed off people who said it would be a problem, calling them cavemen.
Like the Swift boat attacks of on Senator John Kerry, a decorated Viet Nam Veteran -- this assault will be on what is now a strength of Barack Obama's -- his focus on changing a broken system in Washington. To make this assault, McCain picked in Palin someone who has taken on the corruption in the GOP in Alaska, turned against her own party's establishment, and fought for reform.
The McCain campaign intends to claim that "more of the same" in Washington means Barack Obama and Joe Biden and will make the argument that if you want to "shake things up" then McCain and his reform minded running mate from Alaska will get the job done. My initial reaction was that in picking Palin, McCain had taken away the argument that Barack Obama wasn't ready to be president.
I now think my initial assessment on that score was wrong. Over time, the McCain team will insinuate that if you think a first-term Governor isn't ready for the number 2 slot, are your really sure that a first-term Senator is ready for the number 1 spot?
There are flaws in all these arguments. There is McCain's own brush with corruption as a member of the Keating Five, as the country was wracked by the savings and loan scandal.
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