A month ago a star was born.
A month later the star that once shone bright has fallen from the sky.
Or so the liberal media would have us believe. The liberal media even have some conservatives calling upon a woman some consider the spiritual heir to Ronald Reagan to excuse herself from the ticket.
But is Sarah Palin a different person than she was four weeks ago?
She is still the beautiful, G-d fearing, moose hunting, hockey mother of five who signed up for the PTA and gradually ascended from town councilor to small town mayor to Governor to GOP Vice-Presidential nominee and the liberal media, the Democratic Party and the Left at large hate her for it.
Over the past month, these constituencies have pilloried her pregnant teenage daughter, compared her to a porn star, and claimed her only qualification for higher office was that she hadn’t had an abortion while at the same stating she isn’t really a woman.
And we haven’t even talked about policy yet.
Sure one can fault Palin for not knowing the intricacies of the Bush Doctrine. But Charlie Gibson didn’t know them either. There’s nothing wrong with Katie Couric questioning Palin about how Alaska’s proximity to Russia is germane foreign policy experience. There is something wrong when Katie Couric doesn’t question Barack Obama about how his time spent in Indonesia as a child is germane foreign policy experience. You might recall that in April 2008, Obama told a crowd of San Francisco Democrats that he knew more about the world and understood it better than both John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Dr. Susan Rice, one of Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, said, “(A)n American president who spent part of his formative years and young adulthood living in a poor country under a dictatorship brings an understanding of the complexity of things that others may not have.”
Are you kidding? Obama exceeded McCain’s foreign policy depth when he was all of eight? This would have been at the same time McCain was sitting in a box in the Hanoi Hilton. Remember it was Obama would didn’t want to be held accountable for the actions of Weather Underground terrorist turned Obama associate William Ayers because he was eight years old at the time. Be that as it may, Ms. Couric didn’t think it fit to bring up in her interview with Obama in July 2008.
Nor did Ms. Couric have anything to say when Joe Biden recently informed her that FDR went on television in 1929 to talk to the American people about the Great Depression even though FDR was neither President nor was there any television on which his image could be transmitted. But if Palin was unable to name FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury, Couric would have sucked her up like a Hoover. (For the record, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. served in that post during the most of Roosevelt Administration.) While Couric quizzes Palin on obscure passages of testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee when it comes to Obama-Biden she is doing little more than pulling a Nina Burleigh.
But to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of Sarah Palin’s political nadir have been greatly exaggerated. Why? Sarah Palin is of the people. Everyday Americans are with her.
I am not suggesting they necessarily agree with all her policy positions or point of view. What I am suggesting is the people are with Sarah Palin because they know Sarah Palin. We can see Sarah Palin as our mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister or sister’s friend (perhaps even her really hot friend.) We can see Sarah Palin as someone we would like to introduce to our friends and bring home to meet our parents. We can see Sarah Palin running our local diners, hardware stores, the neighborhood bank and our union shop floors. We can see Sarah Palin as a down to earth person who is slightly more ambitious and hard working than the rest of us and she knows it. But she knows that doesn’t make her better than you and you know it too.
If we look at Sarah Palin’s life she has succeeded beyond any reasonable expectations. Her success gives people hope; to use a word oft employed by Obama. This is why tens of thousands of every day Americans who wouldn’t ordinarily attend political rallies to come to see and hear her. If she should make her way up to New Hampshire I would be more than happy to get up before 6 a.m. to catch an early bus from South Station.
So here we are less than twenty four hours removed from Governor Palin sitting opposite Senator Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill (who would be cast more fittingly as Senator Biden’s tag team partner given that she has written a pro-Obama book that is due to be released on January 20, 2009 – Inauguration Day.) What will come of the debate is at the moment unknown. But we do know two things. The liberal media will be rooting for Sarah Palin to fall on her face and break her glasses. Everyday Americans will be rooting for Sarah Palin to face up, rise to the occasion and with a clear vision for America succeed against all odds.
Aaron Goldstein was a card carrying member of the socialist New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP). Since 09/11, Aaron has reconsidered his ideological inclinations and has become a Republican. Aaron lives and works in Boston.
