Mrs Underestimated
By Kevin Allison and Edward Luce
Published: September 5 2008 18:53 | Last updated: September 6 2008 00:13
Sarah Palin
For once the comic Daily Show may not have been on the money. Outside the Republican convention hall this week it sported a billboard that said: “Welcome, rich, white oligarchs.” Inside, rich and not so rich delegates alike were paying obeisance to their newest, and least expected, of stars – a 44-year-old mother of five, who hunts caribou and whose husband goes snowmobile racing at the weekends.
Little more than a week ago, virtually no one outside Alaska had heard of Sarah Palin. Now the Republican party faithful look up to the first-term governor of Alaska as their most effective weapon in what promises to be something of a culture war against Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate. In the words of Senator John McCain, who wrong-footed his opponents, the media and perhaps even himself in his surprise selection of Mrs Palin as his vice-presidential nominee, “she’s worked with her hands and knows what it’s like to worry about mortgage payments”.
Some, pointing to her lack of experience, felt Mr McCain had made a terrible choice. Others, observing that it had quelled all that damaging chatter about Mr McCain’s eight houses, saw it differently. “What a breath of fresh air Sarah Palin is.” Fred Thompson, the former candidate and television actor, told delegates. “Washington pundits are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.”
To Ms Palin it looked like the most natural situation in the world. “Awesome,” she said to Mr McCain as the two gathered on the stage with their large families (12 children between them) for the balloon burst that signals the grand finale. It was the best adjective to summarise a week that had catapulted her from obscurity to a position where she could soon be within a heartbeat of becoming America’s first female president.
Born in the small town of Sandpoint, Idaho, in 1964, Sarah Heath was the third of four children in a blue-collar family that shortly afterwards moved to wintry Alaska – America’s second-newest state and its final frontier. The family settled into Alaska’s outdoor ways. According to her biographer, Kaylene Johnson, the freezer was always stuffed with fish and game. “Dad never stopped lining up adventures for us,” said Chuck Heath, her older brother. “We could literally go hunting out our back door.”
The first inkling of Ms Palin’s appetite for a larger stage came in her teens when she surprised her siblings by announcing she was entering the contest for Miss Wasilla – her local town. “I remember asking Sarah why she would enter a beauty pageant when that seemed so prissy to the rest of us,” said Chuck. “She told me matter of factly, ‘It’s going to help pay my way through college.”
She won and it did. After graduating from the State University of Idaho in journalism, Ms Palin (who had by then married her high school sweetheart, Todd) launched into a career as a sports presenter on a local affiliate of NBC. It provided a springboard for her foray into politics, first as a member of the Wasilla council, then as its mayor. Few of her family had anticipated politics would be her calling. Running on a platform of “roads and sewers”, Ms Palin exploited her local recognition to unseat older and usually male incumbents. It was a feat she was to accomplish again and again. “I underestimated her,” said John Binkley, an Alaska businessman who lost to her in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary.
It is also a description that could sum up the Democratic party’s first reaction to her last week. “I assumed that her lack of experience compared to the experience that I had would be evident and compelling,” Mr Binkley added. “It didn’t matter if we tried to attack her or if we tried to ignore her. She just connected with voters.”
Ms Palin quickly turned from an apprentice into a skilled operator who knew which populist buttons to push. Alaska’s domination by an older and often corrupt “good old boy network” of establishment Republicans was ripe for change. Again, exploiting the fact that her rivals – often former mentors – underestimated her, Ms Palin combined a small-town conservatism with a populist “whistleblower” reputation to challenge her party from within. At times, such as when she was part of the Alaska delegation to the 2004 Republican convention, her reputation for disloyalty and opportunism turned her into an outcast. “Nobody paid much attention to her,” said one delegate. “I can remember her mostly sitting by herself.”
But what played badly with the hierarchy was music to the ears of Alaska’s voters. Running on a small budget she defied pundits and rivals alike by unseating the sitting governor of Alaska in the primary to become the Republican nominee. Less than two years later, her approval ratings exceed that of almost any other governor in America.
Having run on a social and fiscal conservative?platform, she has governed on pragmatic grounds. Using the state’s fat revenues from high oil prices, Ms Palin recently sent a $1,200 (€840, £680) rebate to every Alaskan household. Voters, meanwhile, heard very little of Mrs Palin’s Christian fundamentalism. Contrary to her promises, she has taken no initiatives to restrict abortion rights or to introduce the teaching of creationism in schools.
Then came Mr McCain’s thunderbolt that took even Ms Palin by surprise (as recently as June, she told a reporter she had little idea what the vice-presidency was for). Even her mother-in-law seemed doubtful about her credentials. Friends were incredulous. “I was like no way!” said Mark Niver, who goes snowmobile?racing?with?Mr Palin. “But after a few minutes, I thought, that would be fine. She’s a quick study – she reads the paper every day, back to back.”
Much could still undo her – not least the “troopergate” inquiry into allegations that she has used her powers as governor to try to sack her former brother-in-law, who is a state policeman. The inquiry is due to be released just a week before polling day. For now, Ms Palin is basking in the attention of millions who see something of themselves in her – small-town, blue-collar families that form the backbone of America’s self-image. “They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America . . . who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars,” Ms Palin told cheering delegates. “They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008 |
