The New Palin

What to make of Sarah Palin? I can tell you that in my current home state of Alaska, this is very much the question du jour.

Granted, our junior governor is nothing new. Or at least, she wasn't anything new, until John McCain picked her to run with him on this fall's GOP ticket.

But Palin-as-Vice-President, or even Palin-as-President? Now, that's new. And it's not just that the situation has changed; it's that Palin herself - as a candidate, and as a persona - has changed overnight. Her expanded aspirations cast her personality and her story in a different light, and expose her past to a heightened degree of scrutiny. A mere fortnight ago, Sarah Palin in the White House would have been a ridiculous hypothetical. Today it's a very real possibility, and even the residents of the 49th state need to redraw their conceptions of the "hockey mom" who might, one day, sit behind an Oval Office desk.

Thus, we Alaskans stand astride with the rest of the world in making evaluations. Some of us are swelling with state pride and posting McCain-Palin signs in the yard; others are taking a second look at her checkered past, and not liking what we're seeing.

It is two months before the election, and a pall of discord and disbelief broods over the Great Land.

Exciting, surreal, controversial, flabbergasting: Palin's anointing defies any single descriptor or response. It's set off a buzz of chatter and debate in the cooling September air. My Alaskan friends are finding it difficult to maintain a conversation for long before talk veers back to the VP nod. There's a lot to discuss: Palin's qualifications (or lack thereof) for the job, her potential role in the White House, her history in Wasilla and Juneau, and what her selection might mean for the state.

Her nascent candidacy has offered, politically, many immediate positives and negatives, as well as a study in contradictions. Palin as McCain's counterpart seems simultaneously brilliant and absurd, shrewd and foolish, fascinating and horrifying. Every news cycle seems to bring a different wrinkle to Palin's meteoric political narrative, and I keep finding new ways to make sense of it all.

On the one hand, McCain and his advisers may have hit political pay dirt, if last week's Republican National Convention was any indication. Palin's stinging oratory on Wednesday night electrified the delegates. There was plenty of camera time for her family, ample jabs at the Democrats, the normal drumbeats of national security and lower taxes, and the reassurance that she would carry her working-class street-cred into the White House. Only a speech from Ronald Reagan's ghost could have rallied the Republican base more.

At the end of the day - although her initial pick seemed a bizarre surprise - Palin makes sense for John McCain. Her youth and credibility as a working mother, her faith, and her staunch, money-where-your-mouth-is position against abortion have drawn together a conservative electorate that hadn't quite made up its mind about the silver-haired Arizonan. Palin is a game-changer. She brings the base to the table with a smile, and she might even drag a few independents and swing voters along for the ride.

But on the other hand, Palin's political history raises many, many red flags. And while there's a lot of smoke, there could be some fire, too.

In Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor, she made enemies by using evangelical Christianity as a wedge issue. She was a born-again Christian, and promoted herself as the "first Christian candidate" when she was running for the job, even though her opponent was himself a Lutheran. (See this article in The New York Times.)

The degree of her religiosity - and how it might affect her politics - continues to be an issue. A recent Associated Press story (via the Chicago Tribune) relayed how her own Wasilla Bible Church was encouraging a conference that would "turn" gay men and lesbians straight. (The ultra-conservative group Focus on the Family supports this "pray the gay away" movement.) If Obama's private church-going is political fair game - with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and all - then so it goes for Palin, too. The pendulum swings both ways: just what does she believe?

More recently, she's been embroiled in the scandal that she fired the state's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, possibly for personal reasons: Monegan refused to dismiss Mike Wooten, an Alaska State Trooper who also happened to be the ex-husband of Palin's sister. A chain of phone calls and emails may suggest that the Governor's office overstepped its bounds in pressing for Wooten's dismissal. (The Anchorage Daily News is chronicling the ongoing story, at this page.)

Amid the flak, Palin has painted herself as a bare-knuckles Alaskan reformer and a tireless champion of political ethics. The "hockey mom" reputation dovetails well into this portrayal: one imagines Palin floor-checking dirty politicians who cross her path. A new ad from the McCain campaign shows the two of them as "mavericks" of the same stripe: unbound from party cronyism, marching off to do glorious battle against corruption and earmarks.

But here's the irony: thanks to the Monegan firing, the Alaska legislation has launched a bipartisan investigation into Palin's own ethics.

And for all Sarah Palin's self-promotion as an opponent of federal aid, she is hardly the foe of earmarks that she says she is. While mayor of Wasilla she took an interest in the earmark process and requested huge sums of federal money: so much so, in fact, that McCain himself criticized her pork projects. This year alone, she appealed to Senator Ted Stevens for earmarks totaling nearly $200 million; that would be the most federal money, per-capita, of any state in the union. (Check out the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Seattle Times for more.)

This Monegan/Wooten/"Troopergate" story - which Alaska state senator Hollis French (D) recently said could be an "October surprise" for the McCain campaign - may reveal a broader insight into how Palin likes to govern. A number of government employees who have worked with her say that Sarah Palin simply likes to get her way. When she doesn't, there's trouble.

Putting aside the obvious comparisons - does a stubborn, evangelical Christian with a propensity for wedge issues and big spending remind you of anyone? - one wonders just what kind of Vice President Sarah Palin would make. Have Wasilla and Juneau already seasoned her enough to tackle Washington, D.C., and, with it, the world? Or, do we have another Dan Quayle on our hands - except this time, one who could be "a heartbeat away" from Commander-in-Chief? One conservative critic, Rick Brookhiser, put it concisely in his column for the National Review:

Either McCain thinks the war on terror isn't serious, or he thinks the vice-presidency isn't... McCain, bless him, intends to do everything himself. Good luck! Palin will go to funerals.

My own political opinions are likely clear by now; the Obama '08 sign propped against our living-room window will not be coming down anytime soon. But, at least for this post, that's beside the point. Sarah Palin may be a reformer saint or a rotten surrogate, but either way, it's made for a fascinating two weeks of conversation. The surreal spotlight on Alaska and our governor has only begun.