Matt Danko is a freelance writer based in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Contact via danko@libertysociety.net

In the 2000 movie, The Contender, the first female vice president, Laine Hanson (Joan Allen), is appointed to the office after the incumbent VP unexpectedly dies.  As a typical Hollywood screed, the film is unapologetically liberal: it is the Democratic Party making history by appointing a woman and the Republican Party attempting to thwart them. GOP Rep. Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman) questions whether any woman can be trusted with the nuclear trigger.

The movie is about her confirmation and the subsequent investigations into her personal life.  The discovery of photographs of her during her college years having group sex is the major plot device that sets the confrontation in motion.  Hanson refuses to answer questions about her past sex life, insisting that it is no one’s business, that if she were a man it would not be an issue, and that it has no relevance to her governing ability regardless.  To the point where the president (Jeff Bridges) considers dumping her altogether, Hanson refuses to part with principle.

The question that is never really answered is whether or not Hanson took part in these acts when she was young, for it is possible that the woman in the photographs isn’t even her.  Of course, that doesn’t matter for the point of the film is why this question is being asked in the first place.  The evil Republican congressman is a villain no matter what the truth is, for his motivation for attack is that Laine Hanson is a woman.

The film was made just after the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski controversy and attempted to address issues dealing with the private lives of high profile government officials, the power of a determined political smear machine, and the willingness of a frenzied media.  The issue of sexism was added if for no other reason than to distinguish the film from reality, for few on the Left considered Clinton sexist, just a sex addict.  Ironically, however, The Contender now seems far more relevant to the treatment of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

It has been said by many multiculturalists that sexism remains the dominantly ingrained form of bigotry in America and the world, more so than racism or any other ethnocentrism.  Gloria Steinem wrote that gender is “probably the most restricting force in American life.”  The contrast between the treatment of Governor Sarah Palin and that of Senator Barack Obama by the liberal media may be evidence to that point.

It seems that for some, when ideology comes in to play, ingrained prejudices begin to surface as tools for attack.  In the past month, Sarah Palin has had to endure more continuing scrutiny from the press than Barack Obama has had to endure in the past two years.  Her womanhood itself has been called into question for the single reason that she does not adhere to the orthodoxy of the Left.

At the moment of Palin’s naming, reporters began to set up camp in Alaska, searching for that next revelation from the Governor’s past.  One must wonder: are they looking for provocative photographs?  The Democratic Party sent at least 30 lawyers, investigators, and opposition researchers to Anchorage, Juneau, and Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, some arriving less than 24 hours after McCain made the August 29 announcement.  Since then, we’ve learned all sorts of tidbits about Sarah Palin.

Rumors started immediately on sights like the Daily Kos.  Conspiracy theorists claimed that the Governor had actually faked her last pregnancy and that the real mother of Trig, the newborn with Down syndrome, was none other than daughter Bristol, age seventeen. A post on the Daily Kos had photos of Bristol with a "baby bump" stomach, and photos of Governor Palin looking very fit just before giving birth. "Sarah, I'm calling you a liar," blogger ArcXIX declared, "And not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better." The post even went on to cite evidence that Palin returned to work just three days after supposedly giving birth to Trig.

The mainstream press soon latched on to these conspiracy theories.  Even Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic seemed convinced that something was amiss, demanding that the McCain campaign release medical records to prove whose child this was.  To quell these absurd accusations, the Palin campaign announced that Bristol was currently five months pregnant.  They continue to ask the news media to respect their daughter’s privacy, but some have gone so far as to declare Bristol as fair game, even to compare her pregnancy to celebrity pregnancies.  Thom Hartmann of Air America Radio still believes that Trig is Bristol’s child and that her current pregnancy is her second.  Despite the well-known fact that having a child after age 40 greatly increases the likelihood that the child will be born with Down syndrome, some on the Left continue to see only what they want to see (the essence of ideological delusion).

Palin’s judgment has been questioned for accepting the vice presidential nomination while being the mother of five, including a pregnant daughter and a newborn with Down syndrome.  The New York Times printed:

With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.

Why did no one question Joseph Biden’s judgment when he came to the senate as a single father just after losing his wife in a car accident?

The National Enquirer has alleged that Sarah Palin had an extramarital affair with her husband’s business partner.  Her private Yahoo email account was hacked and her personal messages and photographs of her family are now posted all over the web.  We are to look down on her for being on a radio show hosted by a local Alaskan shock-jock who used foul language to describe her political opponent.  Should we now catalogue all politicians who have appeared on Howard Stern’s show?  On its front page, the New York Times reported incorrectly that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a fringe group that wants to secede from the United States.  The Times had to print a retraction of this poorly vetted story, though it buried the retraction on page A18.

Religion and Public Service

The Associated Press recently created a controversy with the headline, “Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'” and quoted her as saying, "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God."  But they deliberately omitted part of the quote, so as to insinuate that Palin actually believes that the Iraq war is commanded by God.  The entire quote is as follows with the underlined portion being all that the AP included:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right.  Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan.

Is it wrong to hope that the war on terror is based on a plan and that the plan itself is virtuous?  The fact that this took place in her church (where people tend to do a lot of praying) has not stopped some from condemning her as some sort of religious nut or warmongering crusader.  But clearly the entire quote demonstrates that Palin is merely asking God to guide soldiers and leaders (as many former presidents have done) so that this war may end with the world in a better state.  Essentially, she is saying with great humility, “I hope we are doing the right thing.”

Governor Palin has even been heckled for asking church members to pray for success in her efforts to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Continental United States, an onerous task by any means.  To be sure, there may be some hippies with moral objections to its construction, but most see it as a very good thing, and so it remains uncertain what exactly constitutes a legitimate prayer subject in the eyes of the media.

Of course some tend to see all church goers as snake charmers, unless it’s a fellow liberal:  When visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Barack Obama placed a prayer there, like many have done for 2000 years.  The prayer was later published in a Jerusalem newspaper.  Obama wrote: 

Lord, protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

To date, the media have not accosted Obama for the phrase, “make me an instrument of your will.”  If they did, it would be an injustice, of course.  However, if Sarah Palin or John McCain had written this, they probably would have been labeled with a messianic complex.

Hollywood actor Matt Damon wants to know more about Sarah Palin’s position on creationism and evolution and whether she has ever tried to ban books because, he said, “she’s going to have the nuclear codes.”  The codes notwithstanding, Palin has no record of banning books.  A fake list of books that she supposedly sought to ban has been floating around the internet, even though some titles on this list were not even in print at the time (such as the first four Harry Potter books).  Time magazine alleged that as mayor, Palin “continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times,” asking the librarian “how she could go about banning books.”  However, the actual librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, was not even interviewed for this report.

The facts: In 1996, when she first became mayor of Wasilla, Palin was discussing city policy and asked Emmons how she would feel if the community attempted to remove objectionable books from the Wasilla Public Library.  Emmons, of course, said she would refuse.  Months later, Palin asked for her resignation.  Palin never mentioned the issue of censorship; only that Baker did not fully support her political agenda, which included merging the library and museum operations together.  When it became clear that Emmons was onboard, she was immediately rehired (the day after she was asked to resign) and did stay on as librarian until 1999. In fact, Emmons never once claimed that Palin threatened to fire her for refusing to ban books.  Nor did Palin ever attempt to exert any form of censorship no matter who the librarian was.

The former three-term mayor of Wasilla, John Stein, Palin’s political opponent, appointed librarian Mary Ellen Emmons.  As a member of the old guard, Emmons publicly supported Stein against Palin and was one of many resignations that eventually took place after the administration change (this would be expected, especially considering Palin ran as a reformer).  Other resignations included police chief Irl Stambaugh, public works director Jack Felton, museum director John Cooper, and finance director Duane Dvorak.  The Left can speculate on circumstantial evidence all it wants, but the fact remains that no book was ever banned and no specific title was ever targeted for censorship.

Palin has expressed her openness to the idea of teaching creationism along side evolution, but along with not banning books, she has never pursued such a policy as governor, explaining:  “I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It (creationism) doesn't have to be part of the curriculum.”  In fact, Palin’s children attend public schools and Palin has yet to attempt to have creationism made a subject for instruction.

Perhaps it is because her religious beliefs are private and not part of her public policies that the press has had to interview close friends and former pastors to uncover her spiritual beliefs.  She seems far more pragmatic than many would have us believe.  She is obviously religious, but like most, her public policy is not contingent upon her religion.  And she has certainly never done anything as a government official that would portend the end of civil liberties.

But some in the media consider any traditional belief itself as Neanderthal.  Because many in the Republican Party are against public sex-education (specifically dealing with contraception), Max Blumenthal wrote in The Nation, "Could Bristol Palin have benefited from the sex education and contraceptives the GOP seeks to deny to public school students?”  This is despite the fact that Palin is on record of being somewhat pro-contraception.  Regardless, are we really to assume that Bristol did not know that sex could lead to pregnancy?

Sarah Palin has also been accused of forcing rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests, an outdated policy of the town of Wasilla, and one that she never supported.  A spokeswoman for Palin told USA Today that Palin “does not believe, nor has ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test.”  Nevertheless, the press attempted to tie Palin with the former police chief, Charlie Fannon, who USA Today quoted as saying, “We’ve charged the cost of exams to victim’s insurance companies when possible.”  What the paper did not include is what Fannon went on to say:  “Ultimately it is the criminal who should bear the burden of the added costs….  Id like to see the courts make these people pay restitution for these things.”  Though Fannon was confirmed by the City Council in a 5-0 vote, Palin seems to bear the brunt of his out-of-context statement.  When Fannon later ran for mayor of Wasilla, then Governor Palin supported his rival, Curt Menard.

Of the most insulting accusations is that she is an anti-Semite for wearing a Pat Buchanan button in 1999 when the then presidential candidate visited her town, Wasilla, of which she was then mayor.  Rep. Robert Wexler, co-chair of Obama's campaign in Florida, claimed that Governor Palin had "aligned herself with a leading anti-Israel voice in American politics," and even later used the phrase, “Nazi sympathizer” (though Wexler has yet to condemn Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann for working with Buchanan on MSNBC).  Palin had already said that the button was merely a courtesy for the visit.  Despite the fact that Palin was part of the Steve Forbes campaign in 2000, this shameless attack overlooks Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a man who praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, arguably the most outspoken anti-Semite in America.

Troopergate

The only legitimate controversy is the investigation of Governor Palin for dismissing the Department of Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, allegedly for refusing to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten, the ex-husband of Palin’s sister.  Palin has said that Monegan’s dismissal was due to budget disputes.  Monegan himself has said that the Palins did pressure him to fire Wooten, but he has not claimed that this was the reason he was fired, saying "I don't know that it's all of it. ... I worked at the pleasure of the governor."  The original accusation of impropriety came from a blog by Andrew Halcro, a formal political rival and outspoken critic of Governor Palin.

State Trooper Mike Wooten (who is now on his fourth divorce) was investigated by his own department on 13 issues, four of which he was found to be in violation of trooper policy and in some cases the law: he illegally shot a moose, he shot his ten-year-old stepson with a taser gun, he drank beer in his patrol car, and he threatened to kill his wife’s father (also Sarah Palin’s father) should he help her hire an attorney to divorce him.  Before Sarah had even launched her campaign for governor, her family and friends were calling for action against Wooten, and the Palins even hired their own private investigator.  With help from his union, Mike Wooten was punished with only a five-day suspension. The Palins’ concern with an armed state trooper who had threatened the life of Sarah’s father should be understandable to most.  And any abuse of power would seem to lie with the union that sought to protect this officer who had a history of public endangerment.

Monegan’s position was a political appointment and so he served at the pleasure of the governor, as he and the Alaskan state legislature have publicly stated.  The legislature has also stated on the record that Palin has been cooperative with the investigation, at least up until it became politicized after Palin’s rise to the national stage.  More imperative is the fact that Palin waited 18 months after taking office before terminating Monegan, and at a time when she was being watched as a potential VP nominee.  This is hardly the making of a cover-up, despite the national media’s focus.

(UPDATE: Palin Exonerated in Troopergate Investigation)

On Earmarks and the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’

The $398 million “Bridge to Nowhere” would have connected the sparsely populated town of Ketchikan, Alaska's entry port for northbound cruise ships, located on Revillagigedo Island, with its airport on Gravina Island.  Though Palin first supported the idea in 2006 while she was running for governor, after seeing the financial costs and the national ridicule that the project was creating, she “ordered state transportation officials to abandon the ‘bridge to nowhere.’”  Palin believed that there needed to be a better way to get to each island other than the current 15-minute ferry ride, but that the bridge was not the answer.  She instead directed the State Transportation Department to find a more ''fiscally responsible'' alternative, such as improving ferry services, and to create a list of other uses for the money that congress had allocated without specific earmark instructions.

In their attacks on Senator Ted Stevens for his support of the bridge, the Alaskan Democratic Party even credited Sarah Palin with ending the project.  Ironically, both Barack Obama and Joseph Biden voted for the “Bridge to Nowhere.”  In fact, they voted for it twice, the second time rejecting an amendment by Senator Tom Coburn that would have diverted funds from the bridge to Hurricane Katrina relief.

While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbying firm and secured $27 million in earmarks for her town.  This isn't hypocrisy, it was her job to help her town, and earmarks are only a problem when they are wasteful, serving only useless pet projects, or as payback for political campaign donations.  While critics have cited that Alaska receives more money from the federal government per resident than any other state, the sheer size of Alaska relative to its population (it has 3 electoral votes, the same as Delaware) might suggest why.  Just because fewer people use the same sewage system doesn’t mean that the sewage system shouldn’t be maintained.

As governor, she significantly reduced the state's requests for federal money: $197 million this year and $256 million her first year, compared to $350 million the last year of her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski.  Just last year, she said to the state legislature that Alaska "cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government earmarks."  Her administration went on to request money for only "the most compelling needs," for which she has earned praise from the watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste.  In March, the Anchorage Daily News reported, “Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is aggravated about what he sees as Gov. Sarah Palin's antagonism toward the earmarks he uses to steer federal money to the state.” 

Senator Barack Obama, who is also running as a change agent, has requested $860 million in earmarks over three years according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.  His position against earmarks began shortly after he began his presidential campaign, and when he co-sponsored a moratorium on earmarks, a bill that was authored by Senator John McCain.  Before then, he voted for a bill by Senator Harry Reid that was criticized by Citizens Against Government Waste because it would shield earmarks from public scrutiny.  Despite Obama’s obvious vulnerability on this subject, Palin remains the primary target of the media.

When Palin does reduce spending, she of course gets hammered.  She has been criticized for reducing the funding for Covenant House Alaska, a transitional home for teen mothers, from $5 million to $3.9 million.  The press has painted this as hypocritical because Palin’s daughter is now pregnant.  But this is exactly why states have given governors line-item veto power: because legislatures tend to throw money at programs without looking at how that money is spent.  Just this year, Palin has cut the state’s budget by 10%, saving $268 million.

Palin, however, did not cut the budget for children with special needs, as some have claimed, again looking for hypocrisy in relevance to her child.  In reality, she raised the funding for this program every year, from $203 million in 2006 to $276 million in 2009; and for intensive need students, she tripled the budget from $26,900 per student in 2008 to $73,840 per student in 2011, this according to Education Week.

The media have even taken Palin to task for bragging about putting the former governor’s state-owned Westwind II luxury jet on eBay for $2.7 million, and driving herself to work.  This move went over very well in Alaska, for the jet represented the many indulgences of the previous administration.  In reality, the eBay deal fell through and the jet was sold offline to businessman Larry Reynolds for $2.1 million, brokered by Republican John L. Harris, speaker of the Alaskan House of Representatives.  But even if the original eBay deal fell through, isn’t the point that she sought to sell the jet in the first place, and that it eventually did sell?  For the record, she does drive herself to work.

A Dichotomy of Experience

At issue is the Governor’s experience (how any democrat can argue this with a straight face is staggering).  One columnist was amazed that McCain would pick someone who “has never even appeared a single time on Meet the Press.”  Of course this begs the question that few have asked: If a first term governor isn’t ready to be vice president, how can a first term senator be ready for the presidency (especially if he has spent most of that term running for president)?

In defense of his own lack of experience, Barack Obama once cited a comment by Bill Clinton during the 1992 election: 

The same old experience is irrelevant. You can have the right kind of experience or the wrong kind of experience. And mine is rooted in the real lives of real people, and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.

If the right kind of experience is executive experience, then Palin has more executive experience than any of the four candidates, having been governor of an energy rich state of 700,000 citizens.  The Alaska governor’s office has been ranked as one of the most powerful in the country due to its potential length of service, its budgetary and appointment authority, and especially its veto power.  It has more power than the governorship of California or for that matter, Arkansas, from where Bill Clinton was elected president.  And unlike a senator casting one out of a hundred votes, a governor, like a president, must live with the consequences produced, either directly or indirectly from their decision.  Obama, Biden, and McCain’s executive experiences are limited to their campaign staffs.

Palin first had a career outside of politics, as a sports journalist, commercial fisherman, and as a state and oil gas commissioner.  At the age of 28, she entered politics and won a seat on the Wasilla city council.  Four years later she defeated the three-term incumbent mayor of Wasilla and removed all of his cronies from the government.  Her rise was based on challenging the good-ole-boy establishment of her own party in Alaska, a state dominated by the same people since its inception, thus earning her reputation as a change-agent.  The Wall Street Journal has remarked that:

Governor Palin's credentials as an agent of reform exceed Barack Obama's. Mr. Obama rose through the Chicago Democratic machine without a peep of push-back. Alaska's politics are deeply inbred and backed by energy-industry money. Mr. Obama slid past the kind of forces that Mrs. Palin took head on.

85% of Alaska’s state revenue comes from the oil industry, which consequently funds most political campaigns.  The GOP particularly has been rolling in money from an industry that practically owns the state.  When politicians retire from office, they usually end up lobbying for Big Oil.  Palin directly targeted the lobbyist-legislator relationship that was so prevalent in Alaska politics.

While serving on the state’s Oil and Gas Commission, she oversaw production of the largest petroleum reserves in America.  There she went after the Republican chairman, Randy Ruedrich, who had illegally taken money from oil companies.  This led to his resignation and a $12,000 fine.  In 2005 she announced her run for governor and defeated the incumbent Republican, Frank Murkowski, for the party’s nomination before going on to win the general election.  During this campaign, she was told that she would be running not just against Governor Murkowski, but the “whole state Republican party.”  Fortunately, her grassroots campaign attracted plenty of independents.

After winning the governorship, Palin immediately fired or demoted several top officials at the Department of Natural Resources and appointed a new director.  Her toughness won her much public support, but often alienated her from Republican legislators.  Still, she was able to work with Democrats to pass anti-corruption laws.  Former Alaskan state Democratic Rep. Ethan Berkowitz said of her, “Governor Palin has made her name fighting corruption within her own party, and I was honored when she stepped across party lines and asked me to co-author her Ethics White Paper.”

Why McCain Picked Palin

To the dismay of the Left, Palin helps distinguish McCain from Bush while at the same time she excites the conservative base of the party. Her selection reestablishes McCain as an innovator as well as a real reformer, one who will shake up Washington just as Teddy Roosevelt did.  Palin, whom the Washington Post has labeled “A Tenacious Reformer” complements McCain’s contrast with Obama’s spending habits, specifically his support for earmarks, ethanol subsidies, and the ever-bloated farm bill.  Both McCain and Palin have stood up to the powers that be in their own parties: Palin at the state level and McCain at the national level.  The McCain/Palin reform ticket is proof that Republicans at least acknowledge that their own party is part of the corruption problem. Barack Obama has yet to challenge his party on anything other than the nomination.

Most importantly, McCain has garnered the media’s attention away from Obama.  Palin is now the focus of this campaign and may come to represent the change America so craves.  Obama has even taken the bait by attempting to defend his credentials against Palin’s, which only highlights his deficits when compared to McCain.  And McCain now intends to win not by attacking Obama, but by offering a positive message of real change that is based on pragmatism, rather than random and unspecified hope.  The real accomplishments of both he and his running mate now lead the way.

It is clear that John McCain’s choice was fully vetted, despite his late decision. Palin helps in so many ways, but not because she is a woman.  If McCain’s choice was solely about gender and winning Hillary votes, he could have went with Olympia Snowe, Elizabeth Dole, Meg Whitman, Kay Baily Hutchison, Susan Collins, or Carly Fiorina.  It so happens that there were only two candidates, man or woman, who fit McCain’s reformer credentials: Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin.

The Ideological Basis For Attacking Palin

Why is it that her daughter’s sex life or her husband’s 1986 DUI is fair game for the front page, but not Obama’s past drug use, his twenty-year relationship with a rabidly racist preacher (who has now mysteriously disappeared from public life), or for that matter his relationship with an admitted and proud left-wing terrorist? Does equality stop at the door of ideology?  Writing in the New York Post, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann described Palin as an “existential threat to the Democratic Party” because her rise, like that of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, or Clarence Thomas, threatens the party’s hold on a core constituency.  “Democrats can't stomach seeing the feminist movement's impetus for greater female political participation and empowerment ‘hijacked’ by a pro-life woman who espouses traditional values.”  It would be like the president of a labor union being a Republican.

Writing in the Financial Times, Clive Crook sums up the problem for democrats:

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

The purpose of all these false reports, these omissions of inconvenient facts, and the rush to publish lurid allegations before they are properly sourced, is not to portray truth, but rather to establish an idea: the idea that Sarah Palin is a religious fanatic, an unqualified dip, or a lying and manipulative political operative.  This is an example of what former Leftist radical David Horowitz would call an “ideological concoction”; an “incendiary device” designed to create controversy where none exist.  The Left seems so obsessed with their own “progressiveness” that the mere possibility that the first woman elected to a national executive office may end up being a Republican is simply unfathomable.  As true zealots, their words deny this possibility while their actions set out to fulfill their own prophesies.  This can’t happen; therefore it won’t, no matter the means.

In contrast, libertarian Camille Paglia writes in Salon, “A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.”  Palin represents “an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism.”  J.R. Dunn of American Thinker regards her as an “archetype of the American frontierswoman.”  After all, it was the Western states that first granted voting rights to women long before the 19^th constitutional amendment of 1920.  Frontier women faced the same hardships as men did and were already regarded as equals.  Dunn writes:

It was the women -- and their families -- who made the land bend, who brought with them a sense of permanency, who civilized the frontier. Where men went, they created forts and outposts. When women followed, they established settlements and towns.

Historically, it was often the high society ladies of the East who fought against granting suffrage to women.  This is the disparity between Palin’s feminism and the establishment feminism.  Hers is about equal opportunity; theirs is an ideological litmus test.

For the record, Sarah Palin is against same-sex marriage, but as governor she did veto a bill that would have blocked health benefits for partners of gay public employees.  She also opposed efforts by her party to add abortion restriction measures to a legislative session on oil and gas policy.  She has sued the federal government to stop it from making polar bears an endangered species and she favors drilling in ANWR.  But she has also levied a windfall tax on oil companies.  She also stood up to those same companies and supported a more eco-friendly natural gas pipeline instead of the oil pipeline that they desired.

On a more personal level, the Palins’ son shipped off to Iraq on September 11.  Her husband Todd is part Yupik Eskimo, a snowmachine racing champion, a member of the steelworkers’ union, and an oil production operator for BP.  The family also owns a commercial fishing business. Sarah smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska and her kids all have hippie names.

Dennis Miller pointed out that Sarah Palin’s biggest sin is that she is normal and that she is so comfortable with her normality, it makes some people uncomfortable.  “She unnerves people who define their life by their need to be precious….  Sarah Palin would be sheepish to be an icon, but in her day-to-day life, she would be happy to inspire a singular girl.”

She is not a savior, an idol, a rock star, or any sort of self-righteous demagogue.  But she is a working mother role model, as well as a family woman with traditional values, who likes to hunt, who loves her husband, and who deals with family problems the way most families do.  She is the only candidate of the four who still lives a middle class life and sends her children to public school.  Her lineage is neither affluent nor well connected and so her success is based solely on her audacity, independence, and merit: what feminism aspires to be.  Neither her status as the nation’s most popular governor, nor any political ambitions have led her to see it necessary to write a book about herself.  Most importantly, she doesn’t care what people think of her, because no matter what the cosmopolitan media may say is wrong with her, she remains comfortable with herself.  Because of this, she has been marked an apostate.

A Proper Vetting of Palin

Of course, the media must do its job and vet for the public any candidate for a major political office.  Sarah Palin’s public service record is fair game and we shouldn’t set out to Obamamize her as a celebrity of the GOP, especially when some of her ideas may seem more populist than conservative.  Her performances during interviews have raised some questions about her qualifications, though we should be careful not to confuse plain nervousness with general ability.  Our complaint is that the media has spent less time attempting to unearth facts and reporting what is verifiably true, and far more time on speculative titillation.

It is clear that Governor Palin is a novice at foreign policy, and both she and McCain would do well to stop claiming that the proximity of Alaska to Russia somehow makes her command of the Alaska National Guard more qualifying.  However, unlike Obama, she has negotiated with a foreign government, this being Canada, our largest trading partner and energy supplier, to construct a 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline that has been called, “the biggest construction project in U.S. history.”  This while Obama seeks to marginalize Canada by ending NAFTA.

More importantly, the positions she does hold are the right ones: strong national defense, fighting a war on offense, support for Israel, and a refusal to negotiate with terrorists on any terms.  Contrast this with Joseph Biden, whose appeasement policies led to the Washington Post labeling him “Tehran’s favorite senator.”  Charlie Gibson’s interview with Palin on this subject was filled with annoyed contempt and condescending elitism on his part, and so actually did more to help Palin than hurt her.  That so many in the media feel she blundered when asked about the Bush doctrine only shows their own lack of knowledge of what actually compiles the Bush doctrine: it’s not just preemption, but also unilateralism, making no distinction between terrorists and nations that harbor terrorists, nuclear nonproliferation and the right to take out suspected WMD sites, and of course spreading democracy.

Further, the press has tried to put her inexperience in geopolitics front and center while simultaneously ignoring the inexperience of Barack Obama.  Sara Kugler of the Associated Press wrote on Sarah Palin’s meetings with various world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, calling it a “crash course on foreign policy” for Palin who “has never met a foreign head of state.”  The article went on to complain that the McCain campaign “banned reporters from the start of the meetings, so as not to risk a question being asked of Palin.”  Though the AP objected to this decision, they were silent when Obama did not include reporters during his first-time meetings with heads of state while on his July European tour.  Then, the AP only nonchalantly remarked that the trip was meant to “burnish his international credentials.”  (It should also be noted that Sara Kugler, the journalist reporting on Sarah Palin’s UN meetings, has donated money to America Coming Together, a liberal 527 interest group that was recently fined $775,000 for violating federal campaign finance laws.)

Those in the mainstream media still remain somewhat divided on exactly what makes Sarah Palin a poor selection.  Some have painted McCain’s decision as impulsive and others have described it as politically calculated.  On Sarah Palin herself, the Left’s new antichrist, the media and some in the Democratic Party continue their united and unsightly war:

On the McLaughlin Group, Eleanor Clift remarked that, “If the media reaction is anything, it's literally laughter in many places across newsrooms.” Sally Quinn in Newsweek said, “It is political gimmick …  I find it insulting to women, the Republican party and to the country.”  The chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Carol Fowler, claimed that Sarah Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”  Maureen Dowd of the New York Times opined, “They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West.” Congressman Alcee Hastings said, “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”  Professor Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago, declared that Sarah Palin's "greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."  And writing for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Heather Mallick said that Palin "added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up: the white trash vote."

Comedian/actress Sandra Bernhard warned Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she be “gang-raped.”  Congressman Steve Cohen compared Barack Obama to Jesus Christ and Sarah Palin to Pontius Pilot.  Hanna Rosin wrote in Slate of Palin’s “wreck of a home life,” and Oprah Winfrey has refused to allow Palin on her show.  Roseanne Barr fears for women, that Palin will “overturn our right to vote,” Rep. Charles Rangel called her “disabled,” and of course, Bill Maher, in an expression of Hollywood superiority, called Governor Palin a “stewardess.”

Hurrah for diversity … that is diversity on certain terms.  At this point we might as well have a state-controlled media and refer to Barack Obama as our “Dear Leader” and anyone that opposes him as a demon incarnate.  If this were happening to a Democrat, it would be a movie within a year; but when it’s a Republican ... well then, anyone is welcome to write the script on Sarah Palin’s inquisition, but good luck selling it to Hollywood.  But back to reality: I hope women are watching, for if they are and the Left continues to laugh at Palin, the long-term consequences could be drastic.

Matt Danko is a freelance writer based in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Contact via danko@libertysociety.net