Sarah Barracuda!!!!

Link: Poynter Online - Al's Morning Meeting.

The governor has roots in local government, serving two terms on the Wasilla City Council and two terms as the mayor/manager of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 6,700 people whose average family income is $53,000.

[...]

RealClear Politics gives this background for the Alaska Governor:

When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her fierce competitiveness.

Holy Crap!

Sarah Heath Palin has just been named Sen. John McCain's running mate for the highest office in the country!

I know I'm strongly backing Barack Obama now that Hillary is out, but I just HAVE to note this. I mean, it isn't every day somebody you know from high school has a chance to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the single remaining global super-power nation (as opposed to global super-power corporations, for instance, which are more powerful than many nations).

Oh Sarah, I wish I could vote for you, but I am SO pumped that you got named for this. Wow. What an amazing life and career you are having!

Link: McCain taps Alaska Gov. Palin as vice president pick - CNN.com.

[...]

Palin, 44, is a first-term governor who unseated incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2006 and went on to defeat former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, in the general election.

She will be the first woman to be nominated for vice president as a Republican and only the second to run for vice president on a major party ticket, after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Palin also will be the first Alaskan to be on the ticket for either party.

[...]

Yeah, people in Alaska woke up to a pretty big surprise today. My mom called, cuz her sister called from Wisconsin to wake her up and tell her. I was on the road, and I stop to type this in a truck stop restroom, after listening to the announcement on the radio.

I'm just trying to imagine how she'll do in the debate with Sen. Joe Biden. It's hard for me to wrap my head around. I mean, this is somebody with the same college degree as I got (journalism), whom it was my duty to guard as a point guard for many years, as cross-town rivals. And yes, she generally fouled out more than I did. I attended a basketball camp where her dad coached one summer.

I'm also pretty sure I covered at least one beauty pageant she was in, when I was a photog for the local paper in the mid-80s. That was my beat the summer of '85, and it was thrilling, let me tell you.

My mom is just freaked out that their little Wasilla mayor is up for vice president!   

McCain apparently is making a concerted effort to reach out to former supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton who may be unhappy with the choice of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee.  Reacting to the choice of Palin, Ferraro said, "I believe that people will look back and assess how Hillary was treated by the media during the campaign primaries. And it remains to be seen whether or not the ugly head of sexism -- in the media -- will raise its head again."

[...]

Sarah is an unorthodox political original, I'll give her that. If anybody tries that sexist crap with her, she'll find a way to knock them back on their asses. I've been knocked on my ass a few times by her, and I can vouch for that.

My friends have wondered how I reconcile my enthusiasm for Sarah's political fortunes with my own politics, which are quite different from hers. I really don't have a good answer, because, from growing up in Alaska, I was never that bothered around people with political views widely divergent from my own. That's just normal up there! Nobody in Alaska marches in lockstep. If you went around breaking with people you disagreed with on X or Y, you'd have no friends left. It is a state of extremes, and that's why people go there, live there, love it there. 

I don't think McCain will be the best president, and I'm now completely on board with Obama/Biden.

When I was a kid, I dreamed about going to law school, or going into politics. In high school I applied for and desperately coveted the internship with the now-notorious Sen. Ted Stevens. Then along the way, I sort of lost my dream. It didn't come for kids like me, I was told. My dad was a construction worker, my mom an elementary teacher. I didn't get into the elite schools. I have student loans up the ass. I took classes that talked about how hard it was to break into those rare air spaces. I just figured, for me, it wasn't in the cards. I wrote it off as a door that only opens to people of great privilege.

I never dreamed I'd end up working in Arkansas as a journalist, where I met this guy, the governor, and his wife, and later taught at their school for high school gifted kids. And NEVER in a MILLION YEARS would I have guessed that I'd been running up and down the basketball court in high school with a future vice presidential candidate.

(Nor would I have guessed I'd be typing out this blog post on free wifi inside a stinky truck stop rest room in PA, the laptop balanced on top of an overflowing wastebasket! LOL!)

But Sarah, you GO GIRL! I know what theme song they'll play for you! Heart: Barracuda!

Comments

[Tristan]

I'm not trying to start a flame war here, this is a serious question.

I understand that you know her, but how can you think that she'd make a good president? She's been governor for 2 years and before that a mayor of 9,000 people. That just seems like a mistake by the republican party. I'm voting for Obama, but I just don't get how anyone can vote for McCain now seeing as he'll probably die before his term is up and the country would be left in the hands of a 44 year old who has no background in politics.

[DrM]

Hey, I'm votin' for her. It won't be easy and I am aware that it's not in my best self-interest, if I'm trying to be rational. But on a gut level, which is what most people vote on, I'm still so completely p*ssed about what Obama and dems did to my gal Hil, I'm not going to pass up this opportunity to vote for a woman VEEP who may be Prez someday.

Obama wouldn't do much for lgb issues anyway, I'm sure of it. He's not really good for much, imo. Sure does look and talk pretty (tho his speech Thurs was nothing compared to Hilary's Tues - in fact I'd already heard his Thurs speech 4 years ago) - but that's about it, as far as I can see after 19 mos of watching.

Not to mention Palin was born in ID (where I grew up) and was at U of I in Moscow while I was at WSU in Pullman. I just know our paths crossed somewhere ... probably while she was outside picketing one of our LGB student union dances ...

But who cares, I'm votin' for her! One for the girls!!

If McCain wanted to win over disgruntled Hillary supporters, it worked with me. And I have to say I'm impressed with McCain's political savvy with this pick. It cracks me up how now people who argue that Obama is qualified to be prez (ha!) try to at the same time argue that Palin isn't qualified enough for VEEP. Umm ... she has more experience than he does ... AND she's not at the top of the ticket.

And I think Obama's passing Hillary over for VEEP will turn out to be one of the great political blunders of all time. Not all that unexpected for someone who's just a pretty face, and imo an arrogant one at that!

[Chris Boese]

Just a quick reply to Tristan:

You raise good points, and I am hoping for Sarah's sake she does all right in the debate with Biden.

But she ain't no Dan Quayle, I can tell you that. Just because she's been tucked up in Alaska (as many talented people are, hiding away up there, by choice), doesn't mean she won't study her playbook and be quick with decent replies.

Here's where I give her points: you gotta understand what it means to stand up to the oil companies in Alaska. Before she did it, it was inconceivable to me that ANY Alaskan politician could do it. These are companies who rule the world, who dictate terms, pay off whomever they want in whatever countries they want, and have corrupted Alaska politics long before I ever moved up there in 1976.

But like Oklahoma, they are the only game in town for Alaska. Without oil, the state has no economy to speak of.

So what do I give Sarah credit for? Her political resume IS as lite as Obama's, and while she's one year younger than I, Obama is one year older than I am. Obama's lite resume (community organizing? Fancy word for what Sarah was doing in Alaska in her school board and as mayor, if you ask me) includes Harvard Law, but any Alaskan resume includes the deep foundational credo: "We don't give a damn how they do things Outside" (meaning Lower 48). To my mind, that unorthodoxy, surgically implanted into your backbone, leads many supremely qualified people, multi-generational families, to essentially give the Eastern establishment the finger, and to make their religion the common sense logic of Huck Finn, who "lights out for the territory" to be able to start with a cleaner slate than any given establishment will allow. That same motivation also led a lot of Northern Europeans to settle in a so-called "New World," and legions of immigrant waves to follow in succeeding years.

But the main thing I give Sarah Palin credit for is integrity, and lord knows, the GOP needs a MASSIVE dose of that. And truly? What kind of a woman does the GOP pick? They got Elizabeth Dole, and they picked Sarah. Sexist GOP piggies THINK they got a pretty prop that they can trot out when they need her, then go off into smoke-filled rooms to take their orders from Karl Rove and Cheney.

I mean, look at what they did to Christine Todd Whitman. Republicans favor women politicians as quiet props who keep in their place.

I bet you Frank Murkowski is STILL wishing Sarah were that kind of a woman. And I can't stop grinning, because she isn't, and she is walking into Rove's world with her eyes open and integrity in place. They are betting they can corrupt her with politics as usual. I am betting that she could take down more ethically-challenged Republicans from the INSIDE than Woodward and Bernstein ever did!

Think of it. What would Donna Haraway's "feminist cyborg guerrilla" come from, if she were set up to subvert from inside the belly of the GOP beast?

Chris

[Dr. RM]

One has to be nearly brain dead or hyper-partisan and intellectually dishonest to suggest Obama's governing credentials are better than Palin's. She brings real governing experience to the table. Neither Obama or Biden has any such experience. She has a lucid vision of the near term energy needs of the nation whereas Obama-Biden feel beholden to the environmental extremist lobby in Washington. She knows (as Obama has finally admitted) we are winning in Iraq primarily as a result of the McCain-advocated surge. It is an irony the left is accusing the GOP VP candidate of having little experience when the guy at the top of their ticket has absolutely zero! Governers "govern" whereas senators debate and campaign and spend time being entertained by lobbyists. If this distinction is lost on you allow me to suggest a contrast-enhanced MRI scan of the brain.

By the way, Chris, I do agree with Gen. Newbold's statement posted at the top of your blog. I have no doubt John McCain also agrees. Had McCain been elected in 2000 we would not be in Iraq now.

[dmarks]

"I mean, look at what they did to Christine Todd Whitman. Republicans favor women politicians as quiet props who keep in their place."

It had nothing to do with "quiet props". Whitman favored abortion, which is generally a liberal/left/Democrat position, and the Republicans could not embrace like that.