The reaction to Palin since she was chosen as McCain’s running mate has been at polar extremes, much of it virulently negative. I don’t know why. To listen to some people, you’d think that Alaska is a third-world country.
Antagonists either stigmatize her or treat her as though she has no grey matter between the ears. Even Kathleen Parker, a prominent conservative columnist, has come down hard on Palin. The piling on continues. Let me share with you what I think:
Sarah Palin is intelligent. That’s right, intelligent. Without smarts, you don’t get to be a governor and to survive and thrive in the political battles which she won in Alaska. Her detractors would like to label her as the brunette version of a dumb blonde – both sexist insults, but political correctness restrains them from saying what they think. She is tough. After getting bushwhacked several times in a couple of unprepared TV interviews, she jumped right back into the fight, seemingly stronger than before, a quick learner.
She is even-tempered. Not once have I seen her lose her cool under relentless campaign pressure. She evokes jealously: Palin has had the guts to have succeeded in a man’s world while simultaneously achieving what women do splendidly – being a loving wife and mother. That has got to stick in the craw of the dying breed of 1960’s-style feminists. She can be self-deprecating; that was evident in her appearance on Saturday Night Live.
She has a magnetic personality and is the best- looking woman on the campaign circuit: Is she supposed to apologize for that? Is she supposed to put a bag on her head? The woman has charisma and is using it almost effortlessly to her advantage. And why not? Others only wish.
OK! OK! She doesn’t have any international exposure and foreign policy experience. She hasn’t hobnobbed with the Washington, D.C. cocktail party crowd. She isn’t a national economics whiz. She doesn’t come from an ivy-league school. She doesn’t charm the New York Times. She doesn’t have the sophistication of Northeast intellectuals and the approval of Hollywood narcissists.
Nor has she taken bribes; or slept around like so many of our prominent Washington officials; or become addicted to drugs, drinking and drunk driving, like a few D.C. Senators and Representatives from prominent families; or aborted a Down Syndrome baby; or taken to abandoning a practicing faith; or rejected her daughter for getting pregnant; or gone along to get along with her own Republican party caught up in scandal and bribery in Alaska.
Whatever else may be said, the woman has integrity.
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