Mrs. Palin goes to town

Don't count out small-town America.

That was the message of Sarah Palin as she addressed the nation for the first time Wednesday night at the Republican convention in preparation for accepting the party's nomination as vice president.

She quoted an unnamed writer as saying, "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity and dignity." She might have gone on to add energy, strength and pugnaciousness to the list, because she showed herself to be a fighter and a formidable opponent.

It was a message addressed partly to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose campaign had been somewhat condescending to Palin before her speech, but probably won't be again.

Obama once infamously quipped that people from small towns "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" when politicians make promises they can't keep. Well, there is no doubt that politicians often mislead voters, but that doesn't mean you should dismiss the values of the voters. Instead, you should discount the promises of the politicians.

Maybe that's why Gov. Palin didn't spend a lot of time making promises in her speech; she instead talked about who she is. And it was clear when Gov. Palin spoke of her values, she did not do so out of frustration, but out of love - love of her country. If she believes in policies that are not the same as those espoused by Barack Obama, it is not because she is afraid or frustrated, but because her beliefs are based on her own values, small-town values, frontier values, the values that made America the great nation it is.

It was also clear that Palin's message about small-town America was being sent to the national media as much as to Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden. Small-town America maybe still hasn't made up its mind about this newcomer Obama, but they know exactly how they feel about the elite Washington establishment that tells people what to think.

The same talking heads who dismissed suggestions that Obama is not qualified to be president after one term as U.S. senator wasted no time laughing at the "inexperience" of a woman who has held elective office almost continuously since 1992, winning two terms as city councilor, two terms as mayor and a term as governor. When not in elective office, Palin chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and in the meantime, she has also raised a family of five children and enjoyed a successful 20-year marriage to her high school sweetheart, Todd.

Not too shabby for a woman with "no" experience. And everyone knows that what the media is really saying is that she is a Republican "woman" with no experience. If Montana's Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, had been tapped by Barack Obama to be vice president, would the Washington establishment be talking about his inexperience as a first-term governor? Or would they be celebrating his maverick credentials and his bolo tie?

The fact of the matter is Barack Obama SHOULD have picked Brian Schweitzer to run for vice president instead of Joe Biden. Biden is a career politician; Schweitzer is a breath of fresh mountain air. If Obama is the "change" candidate, he should have put some thought into what kind of change the American people want to see.

It is apparent that John McCain did just that. Despite the pundits telling him that he ought to pick someone safe like Tim Pawlenty, the milquetoast governor of Minnesota, McCain went for "Fire and Nice," a sometime nickname for Gov. Palin.

Is she ready to be vice president? You bet. She has all the qualifications. She is more than 35 years old, a natural born citizen and has lived in the United States for more than 14 years. That's what the Constitution asks for, plus one more thing… She needs to win a majority of the electoral votes cast for the office. To do that, she needs to be vetted - not by John McCain, not by the media, not by Barack Obama, but by the people of the United States of America. If we think she is ready to be vice president, then by God she is. And all the whining about it from the Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, MSNBC and the Democratic National Committee won't make a bit of difference.

In fact, it's very likely that the more people like Keith Olbermann, Sally Quinn and Oprah Winfrey complain about her, the more popular she will become.

That remains to be seen, but as Palin said in her acceptance speech Wednesday, "Here's a news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."

It reminds me heartily of the story of Longfellow Deeds, the folk hero of American cinema who was turned by Gary Cooper into a plainspoken voice of the common man in the movie "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town." As you probably remember, Deeds was a small-town Vermonter during the Great Depression whose worldly experience consisted mainly of writing greeting-card doggerel and playing the tuba. Like Palin, Deeds was thrust upon the world stage, in his case by inheriting $20 million, and like Palin, Deeds was mocked by the big-city journalists who found him too simple by half, and too decent by far.

But Deeds was an all-American who stood on the shoulders of small-town country folk like Lincoln and Thoreau. One famous scene takes place at Grant's Tomb, the burial place of Ulysses S. Grant, which his girlfriend tells him is "an awful letdown" to most people.

Deeds tells her, "that depends on what they see" and then tells her what he sees:

"Oh, I see a small Ohio farm boy becoming a great soldier. I see thousands of marching men. I see General Lee with a broken heart, surrendering, and I can see the beginning of a new nation, like Abraham Lincoln said. And I can see that Ohio boy being inaugurated as President - Things like that can only happen in a country like America."

The pundits in the media don't understand it, but that's what ordinary folks see when they watch Sarah Palin, too - a woman who raised herself up from a simple Idaho and Alaska upbringing to become governor of a great state and to inspire the nation with her example. Or maybe (and this is scary) the folks in the media do get it, and they just say the hurtful things about people like Sarah Palin because they don't care about anything except ratings.

Longfellow Deeds was hurt by the newspapers, too, but realized there was no point in worrying about them or what they would say because "they'll go on writing [those hurtful articles] until they get tired." But he didn't just stop there. In the script by Frank Capra, Deeds asks a question that is still resonant 75 years later:

"What puzzles me is why people seem to get so much pleasure out of hurting each other. Why don't they try liking each other once in a while?"

The same puzzlement probably intruded on the sincere joy and excitement of Sarah Palin last week as she thought about how she lives in an America where "every woman can walk through every door of opportunity." But I suspect her consternation didn't last long, even when the media attacked her family; she is, after all, a woman of character, and like most Americans a born optimist.

"Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests," she said. "The right reason" to serve in public office "is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it."

Sarah Palin, as a national figure, is only a week old, but it's clear already she wasn't born yesterday. For an "average hockey mom," she makes a pretty darn good vice-presidential candidate.

. Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com