Gov. Palin

The Alaskan Governor is a very good public speaker. She delivers a speech, while written by others, in a way that shows she can put her own voice into it. In other words, she owned it. And the Republicans at the convention loved it.

She learned from the Obama acceptance speech to look into the camera nearly full time. That may have been a wiser choice of camera location than for Sen. Obama. So she may have connected better with the TV audience.

She also learned a lot of international politics in a hurry because she traversed the pronunciations and ideas in the most complex part of the speech. What she actually knows may not be relevant because she can present it with a little background and practice, something most politicians have to be able to do since the world is so complex.

She is not to be underestimated . . . even if she says "noocular" like President Bush. She is a formidable opponent for the Democrats as far as stage presence and cleverness is concerned.

-"Cleverness" is to be distinguished from "intelligence" in my use today in this way: intelligence includes a vast amount of information at the disposal of the clever mind. Spin doctors like Dan Bartlett are clever too. It takes intelligence to realize what the spin is and to counter it.* -

She will be effective in the debates. One of her opponents in the governor's race failed to get her to be more specific in her responses to questions. She is very capable of presenting generalities which are hard to disagree with and can stay among them despite pressure to give more content. In her speech last night, she was given specifics to counter that critique. But she will probably be capable of sounding good in the debates without them.

She is a popular governor. Alaskans voted for her because she promised to involve them in the profits of the energy companies. She negotiated a different deal than her predecessor and as a result, during her first year in office, every Alaskan man, woman, and child, received around $1,600. That would give any governor an 80 per cent approval rating.

She is a clever person. She has spun that negotiation into "standing up to the oil companies" without having to say she is also fully supporting their expanded exploration and exploitation of Alaska's energy.

Will she draw the disenchanted "Hillary voters" to the Republicans?

That is the major gamble of her selection by Sen. McCain.

That is hard to say.

If the Republican women had come to Sen. Clinton's aid when she was concerned about sexism against her, there is a good chance the Clintonites might vote Republican this time. Instead, she was called a "whiner" by Republicans (including Gov. Palin!) and their women remained silent.

If Gov. Palin was pro-choice, there would be a chance of cross-over voting.

Most likely, the followers of Sen. Clinton who refuse to vote for Obama will just pass on that vote but vote for Democratic Congressional candidates. That will be terribly important in final results of the Nov. 4 elections.

In the meantime, what I will be most interested in watching is how soon Gov. Palin takes the spotlight away from Sen. McCain and how he will react to it. We may see as soon as Sen. McCain's acceptance speech tonight . . . .

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*Update: There are many words related to the intellectual capabilities of a person. My little statement about "clever" and "intelligent" doesn't come close to adequately assessing Gov. Palin's astuteness.

She is a very sharp person. As a colleague said of her, "She's a quick study." That was apparent to me as I noted above.

Wise? Intellectual? Scholarly? Reasonable? I am not ready to use those words to describe Gov. Palin. But she has as potent a set of "smarts" as any of the major politicians today and I hope the Democrats will not learn that the hard way.