US Elections 2008 - 4

[acharya]

Le Monde, France
<b>With Sarah Palin, Republicans Hope to Have Found Their “Obama”</b>
By C. Ls.
The parallel is clear: with Sarah Palin, the Republicans hope to have found their “Messiah,” their “Obama.”
Translated By Sarah Whorton
09/04/08
France - Le Monde - Original Article (France)

You only need to see the cover of the Weekly Standard, the American neoconservative magazine, over the weekend, to find John McCain’s “bright idea.” “Is she what we were waiting for?’ asks the weekly magazine, toying with the phrase often employed by Barack Obama at the beginning of his campaign. The parallel is clear: with Sarah Palin, the Republicans hope to have found their “Messiah,” their “Obama.” “A ghost haunts the elite liberals in New York and Washington: the ghost of a young conservative, without inhibitions, attractive, from rural America, and free from the Bush administration’s mistakes,” writes editorialist William Kristol. “This ghost has a name: Sarah Palin.”

Barack Obama carefully prepared the way to launch his candidacy, and he told his story himself. Sarah Palin was totally unknown to the public, even though she is the most popular governor in the United States (80% approval rating). The media and Democratic blogs rushed to get her biography. John McCain’s staff did not foresee the flood of disclosures that followed.

Obvious Offense

For forty-eight hours, the entire country was buried in Palin’s familial complications and Wasilla, Alaska’s (population 8,000) local chronicles. Was she under pressure to have her ex-brother-in-law fired from the police force while engaged in a complicated divorce with her sister? An inquest was opened by the local assembly. Is she wedded to the petroleum lobbies?

Americans have also discovered the cultural difference that exists with Alaska. In the “48 contiguous states,” she is criticized for being too close to petroleum interests. But in Juneau (the capital of Alaska), she is almost considered “anti-petroleum” for daring to increase fees paid by the petroleum companies.

Mrs. Palin was also caught flip-flopping in the controversy over the “bridge to nowhere,” a project allowing Alaska to earn federal credits for constructing a bridge connecting the small town of Ketchikan (around 9000 inhabitants) to the island of Gravina, which houses several dozen residents. During her campaign, she was in favor of the bridge. Once elected, she changed her mind.

She is still criticized for recruiting a lobbyist from Washington to obtain government grants, when she presents herself as a champion for reform. Todd Palin, her husband, has been criticized for being part of the Alaska Independence Movement. She also assisted in this organization’s meetings.

“Cultural War”

But it was the confirmation that Bristol, her 17-year old daughter, is pregnant, that raised sarcasm and relaunched the “cultural war” that sets the Right and Left against each other in terms of “values.” Until Mrs. Palin’s appearance, conservative Christians were, this year, not very mobilized. Attacks from the Left woke them up. “In the eyes of people who believe themselves to be sophisticated world citizens and who are proud of saving the planet by buying rights to pollute, a women who brought five children into the world is unbelievable,” writes the director of the right-wing review American Thinker.

Finally, Mr. McCain, who wanted, through Mrs. Palin, to restore his image of “independent,” finds himself associated with this “cultural war” that he didn’t arrange. Wednesday night, Sarah Palin attempted to rectify things. She did not question, in her speech, either abortion or creationism, and hardly mentioned God. She presented herself as representing small town America, anti-elite, the America of people who “produce their food, run their own factories, and fight their own battles.”

“Country first!” is John McCain’s slogan. For chronicler David Brooks, a new cultural war is replacing the 1960s war: “Small town America against cosmopolitan America.”