Published: September 06, 2008 04:00 pm            

Unmatched experience: She may not have an extensive political background, but GOP veep candidate Sarah Palin brings assets few could match

TERRE HAUTE — Skeptics have spent the past 10 days accumulating doubts about Sarah Palin’s vice presidential qualifications. What unique things, they scoff, can she possibly bring to the table?

Apparently, moose meat and salmon don’t count.

Palin shares little in common, politically, with the man atop the rival Democratic ticket, Barack Obama. However, Palin and Obama make some Americans nervous for some of the same reasons. They grew up in states we vaguely understand — Obama in Hawaii and Palin in Alaska. They’re still raising young children. And, thus, they’re young themselves — Obama is 47 years old, and Palin’s 44.

The nagging rap on them is that they’re too inexperienced.

What exactly does that mean? To be “a heartbeat from the presidency,” must Palin be at least a two-term U.S. senator? (Fellow novice Obama is a mere first-termer.) Apparently, that’s now a requirement in this 2008 campaign, even though in this country’s entire history, Americans have elected only one sitting, multi-term senator as president — JFK in 1960.

Instead, Palin has been decried as just a first-term governor of a sparsely populated state, and a former small-town mayor. Her detractors insist McCain’s decision to catapult such a national unknown into the party’s No. 2 slot — alongside a guy who precariously would become the oldest elected president — was a cynical example of election pandering.

Even if McCain snidely (and wrongly) assumed scores of disillusioned Hillary Clinton Democrats would vote like zombies for him simply because he picked a female running mate, he still ended up with a strong VP candidate. Palin’s experience is an asset, not a liability. This lady became governor of one of our 50 states and serves while she and her blue-collar working husband are raising not one, not two, not three, not four, but five children.

Incredible. That’s experience few senators, cabinet members or diplomats could match.

Some write her off as another Dan Quayle, chosen simply to inject a camera-friendly face alongside the older No. 1 guy on campaign buttons and posters. But Palin didn’t rise to her governorship through wealthy family connections. Instead, she’s the daughter of a science teacher and a school secretary. Six years ago, Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Four years ago, Obama was an Illinois state senator, and he and his wife were still paying off student loans.

What they need, quibblers say, is more seasoning, another term in office. Yet, it’s that chronological proximity to the real-life situations of average Americans that gives Obama and Palin experience that is still fresh in their minds. That might explain the phenomenon derisively labeled “rock star status” that unfolded when Obama began an underdog campaign against a field of better-funded, more experienced Democrats, and when Palin grabbed national attention after McCain selected her instead of more well-known, veteran Republicans.

America has talent, and it can come from the Alaska pipeline, instead of the old-guard pipeline. For many among that so-called “rock star” audience, Palin and Obama validate that reality. To those folks, being 40 means you’re actually all grown up.

Perhaps even more people would be comfortable with Palin if she were 62 years old. That’s the average age of a U.S. senator. (Of course, the average age of an American is 37.)

Perhaps her VP candidacy would be less worrisome if Palin had graduated from an elite college, instead of a state school like the University of Idaho, where she studied journalism and political science after a series of transfers from other schools. Since 1961 (when Obama was born), we’ve had five presidents who received their degrees from Yale or Harvard (W. Bush, Clinton, H.W. Bush, Ford and Kennedy), one with a Duke diploma (Nixon) and another who earned a military academy degree (Carter, from the U.S. Naval Academy). LBJ followed up his Southwest Texas State Teachers College education with a stint at Georgetown, but didn’t finish. The possible exception was, notably, Ronald Reagan, the most famous alum of the well-regarded but more rural Eureka College in his home state of Illinois.

Perhaps Palin would get more respect if she hailed from a more prominent state like Texas, New York, Virginia or Ohio. Her hobbies seem foreign to a majority of Americans, as do the names she and her husband chose for their kids — Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper. (Some people still can’t accept a “Barack,” either.) But to native Alaskans — who are indeed full-fledged U.S. citizens — Palin’s lifestyle fits quite naturally. They like her. She’s a hockey mom who hunts big game, ice fishes and rides snowmobiles. Her husband, who was Palin’s high school beau, is a union guy working in the state’s oil fields. If she, instead, came from Indiana, Palin probably would be a basketball mom who hunts deer, bass fishes and rides 4-wheelers, and her husband might work for Toyota in Princeton. Their family faces the same trials and tribulations that millions of us do.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s short list of potential VPs included a fortysomething, first-term senator from an oft-overlooked state. The guy’s resume included a loss in a congressional election, and just five years earlier he’d been working as a Midwestern mayor. Yes, Richard Lugar probably was too young and inexperienced to be the Gipper’s running mate. Instead, Reagan chose an older, more seasoned VP, millionaire oil man George H.W. Bush.

Which brings us to 2008.

Palin and Obama are in their 40s, not their teens. Their policies, not their ages, deserve the greatest debate. They’re adults, and maybe it’s their critics who need to grow up.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

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