Great article. Read it.
The virulence of the reaction of the left and the personal tone that the feeding frenzy has taken is indeed largely culturally-based. Even out here in fly-over land (Lowry notes that Palin is in a part of the U.S. so remote that it technically isn't even in fly-over country,) the criticism seems to reflect a desire to want to mimic the rhetoric of the coastal leftish political smart set.
All of this is irrelevant, though. Can Sarah Palin do the job of being Vice President, and President if need be? Absolutely. One need go no further back than the most recent Presidential election: she is far more ready than John Edwards was in 2004, a man who had one undistinguished term in the U.S. Senate and who hardly showed up for that job, since he was too busy running for President.
Now that we think about it, John Edwards in 2004 was more qualified to be President than Barack Obama is in 2008 -- he had spent 6 years in the Senate with his primary job being running for President, while Sen. Obama has only spent 3 1/2 years in the Senate with his primary job being running for President.
The real question is this, and Lowry is not alone in pointing it out: can Gov. Palin withstand the rigors of the campaign trail in a national campaign? No one knows, and there is no way that anyone can know, until we see how she performs. If she handles herself with poise and confidence and if the McCain staff does a good job of running her part of the campaign, then the McCain/Palin ticket has an excellent chance of winning the election.
If she tanks, they could be on the receiving end of a blowout. Montana Headlines, like conservatives across the country, is rooting for her, but sympathy isn't enough -- she will need to perform well. Somehow, we suspect that she will. Much is made of whether the McCain camp vetted Palin sufficiently. They did, and they knew exactly what they were getting. Taking a chance? Absolutely, but McCain's team was smart enough to know that they weren't going to win this election if they played things safe. Good for them.
Update: a commenter brought attention to this piece by Peggy Noonan, who likewise nails it. Out of many great passages in this piece, one of the best is this, where after listing many of her manifestly attractive qualities, Noonan continues:
...conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.
She could become a transformative political presence.
So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.
And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there.
Read the whole thing. Especially her plain-spoken words to those who are dragging Palin's daughter through the mud.
