Palin Channels Reagan and McCain's Old Self
By RICHARD STEIER
Two prominent Republicans of the past loomed large as I watched Sarah Palin address her party's convention Sept. 3: Rudy Giuliani and Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Giuliani proved to be an ideal act for her to follow. After his overbearing and condescending attack on Barack Obama, her more-carefully calibrated skewering of the Democratic nominee for President seemed far more convincing, even as she misstated several of his positions, most notably his tax proposals.

The description of her by a few GOP enthusiasts afterward as "a female Reagan" resonated because, like the Gipper, she offered a likable persona that for a TV viewer seemed so compelling that you were half-inclined to believe what she was saying even when you knew better.

Dr. Melfi Meets the Farmer's Daughter

The net effect — physical appearance and speaking style — was a cross between Dr. Jennifer Melfi, the psychiatrist on "The Sopranos," and Katy, the title character in "The Farmer's Daughter," which won Loretta Young an Academy Award 60 years ago for her portrayal of a young woman from a rural background whose good nature, common sense and honesty elevate her from a Congressman's maid to a Member of Congress by the end of the movie.

MS. PALIN GOES TO TOWN: In her speech accepting the Republican nomination for Vice President, Sarah Palin's endearing demeanor and slashing words created an effect that fit her self-description as a 'pit bull with lipstick.'

To the extent that national elections are personality contests, Governor Palin provided a huge shot of adrenalin for John McCain's campaign. Much of her speech was crafted by Matthew Scully, President Bush's wordsmith, but the manner in which she delivered it was at least as important as what she said. Anyone who doubted that merely had to remember the impressions created by those who preceded her, including Mr. Giuliani, Independent Joe Lieberman and Fred Dalton Thompson, who reminded us that maybe nodding off throughout his own run for the presidency hadn't damaged his chances that much.

Mr. Giuliani's keynote address, which ran long and delayed the start of Ms. Palin's, was meant to offer red meat to the convention delegates by carving up Mr. Obama. Having been postponed a day as one consequence of Hurricane Gustav, he was like a pitcher who was a bit too strong on an extra day's rest.

That became evident at the outset, when he departed from his prepared text to add "left-wing" to a line about the media not being the ones who would decide the next President. While that sort of reference plays well among Republican delegates, Mr. Giuliani has twice been lionized by many of the outlets right-wingers associate with that phrase — first for his success in reducing crime here, and later for his moving words on 9/11 — and so coming from him it sounded phony even by his high standards for that category.

Moments later, he sneered at Mr. Obama's starting his career after graduation from Harvard Law School by working as "a community organizer." When the delegates erupted in laughter, our former Mayor chuckled a bit, then said, "Okay. Maybe this is the first problem on the resume."

The implication was that this work was a step below that of being an errand boy, a job Mr. Giuliani took later in life when, as the third-ranking official in the Justice Department, he carried the Reagan Administration's water in making the case against granting political asylum to Haitians seeking to flee the murderous Duvalier regime, claiming that they were seeking to come to the U.S. primarily for economic reasons.

Staten Island State Sen. Diane Savino noted the following morning, "The truth is that it's community organizers who do most of the work that winds up coming to us as elected officials. I'm not out there knocking on doors finding out what's bothering people; most of us are learning about it from those organizers."

Executive Deficits on Both Sides

Mr. Giuliani lit into Mr. Obama's lack of executive experience, saying, "He's never run a city, he's never run a state, he's never run a business, he's never run a military unit." All this was true, and is bound to be a major part of the argument against the Illinois Senator over the next two months. But except for the military aspect, the same could be said about Senator McCain, notwithstanding his far-greater experience in Washington. And as Ms. Savino noted, "After 30 years, if he couldn't effectuate change in Washington, why should we trust him to do it now?"

Mr. McCain himself didn't sound terribly convincing on that subject when he addressed the convention last Thursday night. It wasn't clear whether it was the rigors of the campaign or the reconfiguration of himself to become acceptable to the people who shape the Republican Party that weighed on him more, but he was oddly subdued as he accepted the political opportunity of a lifetime, except for the part near the end when he spoke of how being a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam had transformed him.

"I was dumped in a dark cell and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore," he said, beginning an eloquent and moving delineation of how he had been "broken" by his captors but rejuvenated by the caring and fraternity of his fellow prisoners.

"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in somebody else's," Mr. McCain said. "I wasn't my own man anymore — I was my country's."

Other than those moments, however, the Republican nominee never summoned the gusto that Governor Palin found in introducing herself to a national audience.

GOP's Privacy Paradox

The previous day, even before his speech, Mr. Giuliani had been the GOP's point person in St. Paul, attacking the media for its insatiable interest in all rumors and details pertaining to the pregnancy of Ms. Palin's 17-year-old daughter and insisting that this was a private matter. True enough, but so is the issue of whether a woman decides to carry a pregnancy to term or not, and yet the GOP has used the abortion issue election after election to fire up its base voters on the religious right and to question the morality of Democratic candidates who support a woman's right to choose. Given Governor Palin's strong positions against both abortion and sex education in the schools, the media would have been remiss if it had not focused on her family drama.

The GOP tried to turn the controversy to its advantage, shining a brighter spotlight on Bristol Palin and her fiancé, Levi Johnston, by flying him out from Alaska and placing him on stage at her side, even as questions intensified about whether the McCain campaign had blundered in not vetting his running-mate more carefully.

But given a chance to dispel the impression that she would bring the Arizona Senator more trouble than support, Governor Palin made the most of her roots and her family.

She spoke tenderly of her infant son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, and told others who have special-needs children, "I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

She used a paean to those who come from small towns both to establish common cause and to take hard swipes at Senator Obama and his wife Michelle. Speaking of those who grew up and made lives there, Governor Palin said, "They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America."

Using Small Towns As Weapon

Referring to her previous elected office as Mayor of Wasilla, she remarked, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening."

In those sentences, she had lanced Michelle Obama for her remark earlier this year that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country, and harpooned her husband for his response to a question at a San Francisco fund-raiser about why he was having such trouble winning support among working-class white voters.

A few minutes later, she derided Senator Obama as "a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform."

It was a vivid preview of the primary avenue of attack Republicans are likely to take for the rest of the campaign: try to use the words of a man they damn by praising him as a gifted orator to convince voters that he and Ms. Obama don't really care about them and their concerns.

Won't Win on Bush Coattails

It is the best shot Mr. McCain has, because if the debate pivots on the current state of the nation, it is hard to make a compelling case for a Republican candidate who has pledged to continue the key policies of the Bush Administration. The candidate himself never mentioned Mr. Bush by name during his acceptance speech, and while he alluded to the abuses of power by Republican leaders when they still controlled both houses of Congress, he was careful to use the word "we" in a way that made it seem as if Democrats there had been equal partners in the corruption and excesses.

Governor Palin's strongest words on her running-mate's behalf focused on the five-plus years he spent as a prisoner of war, calling him the only man "who has ever really fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat means death."

There was no contesting her words about how he "and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country."

A Past He's Renounced

But when she spoke about Mr. McCain the maverick, who put aside partisan interests to do what was best for the country, Ms. Palin was making a similar journey back to the past rather than describing her running-mate as he currently is. It is widely believed that he chose her primarily to prevent a rebellion from the GOP's right wing, and if he had been able to choose freely, he would be running with Mr. Lieberman. If so, that is just the latest example of how the Republican nominee has had to cast aside his old principles and ideas to ingratiate himself with those who control his party. It is why he supports continuation of the Bush tax cuts he voted against seven years ago, and why he sought the blessing of evangelical leaders whom he had branded "agents of intolerance" during his 2000 run for President.

That campaign actually provided the most curious note of Governor Palin's speech. Talking about his idealism, she said, "Senator McCain's record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency — from the primary election of 2000 to this very day."

Really Means Bush Forces

That primary election, of course, pitted him against then-Gov. George W. Bush, and those special interests and lobbyists had ties to Mr. Bush or his father and felt more comfortable that he would look out for them, a faith that has since been amply justified. Karl Rove, the former top adviser to President Bush who is said to have played the key role in heading off the possibility of Senator Lieberman becoming Mr. McCain's running mate, orchestrated the smear campaign during the 2000 South Carolina primary that among other things sought to convince voters that Mr. McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was a secret, out-of-wedlock black child.

And so Ms. Palin's bid for an applause line seemed aimed at convincing the delegates he had to overcome someone other than the very people Mr. McCain has since made his peace with to smooth his campaign ahead, this time using the oiliest gears of the party machinery on his behalf.

"She certainly is snappy and witty and can handle herself well, no doubt about it," State Senator Savino said. "She has a tremendous understanding of energy policy, whether you agree with her or not.

"But," she added, "during her speech there was absolutely no acknowledgment that the economy is in a recession, possibly going into a depression. There was no recognition of education policy."

Can't Win on the Issues

Those were hardly inadvertent omissions. As the standard-bearer for the party that has held the White House for the past eight years, Mr. McCain can no more run on the Bush Administration's meager achievements than he can overtly disown its greatest failures. And so he has to make the campaign one where personality and comfort level matter more than the issues and policy ideas that separate him from Mr. Obama.

Ms. Savino is among those who believe that conditions in the country are tough enough that voters won't get fooled again, as they did in 2004 when Mr. Bush convinced them to overlook the bad judgments that marked his first term to narrowly win re-election. She also questioned whether Ms. Palin's lack of experience — both in representing a larger constituency (Alaska's population falls well short of Brooklyn's) and on the larger governmental and media stage that Mr. Obama has occupied for the past four years — would catch up with her during the campaign.

"There are more people enrolled in Curtis High School up the street from my office than there are in the city where she was Mayor," Ms. Savino noted. "By her calculation, the Principal there could be the President of the United States."

But Ms. Palin's performance last week gave the McCain camp reason to hope that, even as it sought to paint Mr. Obama as the candidate trying to make up in style what he lacks in substance, stagecraft might drop the curtain on reality once more.

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