Sarah Palin: just like you

Ben Brody / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

Since the conception of American politics, voters have tried to convince themselves that the candidates were like them. They tried to reconcile the fact that even though most of the candidates were given a privileged upbringing and attended Ivy League schools, they could relate to middle America; that they would have the answers to the problems that plagued so many of their lives. However, this has shown to be faulty logical reasoning. Voters have come to realize that when the? advisors and focus group tested language disappear, what remains is an aloof, elite, power-hungry politician that doesn’t understand middle America. This election is different though; this election has Sarah Palin.

As any political scientist will note, successful candidates are ones that can form the deepest connections with voters. Think back to the primary elections, when pundits were saying that Obama was winning because he was the candidate that voters would most like to share a beer with. Then, a few weeks later, pictures surfaced of Hillary downing a beer in Ohio. Also, recall when Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and performed poorly. Candidates do these activities to make themselves relatable to the general public to show voters that they are in touch with middle America’s way of life. Palin does just that. She offers these Americans a bridge to the political elite.

Most of the time, candidates need to erect a facade outside that is atypical of their normal routine. For Palin, that is not the case. She is truly the manifestation of everything voters in middle America want in their elected representative. She is a smart and capable leader, but she is not far removed from her target audiences conditions. Palin has not forgotten where she came from. Unlike John Kerry, she has no need to manufacture images of her personality such as when she goes hunting. She simply has to display the pages in her family photo album. She also can relate to the lives of union families because she’s a member of a union. Palin can be classified as a truly middle class politician and that fact scares the Democratic Party establishment.

The party that once embraced this way of life and claimed to be the champions of it have devalued its members contributions to society. The latest criticism of Gov. Palin is that she did not attend an Ivy League school. My response: and your point is?

This election, more than past elections, is one that truly matters. Middle class Americans need a leader that is going to hear them and take action on their behalf. They need a leader to make sure that the job market and consumer confidence grow and that their hard earned money remains in their pockets, not in the hands of greedy Washington bureaucrats.

For the Harvard educated senator, understanding these values may be difficult. However, for the Alaskan governor who was educated in America’s heartland, this is not the case. The most valuable education Palin received at the University of Idaho didn’t come in the classroom; it came from her classmates. It came in her conversations with her peers about how they were going to pay off their colleges loans. It came through the sharing of childhood stories and it came in their shared worries about their parents economic circumstances. This is a far cry from the realm of the philosophical elite that characterizes Ivy Leaguers.

Sarah Palin’s education at a regular school, attended by regular students, who were trying to expand their potential, was her reality check.

It must be hard from the desk of the Harvard Law Review to really empathize with a couple praying that their daughter doesn’t get sick because they don’t have health insurance. It must be hard to understand the fears of the farmer in Kansas whose crops won’t survive the cold winter from the metropolitan streets that line Columbia University. It must be hard to understand an elderly couple discussing retirement from an elitists viewpoint.

From the grassy hills of the University of Idaho, one not only understands these issues, but one also participates in them. Palin knew she wouldn’t be able to afford a pricy education, and she had little need for one. She wanted to help people like her. Such a desire to help comes not from an ability to discuss the underlying themes of Homer’s The Odyssey, but from understanding of her neighbors and herself.

Palin has run a state government, chaired committees and sold planes. She has also raised five children, been the wife of a union worker, an active member of the PTA and remained a small-town girl. She remembered, while Obama forgot, that America is a large nation, comprised of small towns with strong values and big dreams. When she goes to Washington in November, maybe she can remind the bloviating politicos of that important, yet often overlooked fact.