A friend of mine recently called Barack Obama. Just
dialed his cell number, then fell off his chair when the potential
president actually answered. My friend freaked and clicked off without
saying anything — stunned that the Democratic nominee for POTUS would
personally pick up the
telephone.
That’s how it is here in Illinois: most of us
can trace some connection to Obama in fewer than six degrees of separation
(without even passing through Kevin Bacon). And for me, at least,
there’s a certain comfort in knowing people who know people. It does
more than all the media imaginable to help me decide how to cast my vote.
And I say that as a native Texan, with close cousins who are tight with a
Bush.
I have no such connection with Republican
Presidential nominee John McCain. But when McCain tapped Alaska’s
governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, I did like my friend and fell
off my chair.
As I’ve mentioned here a time or two before, I
used to live in The Greatest and Most Incredibly Beautiful State in
America. Heck, I may have even been to Wasilla — the town Palin
served as mayor before being elected governor in 2006, as well as the spot
where the legendary Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race officially begins (after
the phony-baloney ceremonial start in front of the TV crews in downtown
Anchorage).
But why would I have remembered it?
Wasilla is sizeable only by Alaska standards.
Population 7,000, according to the U.S. Census, it would be sort of like if
McCain picked the former mayor of Effingham — and Effingham had
reduced its population by half.
In all fairness, since Palin’s currently the
governor, let’s look at the state: The population of Alaska is
670,053. To give you an idea of how small that is, think of it this way
— every phone number in Alaska starts with the same area code.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being from
a small place, mind you, if you have other intellectual resources to draw
upon. But here again: The only other place Palin lived for any significant
period of time was Montana — state population 944,632 — where
she attended college and earned a degree in broadcast journalism. For a
while, she worked as a sportscaster, according to my expert source, Mike
Doogan.
“Everybody in print knows that’s not
really journalism,” he says.
Doogan was editor of the city desk during my
three-year tenure at the Anchorage Daily News. I was a feature writer who kept crossing the newsroom to
report for the front page, and I will forever remember him as the droll
curmudgeon who made me think a little harder and type a little faster.
At age 60, he’s now a published mystery
novelist and a member of Alaska’s house of representatives, where he
has had a ringside seat for Palin’s rise from Wasilla mayor to
would-be V.P. I found evidence in the ADN archives that Doogan really likes Palin —
specifically her innovative oil and gas policies — and that he did so
long before McCain ever heard of her. Still, even Doogan doesn’t
think Palin should
be V.P.
In a guest column for the ADN, he described Palin’s
resume as having the same thickness as the meat in a vending-machine
sandwich and imagined that the only way she could win a foreign-policy
debate with Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden would be if she
used her briefing book to bop him.
“I don’t think she’s
qualified,” Doogan told me via phone. “In fact, the
jury’s still out here on whether she’s a competent governor of
Alaska. We’re still not sure about that.”
He compares her to Dan Quayle — George
Bush’s V.P., who had the kind of fresh appeal that made him look like
he smelled good. But Doogan refuses to make a prediction.
“She has risen to a level with which I have no
experience,” he says. “It would be just as plausible to me that
she would be elected V.P. as for her to do be booted off the ticket next
week. Or anything in between.”
As we spoke, newswires were churning out a story that
Palin had in the past accepted $5,000 in contributions from Bill Allen,
president and CEO of VECO Corp. While these donations were not technically
illegal, they were tainted — they came from the same donor who has
pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption charges in the case involving Sen.
Ted Stevens.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2008.
