Barack Obama is known to say that only in America could a success story like his come true. 

The same can be said for Sarah Palin.

How would you like to be the mayor of a town the size of, say, Los Fresnos or La Feria, and then two short years later be a vice presidential nominee? It would seem farfetched if it weren’t true.

Palin, you see, was the mayor of her Alaskan hometown, a hamlet of less than 10,000 residents just a few short years ago, but today she stands a reasonably good chance of being this nation’s next vice president. It’s true that Palin is also a governor these days, (of the nation’s 47th most populous state), and a true-blue Alaskan, which adds nicely to the mix of the Hawaiian-raised Obama.

At last, the 49th and 50th states of our union are represented on the two presidential tickets of our nation’s major political parties. It was about time.

John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee who frequently reminds us these days of how he puts country first, put his politics first in the selection of the Alaskan governor. She is a darling of the GOP’s social and religious conservatives, of which have never warmed to McCain. The GOP base, we’re told, is now fired up with the Palin selection given her rock-solid pro-life and pro-gun views.

That’s good. The point of elections is to win, and McCain must figure a little known governor from the farthest continental reaches of America gives him a better chance to be successful in November. The critics, of course, are out in full force over this one. One cartoonist drew up the new GOP ticket holding hands with a caption overhead reading, “The Geezer and Gidget,” a reference that goes way-way back to the days when actress Sally Fields played an airy teenager in a 1960s-era television show.

McCain is a geezer at past 70, and a spirited geezer at that, but I don’t think Palin is Gidget. She looks to be reasonably tough, a self-described hockey Mom and all, and a fresh-face governor who news reports say has been willing to take on the meanies of her party in Alaska.

 Palin better be tough because the intense media scrutiny she is just now beginning to face is akin to the going over Geraldine Ferraro, (remember her?), got long ago when the New York congresswoman was on the Democratic presidential ticket in 1984. The national media ran asunder through her family’s finances. After that, there wasn’t much left politically of the much-hailed first woman to be a vice presidential nominee.

Palin’s selection points to the added importance that a politician’s biography has to the marketing of candidates these days. Biography has been key to the rise of Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, and who was largely raised by white grandparents from the Midwest who settled in Hawaii, (there’s a cultural mind bender).

Obama’s mix of nationalities in his personal background has led to conservatives wondering loudly if he is to strange or exotic to be an American president. The talking heads on cable TV have yakked for several months now how Joe Sixpack in Scranton, Pa., can’t relate to an African-American looking presidential candidate who went to Harvard, and talks too much like a college professor if he doesn’t watch himself.

So, if Obama is too exotic, what does that make Palin, the governor from Alaska?

Why, typical American, say her conservative supporters. She’s a Mom of five children, goes fishing and hunting, played basketball in high school, (hey so did Obama!), and has  learned how to balance work and family life. Not only that, but her husband is a working stiff, a commerical fisherman who works with his hands and has not a single degree from Harvard.

To Palin’s new GOP fans across America, her great lack of knowledge of national and international issues matters is hardly a liability. She’s a great Mom! The governor is a woman who has faced some tough challenges and dealt with them head-on. It would be good, this narrative goes, to have one of us in the White House, and not a Hawaiian who also lived in Indonesia as a kid, and has read way too many books to do this country any good.

We apparently live in an era when what you know and how much you know are hardly the things to ponder in deciding big elections. The more important question is this: How good is your story?  For the 2008 GOP ticket, it’s a gold mine. Pairing up a presidential candidate who was a prisoner of war with a hockey mom from Alaska is just too much to pass up.

I can hardly wait to see how a President McCain would fill out his Cabinet.

- R.D. Cavazos

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