Still More Palin

Despite the revelation of her daughter's pregnancy, the suggestion of her own once-upon-a-time marital infidelity, and the obvious fact that she's a politician who has done political things, we find ourselves still liking Sarah Palin today. Knowing more confirms that she is yet another flawed person in politics, hardly a surprise. Of course, we also now know that she can really deliver a convention speech.

Daniel Henninger of the WSJ has expressed as well as anyone what's up with Palin's appeal, and his analysis resonates with distaff members of the SWNID editorial board (motto: "seldom consulted before publication"). In sum, she's more like what a lot of women are or aspire to be than certain other female politicians.

For a piquant perspective on the anti-Palin counterattack, we suggest the Telegraph's Janet Daily, who makes this stirring comparison:

Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Mrs Palin is coming in for both barrels of Left-wing contempt: misogyny and snobbery. Where Lady Thatcher was dismissed as a "grocer's daughter" by people who called themselves egalitarian, Mrs Palin is regarded as a small-town nobody by those who claim to represent "ordinary people".

What the metropolitan sophisticates failed to understand in the 1980s when Thatcher won election after election is even more the case in the US: most (and I do mean most) ordinary people actually believe in the basic decencies, the "small-town values", of family, marital fidelity, and personal responsibility. They believe in and honour them - even if they do not manage to uphold them.