Interesting Take On Sarah Palin

This is a great article by Yuval Levin in Commentary magazine on the rise of the Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, and a good explanation on the threat that she poses to elites on both the left and the right.
Mr. Levin explains what bothered both elites about someone like Gov. Palin, who actually is putting conservative ideas in practice.
Which leads to what I do not get about conservative elites.
They love the ideas, but do not realize that people have to get elected to govern and put those ideas in practice. And they should come from all walks of life. To take some of the arguments against Gov. Palin as some kind of buffoon are the following:
1) She had spent almost no time abroad.
That is true. But, no where in the constitution is there a requirement that a presidential and or vice-presidential candidate has to have spent time abroad. It is a red-herring because it is not until recent history that any president had been abroad. Not until the 20th century in fact. Traveling and or spending time abroad is a good thing, but not necessarily important as to what would make a good president and or vice-president.
2) She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho.
Many people elected to office have graduated from state colleges and or universities. There is nothing wrong with that in the least. It gives someone a real-world perspective about getting an advanced education while, in many cases, having to work part-time. A state school graduate is more likely to understand how the real world operates than one who attends a liberal-arts college and or elite, Ivy-League school. And, it is not that we do not need those people in government, but not the whole government. After all, we revere the citizen legislator.
3) Her inability in interviews to offer coherent answers about the Bush Doctrine, regulatory reform, and the Supreme Court’s case history.
Many good people can not explain the Bush Doctrine. As far as regulatory reform, that is one of the aspects of being a state governor that she has been working on. And, the supreme court's case history is probably not easy to explain-if one is not a lawyer. That does not mean that she can not read and talk to people about all of these topics. And, I am certain that she has. And will continue to do so.
Here is something else that Mr. Levin points out that is very important.
"In the end, she was no more able than McCain to offer a coherent rationale for his presidency.
That was not her job."
BINGO!
That was the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John "F--- You" McCain's job. And, regrettably, he did not rise to the task.
Yet, many want to blame Sen "F--- You" McCain's defeat on the back of Gov. Palin. And, it does not work.
I love this paragraph from the article:

Many of those (including especially those on the Right) who reacted badly to Palin on intellectual grounds understand themselves to be advancing the interests of lower-middle-class families similar to Palin’s own family and to many of those in attendance at her rallies who greeted her arrival on the scene as a kind of deliverance. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that while these members of the intellectual elite want the government to serve the interests of such people first and foremost, they do not want those people to hold the levers of power. They see lower-middle-class populists like Palin and their supporters as profoundly ill-suited for governance, because they lack the accoutrements required for its employment—especially in foreign policy, which, even more than domestic affairs, is thought to be an intellectual exercise. It is for this reason that Barack Obama, who actually has far less experience in executive governance than Palin, was not dismissed as unprepared for the presidency. Palin may have been elected governor of Alaska, but his peers in Cambridge had elected Obama editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is thoroughly fluent in the parlance of the college town, and in the eyes of the new American elite, Washington is the ultimate college town.

The sad fact is that it is what too many people really think. And, worse, Washington may very well be on it's way to being nothing more than the ultimate college town. And yet, it deals with the real world 24/7, 365 days a year.
Gov Palin will more than likely run for reelection as governor of Alaska and she will work harder to learn some things that she was lacking in.
But, the American people will wonder why the intellectual elites in both ideological camps seem to not really care for them
They will and do have a champion in Sarah Palin.
And that scares the elites on the left and the right.

HT: The Other McCain @ www.rsmccain.blogspot.com