Heartbeats and heartthrobs

Bill Kristol:

“We’re not running against Governor Palin.”

David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, on “Fox News Sunday,” Sept. 7, 2008.

Actually, the Obama campaign is running (in part) against Sarah Palin. Her name will appear with John McCain’s on the ballot. She’ll debate Joe Biden on Oct. 2. And as the new kid on the block, she’ll continue to get substantial media coverage over the next two months.

Will that coverage continue to be as belittling of Palin as much of it has been so far? Probably. It’s not just that many in the media don’t like her politics and don’t identify with her socially or culturally. They’re offended that McCain picked Palin without, so to speak, consulting them. The establishment media take pride in their role as gatekeeper to our political process and social discourse.

So the gatekeeper media’s reaction has been: Who is Sarah Palin to suddenly show up on the national stage? We didn’t vet her. And we don’t approve of her.

Thus Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of the venerable New Republic for the last 34 years, wrote a blog post Thursday while he was “still reeling from last night’s malign hysteria at the Republican convention. This is a rotten crowd, even the pious Christian Huckabee and certainly Mayor Giuliani and the aspiring vice president, Sarah Palin.”

Despite reeling from the speeches, Peretz was able to “give [Palin] her due: she is pretty like a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy’s.” He continued that it was “good to see that the Palin family didn’t torture poor Bristol, at least in the open.” And he concluded: “Yes, please God, do bless America and rescue us from these swilly people.”

No malign hysteria there.

The Obama campaign, which would like to get votes from some of these very Americans, isn’t going to follow Peretz down that rabbit hole. To the degree they have to address the Palin question, they’ll stick to the argument they made in their first reaction to the Palin announcement: “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

...

One thing McCain undoubtedly had in mind was Obama’s failure to pick Hillary Clinton. As The Times’s Patrick Healy reported Friday, “If the election remains close, the next president could very well be picked by what Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist, calls ‘Wal-Mart Moms’ — white working women with children living in the exurbs and in rural parts of battleground states. ...”

McCain didn’t just pick a politician who could appeal to Wal-Mart Moms. He picked a Wal-Mart Mom. Indeed, he picked someone who, in 1999, as Wasilla mayor, presided over a wedding of two Wal-Mart associates at the local Wal-Mart. “It was so sweet,” said Palin, according to The Anchorage Daily News. “It was so Wasilla.”

A Wasilla Wal-Mart Mom a heartbeat away? I suspect most voters will say, No problem. And some — perhaps a decisive number — will say, It’s about time.

She shops there too. It is surprising to see Peretz so unhinged by the pick. He usually has a cooler head than most liberals. But if he was not convinced by her speech millions of others were. Even her eyeglass frames have become a must have item and have sold out at just under $400. The reception she is getting on the campaign trail tells you she has connected with her voters in ways that McCain never could have alone.

Another indicator is the number of stories on her is greater than the number on Obama which is a real switch.