Posted on 01/22/2009 10:33:22 AM PST by STARWISE
I clearly remember the day I met Sarah Palin. It was on a cold, dark midwinter’s eve in Eagle River, Alaska, in a friend’s living room.
There were about a dozen people there, including two large families, one of which was mine. The event was an intimate “meet and greet,” launching Sarah’s gubernatorial run.
Sarah is, of course, lovely, and she is surprisingly small, a feature that stands in contradiction to her very big personality. Her handshake is warm and her gaze personal. She is, in a word, authentic.
I learned more about what it means to be a person in that encounter than I did in any of my meetings in the halls of Columbia University as a student or at Yale as a faculty member.
My family and I worked hard to get her elected, and my daughter even played the harp at a subsequent meet and greet. We stayed with her all the way to the election night party, when each of my family was interviewed and proudly stated our support for “Sarah!”
We still have about a dozen campaign signs in our garage, which won’t go away. We’re sure they’ll be collector’s items when Sarah wins a national office someday.
We were obviously thrilled when Sarah was selected as John McCain’s running mate and were beaming on the evening of her acceptance speech.
My children were ecstatic and felt the same sense of invincibility we all felt during those days when she was the underdog running for governor, ultimately defeating a powerful incumbent governor in the primary and a popular former two-term governor in the general election.
We knew she had to win. She was special. We knew that, even when she was mayor of little Wasilla.
As we watched her at the Republican National Convention, we could feel the whole nation turning toward her podium, like a giant ship arresting and changing course.
We knew the nation was falling in love with this woman, who brought the freshness of a real “Washington outsider,” freshness from the Last Frontier. My son turned to me and said, “Dad, I don’t see how anyone could not vote for her.”
I smiled and said, “Son, you haven’t seen how vicious the media, pop culture and politicians can be. Oh, yes, everyone sees how wonderful she is, friends and foes alike. But that’s exactly why her foes will seek to destroy her.”
Even I did not expect the degree of character assassination that ensued.
Now, Sarah was well-known and loved in Alaska, where she has enjoyed approval ratings of more than 80%. But in the Lower 48 (as Alaskans call the rest of you), she was an unknown.
Her opponents understood they must do everything in their power to soil this tabula rasa and prevent the country from falling in love with her as Alaska had. It would prove difficult, yet we were shocked to find that they would get as nasty as necessary to discredit, ridicule, and ruin her.
It worked (for the present), but not without mortally wounding their credibility, for although many Americans on the left were relieved, many others were outraged to see our country’s honor and innocence slip yet another notch.
As an old friend once said to me, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Character matters. People gauge a leader’s authenticity, vision and genuine interest in others.
When a leader embodies these characteristics, he or she earns people’s devotion, trust and loyalty. Alaskans are very loyal, particularly in the face of injustice.
Americans still have a sense of justice and goodness. These come in particularly big doses in Alaskans. You see, Alaskans still love Sarah.
Let me rephrase that: the Alaskans who love her, love her even more now. Their hearts are in the right place.
Alaskans seem to have a moral compass that sees through smoke and mirrors and points directly North. It’s no wonder the North Star graces our beautiful state flag.
~ ~ ~
Dr. Thomas Mezetti writes from Anchorage, Alaska.
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An expansive article by Dr. Thomas Mezzetti : NEO-EVANGELIZING THE CATHOLIC FAMILY WITH AN ALIEN GOSPEL
~~PING!
The fact Sarah Palin is a weekly story everywhere to this day, and McCain isn’t, speaks volumes.
It also explains what can now be called the poisonous envy coming from Johnny McCain’s direction these days, if indirectly through surogates.
McCain knows he’s ‘done’ as anything beyond Arizona’s Senator. He also knows Sarah Palin’s just getting started, and has a much better chance of becoming President one day than he ever had.
When you think about it, this explains McCain’s silence in relation to the ongoing attacks from both his own staff, the chilly interview yesterday on Fox News with his daughter related to Governor Palin, and the idiot the McCain campaign hired that put her on couric and gibson’s shows in the worst light possible.
The vicious and biased treatment of Sarah! is made even more infuriating with word that her McCain-appointed media "handler" during the campaign, Nicolle Wallace, was a saboteur. This woman, who was responsible for the Couric interview and the wardrobe budget, has now outed herself as a mole for Obama (I guess McCain was too).
Any respect I had for McCain is gone. When one compares the man today with the war hero, it is somewhat like the Petain of 1917 and the Pertain of 1940, the hero vs. the aging fool.
McCain was forced to find a VP nominee that actually had something in common with the Republican Party’s traditional base of support.
We all know why.
Great comparision, I couldn’t agree more with you.
“Alaskans seem to have a moral compass that sees through smoke and mirrors and points directly North. “
I’ve been to AK twice and loved it. My sister lived there for years. If the USA truly goes into the toilet and AK secedes, that’s where I’m going.
Never forget those who betrayed sarah Palin, such as the vile Nicole Wallace, who now writes for Tina Brown’s left-wing blog “Daily Beast” about how Republicans love Obama. Never let her or Steve Schmidt, or Rick Davis ever work in the GOP again.
I’ll never understand how some people can make fun of Gov. Palin, a self-made woman who got to where she is by taking on a machine, while worshipping 0bama, a hack Chicago politico who gained power by sucking up to Daley, Wright, Ayres, et al.
“I’ll never understand how some people can make fun of Gov. Palin”
They’re not making fun of Sarah. They’re making fun of Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah.
Look up the definition of amoral, presumptuous, propaganda, and totalitarianism and I think you’ll understand why.
~~PING!
You got that right. The image I have to the McCain-Palin campaign is that of a thoroughbred race horse (Palin) being hitched to a 500 lb. block of cement (McCain).
~~PING!
More like two horses hitched side by side, one trying to run fast, the other walking about aimlessly, without a bridle but hitched up and turning to the left...(chuckle)
And muttering ‘get off my lawn, damnit!’
Thanks for sharing this great story...
When I watched the inagural on Tuesday I kept envisioning Sarah Palin going through the process. It’s not a matter of if she will be POTUS but when...
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