Editors’ note:  This column originally appeared in Communiqué on September 29, 2008.

By Chris Thurlow

There are a lot of good things to say about Sarah Palin, although you wouldn’t know it if all you did was pay attention to the major news networks, blogs, or Facebook groups that enjoy harassing her. My roommate likes Palin because she is a beauty queen who wears the pants in her high school sweetheart relationship. Even more appealing, she has risen to a position of public prominence way beyond that of her snowmobile-riding, fish-selling “dude” husband. Me, I just think Sarah Palin is hot.

But what is more relevant is Middle America’s take on Ms. Palin, because they are the ones that actually decide the election. The national press scoffs at her lack of experience, but what do local swing state papers think? Ohio.com calls Palin “the perfect complement for McCain and the perfect antidote to Obama,” because “she’s for real and can actually relate to the lives of real voters, people who love, feel and suffer.”

Palin’s appeal lies in the fact that she is not a national woman with seemingly desirable presidential experience. She relates to the average white working class American because her narrative involves words like “high school sweetheart” and “beauty pageant,” marks of achievement that are familiar and understandable to the average voter. For those Americans (and this is a majority) who cannot even begin to imagine a place like the Ivy League let alone know anyone who competes in such circles, Palin’s narrative is much more easily identified as something that is “good” and “decent” and worthy of respect.

Each time the press – or Matt Damon – takes a shot at Palin’s so-called white trash teenage children, every American who identifies with Palin gets called white trash as well. The press is feeding right into its role as an establishment of the out-of-touch liberals and in the process losing credibility and influence. Each time this happens, the culture wars become elevated at the expense of real issues that are pushed to the periphery. Those who think they are fighting Obama’s case by trashing Palin are eating their feet (and the country’s future) in the process.

Of course, the coastal liberal elites can’t stand Palin because she’s the antithesis of what someone on the national ticket should be: a purely values-based candidate who appeals only to values voters. What is also lost on the Dean/Obama crowd is that pro-lifers in the heartland don’t actually care about under-privileged ghetto children having babies, they care about young girls in their own local communities having unprotected sex at 15, 16, and 17 years old and having one, two, or three abortions whenever a “mistake” happens. Bristol Palin is not a shame-faced problematic child, but a heroic fallen angel, guided by the strength of example of her mother and baby brother Trig. For fans of Sarah Palin, this is the crux of the campaign – neither healthcare, the economy, nor Iraq is really the most important issue – it’s liberal moral relativism.

By contrast, Joe Biden was a disastrous choice by the Democrats. He is a terrible candidate and even worse politician, and I’ve felt that way ever since my girlfriend cheated on me with his nephew in 2003. Oh, what was that you say? This isn’t about me? It’s about the country?

Well, I guess for the party Joe Biden was a decent pick. On a cursory glance, he passes Rule #1 of choosing a vice-president, “first, do no harm.” Aside from that, he is the perfect blend you want in a top-ticket democratic candidate: a blue-collar internationalist. His image of a lunch-pail carrying protectionist from Wilmington satisfies the Unions yet his foreign affairs mojo means the espresso liberals and trial lawyers are satisfied.

So McCain helped himself with his VP pick, and Obama did no damage. But, fortuitously for the Democrats, by Election Day this won’t matter. The last time a veep played a significant role in electing a president was in 1960 when JFK was forced to take LBJ on the ticket to prevent an exodus of southern dixiecrats who were in an uproar about the shift of power to a Catholic northerner. Yet it was LBJ who relegated the Democrats to a permanent electoral minority – for even he admitted that with civil rights legislation he signed the South away for a generation to the GOP. That was the genesis of the culture wars in America. More than 40 years later, Sarah Palin is proof that we are no closer to a resolution.