Who cares about her daughter's failed birth control methods. We like Sarah Palin. She is just the shake up the US system needs. And she did well today
Claiming her historic spot on the Republican ticket, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin uncorked a slashing attack on Barack Obama Wednesday night and vowed to help John McCain bring real change to Washington.
"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit," she said of the Democratic presidential nominee.
"Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.
"Government is too big ... he wants to grow it."
A packed Republican convention hall roared at every line delivered by the 44-year-old Alaska governor, the first woman ever named to a Republican national ticket.
In the most eagerly awaited moment of the convention, the first-term Alaska governor and mother of five made her first major address since presidential nominee-to-be John McCain chose her for the No. 2 spot.
Palin faced her largest TV audience ever, a nation transfixed by her unexpected appearance on the national scene and a bumpy family narrative, not least her unwed 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy.
In a home-spun narrative of her public career as governor and small-town mayor, Palin addressed the roiling debate about her qualifications for the vice presidency, and the inevitable comparisons to Democratic hopeful Barack Obama.
"I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town," she said. "I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.
"When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too."
Before Palin was elected Alaska's governor in 2006, she noted, she was the mayor of her home town of Wassila, a job she said compared favorably to Obama's background as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.
"Since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer -- except that you have actual responsibilities."
Her vision of change
Palin also used the occasion to lay out an alternative version of change, a popular Obama refrain.
"Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election," she said. "In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."
Palin also homed in on the issue of energy, a special concern in Alaska and an issue where Republicans believe they have an edge over Democrats who have resisted expanded oil and gas drilling, particularly in environmentally sensitive areas like Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already," she said. "But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.
"Starting in January," she continued, "in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more nuclear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers."
Doubts about experience
Palin's formal debut on the Xcel Energy Center stage came hours after McCain's arrival at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where he was met on the tarmac by his wife, Cindy, and Palin and her family.
That included Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol, and father-to-be Levi Johnston. McCain gave Bristol numerous hugs, patted Johnston on the arm and spoke with the couple longer than any of the others in the greeting line.
Since Palin was added to the ticket last week, the 44-year-old working mom, gun enthusiast and staunch abortion foe has been the focal point of the convention. Arriving with a short political résumé, she's run into a swirl of questions about her experience, her down-home Alaska background and how thoroughly it was vetted by McCain.
Thrown on the defense, Republican leaders launched an aggressive counterattack in the hours before her appearance and set up in a prime-time speech the night before by Sen. Fred Thompson, who decried Palin's critics as inside-the-beltway "pundits and media big shots."
Those detractors, meanwhile, continued to raise questions about McCain's judgment in picking Palin, whom he had reportedly met only a handful of times.
"I'm like the rest of America that knows very little about Sarah Palin," said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, a co-chair of Obama's campaign in Minnesota. "But I already know a lot about John McCain and the way he makes impulsive decisions."
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis defended the McCain campaign's background work on Palin, and he said he thinks much of the criticism is motivated by the fact that the media had no idea that Palin was on McCain's short list. He added that the media scrutiny of recent days of Palin has been "frenzied, and probably could be dialed back a bit."
But the concerns were not limited to Democrats on Wednesday.
Palin's speech also had to dispel the private doubts of some Republicans who feel that her presence on the ticket could squander McCain's advantage over Obama on experience and readiness to lead.
"I think she is the hit of the Republican convention," said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who spoke at a meeting of the Minnesota delegation.
