Sarah Palin: Female Teddy Roosevelt?

Is this really why McCain picked Sarah Palin?

In all of the fuss over Sarah Palin – the relationship between Palin and the Media- how the left screams she is unqualified and the swirl of issues around her – the question of why John McCain picked her has not been adequately addressed.

While I don’t claim to be an intimate of John McCain I have been around him quite a bit – both in local Arizona politics and during the 2000 Presidential Primary run. I think that when John McCain met Sarah Palin what he saw was: a female Teddy Roosevelt.

It has been well documented that John McCain’s political hero and role model is Teddy Roosevelt. He has declared such in numerous interviews over the last decade. An interesting piece on TR and the Two Candidates by John Avalon at RealPolitics.com reminds us of the influence of Roosevelt today, by comparing McCain and Barak Obama’s similarities to TR.

Yet the person in this Prezsidential race that most resembles Teddy Roosevelt is Sarah Palin.

Let’s compare them. Both Teddy and Sarah are known as hearty physical people who love the great outdoors. They both made their reputation on taking on the powers-that-be both political and corporate and crusading against corruption. They both have a plain, folksy speaking style that relies a lot on humor and personal charm. They are both known for their signature smiles and signature glasses.
So when John McCain met Sarah Palin he very well may have felt that he was meeting a twenty-first century TR wearing pumps. This would appeal to John McCain not because his admiration for TR but because he knew her nomination would shake things up.

And that is John McCain at his happiest: shaking up the status quo. Whether it was accumulation demerits at the Naval Academy or giving his North Vietnamese captors a single fingered salute while as a POW, McCain enjoys upsetting the apple cart. In a very astute analysis on the Populism Divide, Dick Morris, wites about the different forms of populism: economic and cultural. McCain has been successful at reaching out to economic populists over his career – such as his work with against earmarks and Citizens Against Government Waste.

McCain has not been as successful in cultural populism: striking out against the East Coast Establishment and the Media. Both Teddy Roosevelt and later Ronald Reagan were able to combine these two populist tendencies.

Gov. Palin brought the McCain campaign the cultural populist stamp. Don’t be surprised that it would take an Evangelical Christian like Palin to do so. That is where a lot of the cultural populism resides in this country today, in the 40 percent of Evangelical Christian Americans who do not feel that the media, Wall Street, Hollywood or the “In crowd” in New York and Washington, DC reflect their values. Some call them values voters.

So when John MCain encountered Palin, he knew she was a compliment to his populist message. The fact she was a moose hunter probably was frosting on the cake – sounding similar to Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” third party. The Evangelical Christian part is not a big departure either. When the Bull Moose Party held their national convention, one of the songs they sung was “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

The race has tightened with one week to go. Most of the constant tracking polls of likely voters have it down to 5 points. That’s still a big hurdle to climb. But even if the McCain ticket does not win, don’t expect Gov. Palin to disappear.

Forty percent of the electorate- who will likely feel very culturally estranged by an Obama Administration, may just turn towards the female TR, who will have more experience by then.