Log cabin logic

There's nothing new about adopting the mythology of outsider status to get political power. American politicians have been doing it for hundreds of years, and it's been working at least since the rise of democracy in the Jacksonian era. Perhaps it's something that taps into the Jeffersonian core of American politics, the resistance to centralising power. But whatever the reason, you don't have to go far to find a log cabin or a haberdasher lurking in American politicians' election narratives.

Alaska has become just the latest in a series of locations sufficiently far from the Beltway that they're seen as free from the supposedly corrupting influence of high politics. And even using Alaska isn't that new. A raging anticommunist in the 1920s, Fred Marvin, ironically styled himself the "Senator from Alaska" to emphasise his distance from Washington politics, before going on to accuse the communist movement of originating in the Order of the Illuminati and operating through big government in Washington.

So no one should be surprised to discover that all is not what it seems with Sarah Palin, and no-one should believe her political strategy is in any way novel. It's, frankly, far too fishy a contradiction in terms to be  opposed to everything associated with Washington and yet at the same time so eager to get there. Investigative journalists have only had a month with this candidate so far, and yet already a more complex picture of her rise is emerging. The contours of a cohort of influential insiders underpinning her efforts have come into focus.

This piece in the New Yorker illustrates the degree to which Palin's rise has been orchestrated by Washington insiders looking for a new great white hope. It also suggests that Palin is a natural politician, highly attuned to the sinews of power in the Republican party. (One might even argue that she resembles Obama in the speed of her ascent and the degree to which her rapid rise has allowed her to be used as a cipher for all sorts of hopes and dreams.)

Meanwhile, mutterings from Bill Kristol, raising the idea that Palin's silence has not been a product of her lack of knowledge but a strategy forced upon her by a sexist McCain camp is clearly an attempt to extract her from the road crash that this campaign is turning out to be. This, Kristol seems to hope, might be enough to keep her career alive for 2012. It seems some powerful people have high hopes for Mrs. Palin.

We shall see about that. Much of her future depends on whether Palin actually merits any of the faith Kristol seems to have in her. On that, the jury must still be out, since we've only had a couple of months to see what kind of a politician she is. The essence of a successul politician is getting out of scrapes, and Palin has one hell of a mess to disentangle herself from here. Much also depends on which camp manages to win the battle for the soul of the Republican party in the next four years, for she only succeeds if the party continues to track to the right. A perfectly forseeable alternative is that the GOP pushes to the centre after this election, much as the Democrats did from the mid-1980s. If that happens, then it's sayonara Sarah Barracuda...