At first hearing of Sarahh Palin’s nomination and the general background facts, such as her stances on abortion, gun ownership and the glaring fact that she was from the outside the continental U.S., I wondered what McCain’s campaign team was drinking. I phoned my mom, who is a DC attorney, attuned to the city’s political pulse, and she shared my reaction. As she told me, the great majority of her peers in DC, both Democrats and Republicans, also questioned what was happening on team McCain. Was this a last resort of shock and awe? Did they actually think that simply being a woman would be enough to cause women to vote McCain? Mom even told me of one very politically opinionated attorney from Capitol Hill who proposed, with complete sincerity, that a high-up McCain campaign manager must have lost faith in McCain and pushed for Palin as a subversive move of surrender. 

These things ran through my head as well. Yet after reading more about Palin and listening to her speeches — yes, even her rough interview with Charles Gibson — I, a registered Democrat, began to worry. No, Sarah Palin is not well known, or at least was not before two weeks ago, she is clearly not a friend of the media and she is not of Capitol Hill stock. But it is not what Palin is not that worries me. My worries, rather, stem from all that Palin is and all that Palin represents.

First, the most obvious fact about Palin is that she is a woman. While this may not provide a great boost come November — and I found the many headlines and stories suggesting that simply having a female running-mate would cause millions of women, specifically Hillary-supporters, to vote McCain to be insulting — the fact cannot be ignored. While perhaps not the women of our generation, there are likely a large number of our mothers, or even their mothers, who have not forgotten that while black men received the right to vote with the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, women did not receive this right until 1920. At some level, whether conscious or subconscious, a significant number of our elders may finally see Palin as a chance to put a woman ahead of a black man, especially given our nation’s commitment to image politics. 

There may be many other women, of all generations, who heard Palin say “this is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity,” and who see a vote for McCain as a validation of this claim. They may exercise their right to simply put a woman in a position of more power and more visibility than any other American woman has ever achieved. Whichever is the case, there are more than 135 million women of voting age in the United States. If a significant portion of those women feel this way and show up at the polls, they will definitely make a difference.

Secondly, on a similar note, Palin is a mother. More specifically, and more importantly, she is the mother of Private First Class Track Palin, who is headed to Iraq in late September. Yes, Palin attempts to sell her motherhood as management experience which will easily transfer to the position of vice president, but it is unlikely that many will buy this. 

What may translate into votes for McCain, however, is the fact that American troop levels in Afghanistan and Iraq stand at roughly 33,000 and 146,000, respectively. Those astounding numbers represent 179,000 mothers and 179,000 fathers. While many of those parents may be completely against the two wars and McCain’s views on them, many others may empathize with Palin, a military man’s mom, and demonstrate this through their votes. If this occurs with even half of these 358,000 parents, who, again, are among those who tend to patriotically show up at the polls, they will make a great difference in November.

Thirdly, lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Palin is a woman of the small town and a woman of the West. As she said in her RNC speech, “In small towns, we don’t know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.” She is more small-town and small-state than McCain, Obama, or even Biden, and this background may attract many. 

What may also attract is her representation of the West. Palin has guns, she hunts moose and she snowmobiles with her husband. Though she may have been Miss Wasilla in 1984 and seems to have maintained her good looks, this woman can definitely handle the great outdoors. Perhaps even more important, she is big on what is a large part of our American mystique: drilling for oil. As such, Palin may cause many to recall the aggressive, independent, and innovative pioneers of the West who made their riches on America’s own natural resources — think badass Daniel Day-Lewis as badass Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. She is an outspoken proponent of drilling, selling it as a job-builder at home and a slap in the face to malicious foreign powers. If any of these representations translate into McCain votes from a significant portion of the sixty million plus voters from the thirteen states that make up the American West (plus Alaska!), they will clearly possess an electoral impact.

Conclusively, then, Sarah Palin could be, in our sport-like game of American politics, a game-breaker. If many of the above influences play out, we are talking about enough votes to put McCain in the White House. If only a a few kick in, that is still one huge boost to McCain from a mere vice presidential nominee. So to Republicans and the McCain team: brilliant choice. To the DC Democrats: think twice. And to you voting-age Democrats here in Ames: Be forewarned, and do your part.   

— Steve Adams is a graduate student in political science from Annapolis, Maryland.