KEY POINTS:
Whatever you feel about Republican vee-pee nominee Sarah Palin and her politics, surely you can't help but feel some sympathy for her as the bloggers and rumourmongers pick through her life and the life of anyone who's been remotely associated with her, looking for dirt.
She's had some experience of the muckraking associated with the job, having taken on the Alaskan old boy network when heading the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
She dobbed in the Republican state chairman, who was serving on the commission for ethical violations, and although she was vindicated when he was fined US$12,000 for breaking state ethic laws, it didn't win her friends in the good ol' boy quarter.
A few years later, the State Safety Commissioner accused Palin of abusing her power as governor by pressuring him to fire a state trooper involved in a nasty divorce with Palin's sister. Palin said the commissioner wasn't a team player, failed to improve alcohol abuse rates in rural Alaska or ease the shortage of state troopers and that's the reason he was fired. Palin survives and the former commissioner is a footnote to history, so she wins on points.
Palin's had the impact the Republicans needed. Her daughter's unplanned pregnancy doesn't seem a problem. But if she's a pin-up girl for conservative Americans then surely her husband, the First Dude, is the prototype for the 21st-century man.
Not only is he an alpha male who hunts, shoots, fishes and is the four time champion of the Iron Dog, the world's longest snowmobile race, but he's a stay-at-home dad and man enough to be happy about his wife's lofty political ambitions.
Every girl needs a First Dude. Todd Palin could prove a trump card for the Republicans. Only in the US could an illegitimate child of mixed race parentage be considered elitist and a moose-hunting, snowmobile-racing oil worker in Alaska the ultimate sensitive new age guy.
