Sydney: Alaskan pit-bull turns into yesterday's moose

Alaskan pit-bull turns into yesterday's moose
Sydney Morning Herald
September 25, 2008

The emails from American friends were despairing in the days after the Republican Party convention. Some were from Democratic Party workers who felt 2008 was starting to look like 2004, when John Kerry lost an election many considered he should have won.

Sarah Palin had dramatically changed the dynamics of the presidential campaign. She was the star of the convention, a pit-bull with lipstick - her self-description - who would vanquish the corrupt culture of Washington and install small town American values.

The more the media focused on her inexperience, on the failings of her governorship of Alaska, on her ignorance of foreign policy and on her kooky "family values" and biblical literalism, the more it seemed her popularity grew, and the more likely it seemed, once again, Democrats were heading for defeat.

In Europe, where Obama enraptured tens of thousands of people in Berlin and charmed leaders in France and Britain, commentators grew hysterical at the prospect of an Obama defeat.

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian reacted with fury and despair at the Sarah Palin phenomenon and the apparent boost she gave the McCain campaign. He warned that if Americans rejected Obama, really bad things would happen.

"If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger," he wrote. "And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift."

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Alaskan pit-bull turns into yesterday's moose