The day that small town US stormed world stage

SARAH Palin was midway through her electrifying speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday night when she abruptly wandered off script.

"I love those hockey mums," she said, smiling. "You know, they say the difference between a hockey mum and a pit-bull: Lipstick."

The ad lib brought the house down, as well it might. For the party faithful it was confirmation that Mrs Palin, until a week ago almost unknown, not only shared their values but had charisma to boot.

She didn't stop there. Mentioning Barack Obama only once by name, she nevertheless tore in to the Democrats' candidate.

"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?"

Attempting to underline a reputation for down-home values, speaking of taking power as governor of Alaska, she said: "I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay. I also drive myself to work."

And with fuel prices at the top of most Americans' worry list, she was unapologetic about renewed drilling in the US.

"To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

Sarah Palin's public persona is rooted in Small Town America, a place she took time to praise by quoting president Harry Truman: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity,'" she said, then added: "I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind."

So do the Republicans: Those are the people that John McCain is now banking on to get him elected.

Small Town America seems a remote place to Europeans weaned on a diet of film and TV emanating from either coast.

Small Town America is derided by the inhabitants of New York or California as the "flyover" states because they are best observed from 40,000 feet.

For its fans, Small Town America is the heart of the country. It is the rose-tinted paintings of Norman Rockwell, neighbour helping neighbour, the farmer working hard by day and relaxing by night on his porch with family around him and Jesus at his shoulder. It is also the original article: Small towns were the first settlements, and, in the minds of millions, they resemble, more than the corrupted cities, the solid values of the first settlers.

Mrs Palin encapsulated that image brilliantly. "She did it with a forceful smile, she did it in a way that was humanising," said radio talk show host Robert Traynham. "If I'm the Obama camp, I'm thinking I've got a problem."

In a single speech, more than Mr McCain, more than Mr Obama, she has defined the coming election.

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organiser'" she said, with a dig at Mr Obama's previous occupation. "Except that you have actual responsibilities."

Beyond talk of the economy, of health care, Iraq or global warming, this election is now set to be a replay of the Clinton-Obama primary battle earlier this year: Mr Obama representing the city dwellers, Mr McCain – egged on by Mrs Palin – the God-fearing, duck-hunting, hard-working countryside.

Mrs Palin herself drew the line in the sand, pouncing on an unguarded Obama comment from earlier this year that small town Americans "cling" to guns and God.

"I might add that in small towns, we don't quite 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 their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," she said.

Her own persona is the perfect Republican photo-fit: Her husband rides snowmobiles, she enjoys hunting moose and church activities, has raised five children and refuses talk of abortion even when carrying a Downs syndrome child.

Mrs Palin has given what was a demoralised party a narrative they can run with: It is a narrative that says troubled times are the best times to return to the honest and simple values of hunting, fishing, hard work and Jesus.

Mrs Palin is Christian, not in the sense of having tea with the vicar, but a bible thumper. She was baptised in the same Pentecostal Assemblies of God church of which the former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, was a member. It was he who said the Iraq invasion was doing God's work.

And Mrs Palin sees the hand of the Almighty all around her, even in her desire to push a pipeline though Alaskan land now reserved as a polar bear habitat. Her job as governor, she explained, was reaching out to the people so that "We can work together to make sure God's will be done."

For the Republican top brass, a candidate who is both Small Town and Big Oil is a dream come true, ensuring funding will continue to roll in.

The first casualty in all this is Mr McCain himself: He hoped to win the election by offering himself as a social liberal to a country tired of the failures of a right-wing Bush administration.

Instead, bullied by conservatives, Mr McCain has himself swung right, coming as near as he can to agreeing that abortion should be scrapped, gay marriage banned and creationism taught in schools.

But while Republicans are invigorated by Mrs Palin, Mr McCain's task of reaching out to the middle ground just got harder.

Put on the spot, most Americans tell pollsters they support the right to abortion; and parents in most states object to the idea of teaching creationism.

Mr McCain's move to the right may leave the middle ground clear for Mr Obama.

Mr Obama has already criticised the Palin speech, for failing to mention the economy, regarded by voters as the single biggest failing of the Bush administration. Mrs Palin, and Mr McCain, will need to put flesh on the bones, struggling, as Mr Obama is, to translate soaring rhetoric into concrete ideas.

Ideology the big issue for Christian candidate delivering electoral shock

PROFILE

PEOPLE in the small Alaskan town of Wasilla remember how they got their first Christian mayor.

The traditional turning points that had decided municipal elections in the town of fewer than 7,000 people – Should we pave the dirt roads? Put in sewers? Which candidate is your hunting buddy? – seemed all but obsolete the year Sarah Palin, then 32, challenged the three-term incumbent, John C Stein.

Anti-abortion flyers circulated. Mrs Palin played up her church work and her membership in the National Rifle Association. The state Republican Party, never involved in the past because city elections are non-partisan, ran advertisements on Mrs Palin's behalf.

"Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, 'Whoa'," said Mr Stein, who lost the election. "But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I'm not a church-going guy and that was another issue: 'We will have our first Christian mayor'."

Shortly after becoming mayor, Mrs Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every city council meeting in Mrs Palin's first year in office, said Mrs Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at a council meeting. "They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her," Ms Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to "resist all efforts at censorship," Ms Kilkenny recalled. The mayor fired Ms Emmons shortly after taking office but rescinded the sacking after residents made a strong show of support. In 1996, Mrs Palin suggested to the local paper, the Frontiersman, that conversations about banning books were "rhetorical".

So is she doing it for the sisters?

NO

says Jacqueline Hunter, Scotsman features editor

'HOCKEY mom"? Come off it, Mrs Palin. If that description of yourself is shorthand for "average, ordinary American woman", you're doing yourself and women everywhere a disservice.

The point about Sarah Palin is that she's anything but ordinary: whatever your opinion of her policies (and I'm no trigger-happy pro-lifer who believes every tax dollar spent on public libraries is money down the pan), she is undeniably an exceptional woman. Just ask Barack Obama – no doubt still having his brow soothed by Michelle after being lined up in Mrs Palin's crosshairs on Wednesday.

So why the attempt at feminine self-deprecation? It's about as convincing as Dolly Parton's wig.

It has taken Mrs Palin less than a week in the limelight to enthral America's Republicans.

We see from her track record as a city councillor, mayor and state governor that Mrs Palin is unafraid to challenge cronyism, confront her detractors or push for reform. Having progressed in her political career with the sure-footedness of a mountain goat over 16 years, while also mothering five children, she has shown impressive determination, focus and stamina.

We're poles apart on politics, yet part of me wants to admire her for the unflinching toughness that has got her this far in a man's world; the fact that it has taken her less than a week in the limelight to electrify the US. But to be honest, were she and I ever to meet beside a hockey rink, I'd back away fast.

She's not the sort of woman many women want to befriend. And if she really wants to be vice-president of the United States, she shouldn't pretend to care what we all think of her.

YES

says Bill Jamieson, Scotsman executive editor

THANK you to all those liberals, particularly liberal feminists, who have spent the past five days trashing Sarah Palin. They have helped to make her a star.

More than any speech she could have made – and her address to the Republican convention was a corker – her detractors have defined exactly what it is that gives her so much appeal: she is not One of Them.

Her female detractors in Britain have proved her case. The United States is not the Washington elite writ large. She connects to the many millions of Americans that the BBC and the liberal press seldom trouble to reach.

Non-metropolitan, country America is a huge force. It doesn't have a problem about membership of gun clubs, or support for evangelical Christianity or family values that the elite seems often to despise. That is why she has electrified the Republican National Convention and made this presidential race even more absorbing than it already was. What a breakthrough.

She is not a senatorial retread or jargon-packed policy wonk. Best of all – and this is why we should all cheer her – she is not a lawyer. Inexperienced? Yes. But the sneering descriptions of small-town Alaskan politics have been arrogant and patronising beyond belief. And Americans, in the main, do not vote for those who sneer at them.

Family problems? The saving grace of families is that is what they are there for. Millions of women will identify with her. As for men, it is said "she appeals like a naughty librarian". The trouble with her feminist critics is that they are just librarians.

If only there were a Sarah Palin here in Britain. Who do we have? Hazel Blears. I rest my case.

IN NUMBERS

HER speech's buzzwords (or not, as the case may be) and how many times she used them:

McCain 16
Tax 13
Family 8
Oil 8
Small town 6
Terror 3
God 2
Obama 1
Woman 1