Palin's got game

For the last two days, all I have heard from the pundits about John McCain's newly-announced number two, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, are the following:

"She is an unknown commodity."

"How can a woman with five children, one just born four months ago with Downs Syndrome, find time to be the vice president?"

"Palin was only picked to be the token woman to take away the angry Hillary voters from Obama."

"Sarah Palin is the hot librarian guys fantasized about in school."

"Sarah Palin is a right-wing, pro-life, gun-totting nut!"

And the most common sentence:

"Sarah Palin has no experience."

Many of these comments are true to some extent; however, her critics seem to be leaving out a few facts. While she might have limited experience in some areas, Palin does seem to have other good qualities that I am feeling.

Mind you, this doesn't mean I will be voting Republican in November, but there is something about Palin that strikes me.

For one thing, she does have experience that McCain, Obama and Biden don't have - executive experience. As a matter of fact, looking at her resume, one could conclude that Palin might actually has more experience than Obama...

But what interests me the most about her, and that the media is negating to mention, is that Palin seems to be someone who wants to reform the system, even at the expense of upsetting her own party.

From Wall Street Journal

In 2003, Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski appointed her to the state's Oil
and Gas Conservation Commission. Bear in mind that Mr. Murkowski had already
served as junior U.S. Senator from Alaska for 22 years. Mr. Murkowski was junior
senator for so long because Senator Ted Stevens (who was recently indicted for
corruption) had lifetime tenure in the senior post.

Shortly after joining the
oil and gas commission, Mrs. Palin commenced an ethics probe of the state's
Republican party chairman, Randy Ruedrich, involving conflicts of interest with
oil companies. The probe resulted in a $12,000 fine for the party chair.

She crossed party lines in 2004 to join a Democratic representative's
ethics complaint over an international trade deal against the Republican
Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who had ties to the Murkowski machine. Mr. Renkes
resigned.

In late 2005, Mrs. Palin announced her run for Governor before
then-Governor Murkowski had announced his intention to stand for re-election. In
a three-way primary, Mrs. Palin got 51% to Mr. Murkowski's 19%. At the center of
this campaign was a debate over competing proposals to build a natural gas
pipeline across Alaska.

These columns wrote about Gov. Murkowski's smashing defeat by Mrs. Palin,
noting that his pipeline proposal had been tainted by reports of sweetheart
deals with energy companies. The editorial ended: "If Republicans are run out of
Congress in November, one big reason will be that, like Mr. Murkowski, they have
become far more comfortable running the government than reforming it." That is
what happened, as disgusted GOP voters turned away from their own party and
ceded control of Congress to the Democrats.

Against the odds, Mrs. Palin won that 2006 election against the state's
former Democratic governor Tony Knowles. Most recently, she promoted the effort
of her GOP lieutenant governor to unseat U.S. Congressman Don Young, who with
Senator Stevens created the earmark that sank the GOP, the notorious "bridge to
nowhere."

Now, inspite of her pending impeachment charges, reading this alone sounds impressive. But here's the real question: If McCain is elected, would Palin continue to be a reformer, or would she be sucked into the cesspool of Washington's business as usual policy?

If the former is true, than that is REALLY change I can believe in!