Holy crap, he actually did pick her! I've had a long, half-composed Sarah Palin post in the back of my mind since about May, when I first saw her mentioned as a running-mate candidate. It stayed on the shelf because I never for a moment thought she'd actually be picked. I confess that I've completely ignored political gossip since Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic primary, but when I saw columns about Palin before then I assumed it was just the usual self-indulgent journalistic speculation. I didn't think anyone was actually serious about it.

My initial reaction was that this tells me McCain doesn't expect to win. It smells an awful lot like the Ferraro pick in 1984. Sure, it sends lots of good messages about what we believe our political party should be about, and how we envision the political future of America, but in the here and now it does precious little to secure more votes for the ticket, and the way in which the candidate was plucked from relative obscurity suggests that she wasn't chosen because she'd make the best president.

But then I have to pause ... because my own opinion, in fact, is that Palin would probably be a pretty good president. In fact, I can't think of any Republican that I feel confident would be a better president than she would be. (Admittedly, that's not saying much.) If that's what I think, then how cynical or arrogant must I be to assume that the McCain campaign doesn't appreciate her for the same reasons?

Then I pause some more and I start to see the strategic value of the pick: First, she's a popular and successful Republican office-holder. Given the sorry state of the Republican party right now, that's no small feat. Second, she will satisfy the social conservatives in the party. Given that so many of the other prominent national figures who would do so are nut-case radicals (which Palin is not), that too is no small feat. Third, of course, she steals some of the token thunder that the Democratic Party was getting out of their first-black-candidate vs first-woman-candidate primary. (Yes, I know. Neither was truly the first — Shirley Chisholm trumped them both at once — but they were the first that looked like they could actually win.) All of these will no doubt be discussed ad nauseam for several weeks, so I won't pursue them here.

Back in May, when I was reading the silly little he-ought-to-pick-her columns, they all disappointed me. I actually like Palin quite a bit, but I didn't think any of the columns got close to what is actually good about her. It seemed like the formula was little more than:

And then it was on to her made-for-TV life story. Beauty queen, Downs syndrome child, blah blah blah. I'm sure we'll be hearing about that ad nauseam, too.

The most interesting part of that formula — and unfortunately the part we'll probably hear the least about — is "popular governor" part. Sarah Palin is not just popular. She is fantastically popular. Her percentage approval ratings have reached the 90s, which is just obscene. Even now, with a minor nepotism scandal going on, she's still about 80%. (As of last week she was anyway; we'll see what happens now that she has been catapulted to national prominence.) How does one do that?

Hearing me call her "fantastically popular", you might think, "Wow, she's a rock star. Everyone loves her." But you'd be wrong. You don't reach 90% approval by being Eva Peron. You might get 60% or 70% who are rabidly enthusiastic in their love and support, but you're also going to get a solid core of opposition who hate you with nearly as much passion. The way you get to 90% is by being boringly competent while remaining inoffensive to people all across the political spectrum.

Bipartisanship is a perpetual topic in political punditry, but it is distorted by the media environment. Due to the nature of what makes a story, the news media thrives on partisanship. Everything is viewed through partisan-colored glasses. Journalists are aware of this, and as a result they are obsessed with finding that which is not partisan. This leads to a fascination with mavericks, centrists and defectors. But none of these are actually being non-partisan: They are being partisan, but they're hopping from side to side in an unpredictable way, which makes them more interesting to the news media than a guy who stays put. This is why you've read more stories about Chuck Hagel than you have about, say, Kit Bond.

The real significance of Gov Palin's success and her phenomenal approval ratings is that they demonstrate her genuine talent as a non-partisan. But that which is non-partisan is invisible to the news media, so you'll never hear about it. One might hope that her leap into the national consciousness will force the media to notice, but evidence is already mounting that it won't. It will instead attach a partisan narrative to her, emphasizing those aspects of her which are not the ones that make her a good governor. Partisans on both sides have already unleashed reams of talking points to be used for and against McCain's new running mate.

If you look at red and blue maps, you probably know that Alaska is a reliably red state. You might think that for a Republican governor to be popular in a Republican state is no big deal. You'd be wrong. It's been 20 years since I lived in Alaska and more than 10 since I've followed state politics carefully, but until someone can demonstrate to me that things are completely different now, I'll still believe that I know something about Alaska state politics.

The first thing to understand is that there aren't just two parties. Alaska is like a European state in that way. If you've seen the European-style election graphs like those in the Economist, you've seen the semicircle divided into various sized wedges representing the different factions from which a coalition must be formed. Alaska is like that. In my mind, there are four basic groups. Allowing for gross oversimplification and approximation, I see them arranged on the semicircle as: Democrats (30%), centrist Republicans (20%), traditional Republicans (40%), and libertarians (10%).

Demographically, Alaska's biggest overlap is with nearby California and Washington, but I don't think either of them is a good reference for Alaska politically. Alaska's traditional Republicans remind me of Texas Republicans. They are strongly pro-growth and pro-development. Growth and development in this context means they are reliably in favor of drilling, paving, mining, harvesting, and that sort of thing. It's not that they love nature less; it's that they love it as virgin territory to be tamed. Alaska's traditional Republicans are also (unlike bloggy and urban Republicans) reliably conservative on social issues like abortion and secular humanism. The dean of the traditional Republicans is Wally Hickel, who served half a term as governor in the late 1960s, just before I arrived in Alaska as a toddler, and then another term in the early 1990s shortly after I left as a young adult, but never at all while I was there.

Alaska Democrats are recognizable as Democrats, but like all red-state Democrats they tend to stay moderate. In a blue state like California or Massachusetts there's plenty of room for a prominent politician to range way out to the left. In a red state, you can't do that and stay viable. Alaska Democrats typically agree with mainstream Democratic ideas but not too radically. They are usually pro-business and are never too opposed to big oil. The oil industry makes up 80% of the Alaska economy. There is room for difference on pace and extent of drilling, but no Alaska politician is ever really against oil. A typical example of an Alaska Democrat is Tony Knowles. If he had won his Senate race he'd have been considered the second most "moderate" ("conservative", "centrist") Democrat in the Senate, after Nebraska's Ben Nelson.

The group I call centrist Republicans remind me of New England Republicans — or at least the sort of Republicans who were still regularly elected in New England 20 years ago before the shake-out process was complete. (A few still remain, mostly in Maine.) They differ from the other Republicans primarily on growth and on social issues. The centrist Republicans tend to be more educated and wealthier, which tends to correlate with being more liberal on social issues. They are conservative in the small "c" sense, generally distrustful of any sort of radicalism. They are very strong on fiscal responsibility, which sets them apart from both of the aforementioned groups, and on environmental issues they incline toward Teddy Roosevelt style conservationism. My all-time favorite governor and personal political hero, Jay Hammond, father of the Alaska Permanent Fund, came from this group.

The Libertarian Party is stronger in Alaska than in any other state. Shortly before I left, Alaska became the first state to elect a Libertarian to the state legislature (Andre Marrou, who went on to be a national candidate twice — first as Ron Paul's running-mate in 1988 and then at the top of the ticket in 1992). Alaskans of all political stripes are more libertarian than their national counterparts, something I didn't truly appreciate until after I left the state. One of the things that most struck me upon moving to the lower 48 (along with how suddenly the sun goes down) is the sense of entitlement and expectation of government paternalism. In California, if a tree falls down and blocks the road, everyone's reaction is to say, "Why haven't they taken care of that?" In Alaska, the first reaction is to get out a chainsaw.

Politically, Democrats from Alaska are more likely to support gun ownership and less likely to support welfare programs. Republicans from Alaska are more likely to support drug legalization and less likely to support warrantless wiretaps. Even libertarians from Alaska are more libertarian. National libertarians, especially on the Internet, talk a lot about free markets and civil liberties. An Alaska libertarian gets out his rifle and says, "Ain't no one gonna tell me what I can and can't do on my own property."

No libertarian candidate has succeeded statewide, but several of them have garnered a large enough chunk of the vote to tip the balance among the others. None of the four blocs is large enough to win alone. In both the primary and the general, a candidate always wins by piecing together a coalition. The traditional Republican starts with the largest following, but even he needs to peel off some votes from the libertarians or centrist Republicans. If a Democrat wins it's because centrist Republicans defected and wouldn't support their party's nominee. If the centrist wins it's because the traditional Republicans didn't defect, which they often do if one of their own isn't nominated.

There are generally two statewide elections in Alaska: the Republican primary and the general election. The rivalry between the two Republicans is often more bitter than between the Republican and the Democrat. Three-way races in the general election are common. More common than two-way races, in fact. For the past eight gubernatorial elections, the third-place finisher's share of the vote (and party) was:

2006   9%  independent
2002   1%  Green
1998  18%  Republican
1994  13%  Independent
1990  27%  Republican
1986   6%  Independent
1982  15%  Libertarian
1978  20%  Democrat

The 1978 race (the first election I paid much attention to, at the ripe old age of 12) was actually a four-candidate race, with the Independent winning 12%. In 1998, the Democrat (Knowles) won with a full majority vote after the Republican candidate collapsed so thoroughly that he was beat out for second place by a last-minute write-in campaign.

It's not a typo that the first "independent" on my list is lowercased while the others are capitalized. There actually is a party called the Alaskan Independence Party. Officially the AIP is in favor of a plebiscite for Alaska in which voters might elect to become an independent nation. The AIP also supports a lot of policies which align closely with libertarian views. As a practical matter, the AIP nomination is often a second chance for the loser of the Republican primary to run in the general. Wally Hickel did that in 1990, when he was elected governor as an "Independent". In fact, he was a Republican all along (and has never favored secession), but he lost the primary to the centrist candidate, so he came back eke out a narrow victory in a three-way race in the general.

If you didn't know better, you might assume that a Republican who enjoys 80% approval must be centrist. You would be wrong. Although it's true that Palin ran as a reformer against the corruption in her own party, her political background is solidly traditional Republican as I've described it here. Geographically she comes from the state's Bible Belt, and her personal lifestyle and beliefs reflect that. (That would be another long digression, so just believe me: Alaska has a Bible Belt.)

Your next question, if you know me, might be, "Well, if that's the kind of Republican she is, then why do you like her? Well, it surprised me, too. After I fell out of regular contact with Alaska politics, Palin was the first prominent Alaska politician whose name was completely new to me. Even though I had been away for a long time, Knowles, Fink, Sturgulewski, and the others had all been on the landscape when I was there, and if I didn't know the current Murkowski or Begich, I knew the family. Palin seemed to come out of nowhere.

Shortly after I first heard she was elected, knowing that in Alaska party affiliations aren't always what they seem, I did some superficial research. This told me that she's a devout Christian from Wasilla and she was supported by Hickel, and from that I figured I had her pegged. The first surprise came a few months later when I happened to mention her to my mother. In national terms, Mom is more reliably Democratic than I am. However, while she doesn't quite share my distaste for liberal excess, she does share my suspicion of big government and strong support of fiscal responsibility, which will sometimes induce her to cross party lines. This makes her exactly the sort of Democratic voter that is targeted by the standard Alaska centrist Republican strategy (and indeed Mom was a strong supporter of Arliss Sturgulewski, the pro-choice Republican who won the primary twice but was defeated by a Democrat in 1986 and by "Independent" Hickel in 1990).

As far as I know, Mom has always strongly opposed the Hickel Republicans, so it was quite a shock to me when, after I asked her opinion of Palin, she said something like, "Actually, to my surprise, she has turned out to be very good." What she is very good at, it turns out, is the boring but important nuts-and-bolts work of making a state government run efficiently and effectively. Fifty percent of the electorate didn't vote for her, but within a year more than half of them came around to support her. The lesson here is that her political views — the things that make her a "traditional Republican" in my book — turned out not to matter. Partisanship is not her agenda.

I don't like to write in a hurry, but I think there's value in getting this post up sooner rather than later. Alas, I find I'm not prepared to write my full paean to Alaska's greatest governor since Jay Hammond just yet, particularly in the face of the avalanche of scurrilous criticisms that have already come pouring out less than 24 hours after the announcement. So I'll try to sum it up in one paragraph and then jump to my larger point.

Palin's magic formula for success has been simply been to ignore partisan crap and get down to the boring business of fixing up a broken government. She hires good people and maintains high standards (the new "Troopergate" notwithstanding), implements smart procedures, roots out corruption and waste, and makes unpleasant choices when necessary. As an instinctive fiscal conservative she has been thrifty, but at the same time she believes in worthwhile long-term investment. It's not a very exciting answer, but it is, I think, why she gets high approval ratings — because all the Democrats, Libertarians, and centrists appreciate that she's doing a good job on the boring non-partisan stuff that everyone agrees on and she isn't pissing them off by doing anything on the partisan stuff where they disagree. This is what make Palin great, but it's the opposite of what she'll be celebrated for under national media attention.

The lesson to be drawn from Sarah Palin's story, I think, is its clear demonstration that the standard political discussion asks the wrong questions. I see this lesson in Obama as well, but it's even more clear in Palin. There are issues on which Americans are in sharp disagreement, and there are issues on which Americans are nearly unanimous. Because politics is only news when there is conflict, the political narrative focuses exclusively on those issues where there is disagreement. This, incidentally, creates the toxic illusion that Americans are viciously divided on partisan issues, which in reality we are not.

Politicians are judged by where they stand on these partisan issues. Those who don't consistently fall on one side or the other (eg, Lieberman, Hagel) are newsworthy, while those who are reliably partisan on the partisan issues but devote most of their political effort to issues that are not partisan in the first place (eg, Feingold, Lugar, Coburn, and, yes, Obama) are not.

Sarah Palin was chosen as vice-presidential candidate in part because she combines two qualities that are very hard to find in one candidate: She is solidly conservative on all the hot-button partisan issues, and she enjoys phenomenally high approval ratings among her home constituency. If one takes the logical next step and asks why she is popular in spite of being purely conservative on the partisan issues, one discovers the answer is: Because the partisan issues are irrelevant to being a good chief executive.

The next question is whether the same reasoning that applies to a governor of a small state can properly be extended to the presidency. If you think it can't, your response will be: That's all well and good, Mark. Palin may be a fine governor, but that still doesn't mean she'd be a good president. I haven't decided yet if I agree with that. Two years ago I argued the case that although Bush has been a terrible president, his terribleness is in no way attributable to his political ideology. Might it not be equally true that the greatness of a great president is in no way attributable to her political ideology? If so, our entire political debate is looking at the wrong issues.

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