What can you say about Sarah Palin--without talking gender,motherhood, feminism, hunting, abortion, teen pregnancy etc??

Not so much, actually.

Last week, Sarah Palin did a McCain long-jump onto the national stage.

That means Governor Palin is potentially tens of millions of votes and one heartattack away from becoming our first woman president.

The whole world is talking about this politician-blogs, tabloids, even millions of foreigners (who don't get tovote).  But the subject of much of the chatter centers on her gender and motherhood.

Tongues are wagging about her daughter's teen pregnancy, her delivery of a Down syndrome baby, her ability toraise a large family while working, even her taking a plane after her water broke.  It's the stuff of soapoperas and reality TV-not the boring stuff of legislative business.

Let's skip the private life and move onto her public life . Palin's gubernatorial achievements consist mainlyof gas deals, disbursing her bountiful state budget, ethics reform and wildlife management.  Not such exciting stuff.  But it's how a governor spends her day-if not a vicepresident.

Go ahead, try to read this, it's not as compelling as the usual Palin-fare that engages us emotionally aboutfeminism, motherhood, working mothers, abortion, teen mothers.  

Or skip this part and cut to the chase---marked by the asterisks below.

OIL AND GAS FIRST

Alaska's gubernatorial website reads a bit like press releases or the business pages-oil and gas deals abound.  There are licenses,leases, exports to trumpet.

This summer, the state finally approved a gas pipeline in the works for 30 years and will subsidies of $500million to the Canadian company to build it.  Palin oversaw the lease sale worth $2.66 billion-the largest in the State's history in the Chukchi Sea.  Dutch Shell got ¾ of the leases, the Italian company ENI also scored.  She opposed Leiberman's Senate bill declaring the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, which would prohibit drilling.  

ANIMALS SECOND--definitely second

Governor Palin has fought many attempts to declare the polar bear endangered.  She disagreesthat the beluga is also at risk. She has vetoed bills that favoured salmon over mining streams.  She's actuallyinvoked the 10th amendment

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Before becoming Governor, Palin made complaints about two powerful figures in her ownparty, State Attorney General and the State GOP chairman who both resigned as aresult of her attacks. Then, she crushed her corrupt GOP opponent for governor,and famously sold his plane, although the deal didn't actually HAPPEN on e-bay.           

IN THE MONEY

Alaska has a big surplus, (not a trillion dollar deficit) so Governor Palin can bestow largess on the resource-fat Alaskans.  Indeed, every body got a $1,200 check from the PermanentFund. The take from the tills was so large, Gov. Palin removed the fuel tax this fall.  She also started aprogram for weatherizing rebates.  Infact, the state just got upgraded by Standard and Poors to AA++

 She got more money by raising taxes on the oil companies, which makes her good to some.

**Start reading again here, if you get bored of pure government stuff.

Basically, Sarah Palin runs a billion dollar version of a mom and pop gas bar-and doesn't tolerate employeeswho take extra candy bars.  And as a franchisee of the federal government, she doesn't necessarily want to takeorders from the main office. (She cited the 10th amendment about states rights to a Californian congressman who was bothering her about herwildlife management, an amendment that hasn't been talked about that much since the 1860's.)

 You can see, that without the up-do, the family photo ops, the how-does-she-do-it musings, the girlie gun image, Governor Palin is not that exciting a choice.  She does her job:  she runs a rich state competently.      

photo: THE NEWS HOUR used under creative commons license