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There
is of course her gender -- the first female governor of Alaska. Then
there is -- how to put this delicately? -- the fact that she is rather
more attractive than your standard haggard timeserver, whether male or
female. It is widely remarked that she is a former beauty queen. True
enough, but she is not beautiful in that slightly creepy, prettified
John Edwards way; she is rather the pretty girl in school who remained
that way twenty-five years and five children later.
g
She is something genuinely new. Unlike Senator McCain (22 years in the
Senate) and Senator Biden (36 years in the Senate), she is not someone
who has risen in politics by sheer longevity. Unlike Senator Obama, who
accommodated himself to the seedy ethnoreligious politics of Chicago's
South Side in search of political preferment, she challenged her own
corrupt party machine to advance. And unlike Senator Clinton-- who,
with her husband, never quite exits the stage -- she achieved early
success by defeating the old bulls who ran her state, not by marrying
the hottest ticket in Arkansas.
g
In the combustible world of American abortion politics, there are
very finely calculated degrees of difference. For example, while both
Obama and Biden are pro-choice, their positions are not the same. Obama
is in favour of federal funding for abortion and permitting
partial-birth abortion. Biden is against both. As the most extreme
pro-abortion candidate for president ever, Obama voted against the
"born alive" act in Illinois, which mandates medical care for babies
that survive attempted abortions. Even Hillary Clinton, along with
Joseph Biden, supported the federal "born alive" act. In fact, the
latter passed unanimously.
The Palin selection indicates that the McCain campaign wishes to sharpen this contrast.
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