Adriaan Lanni and Wesley Kelman note that Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running-mate works beautifully to undermine the democrat’s favorite campaign themes of working class economic stagnation and class envy.
(Palin’s husband) Todd’s two jobs—commercial fisherman and oil production manager on the North Slope—required little formal education and provide ample time off. Yet they pay extremely well. If you include the permanent fund dividend that Alaska distributes to its residents as a way of sharing oil tax revenues, the family made about $100,000 last year, not counting Sarah’s $125,000 salary as governor.
Mr. Palin’s income alone would put the Palins at about the same level as many well-educated, white-collar workers we knew in Anchorage. It is also enough money to enjoy a quality of life that is, at least to a certain taste, superior to what is enjoyed almost anywhere else, either in cities or in the countryside. Like the bricklayer, the Palins can hunt and fish in a place of legendary abundance. Their hometown may be a dingy Anchorage exurb, but it has cheap, plentiful land bordering a vast and beautiful wilderness, which is crisscrossed by Todd (the “Iron Dog” champion) and the Palin children all winter. (By comparison, in the Northeast many leisure activities are brutally segregated by income: Martha’s Vineyard vs. the Poconos, the Jersey Shore vs. the Hamptons.)
This free and easy life is radically different from the desperate existences depicted in Barack Obama’s speeches. The main policy thrust of Obama’s acceptance speech (and of both Clinton speeches) was that middle-class families, and particularly blue-collar families like the Palins, are in crisis because of stagnant wages, unemployment, foreign competition, and growing inequality. But these problems, which are a statistical fact, seem a world away from the Palin family.
This disjunction between the good life for many Alaskans and the not-so-good life for working-class families elsewhere suggests several strategies for the McCain campaign. Palin certainly has more credibility than McCain to attack Democrats’ economic policies. More subtly, Palin embodies a notion that Republicans can create a society like Alaska—where the culture has a heavy working-class influence, state taxes are nonexistent, economic prospects are good for people regardless of formal education, and bricklayers can make the same money as urban lawyers (and have more fun in their spare time).
While Democratic policy tries to help blue-collar workers by making it easier for them to attend college and get office jobs—that is, by encouraging them to cease to be blue-collar—Palin’s Alaskan story offers hope from within the blue-collar culture. She validates the goodness of life in rural America because she has embraced a particularly exotic, turbocharged version of this life. Her biography, bound to be emphasized by Republicans, thus makes a powerful appeal to one of the country’s most decisive constituencies.
The rub, of course, is that however genuine it may be, Palin’s family life may not be possible outside Alaska.
Steve Bodio
“That kind of life” for people with low incomes is possible in the Rocky mountain and northwest too– just not in the crowded east. I’ve been living it (in NM) for 30 years! Might be why I suspect these regions, outside of a few large cities, will go for Palin in a big way.
JimK
That lifestyle is certainly possible here in central Florida, believe it or not! On my ten acre plot I see deer, rabbits, opossum, wild turkey, gopher turtles and I’m just 30 minutes from Daytona Speedway. Game is pretty popular with the people I hang out with. Fried squirrel or rabbit is a real treat. And there are plenty of commercial fisherman in the state, too, naturally.
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