McCain struck gold in Alaska

McCain’s new vice presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, looked golden for the Republican Party after giving her first big-stage speech at the Republican National Convention.

Palin’s speech was highly anticipated as it would either make or break McCain’s campaign. To say she delivered it exceptionally well is an understatement, especially since it was her first time addressing the nation as a potential national leader.

While some say that she’s still just a political ploy, she’s been getting rave reviews from reporters across the nation about her speech.

There were even problems involving her teleprompter throughout most of her speech, but that didn’t stop Palin from delivering and connecting with her audience to bring a new energy to the party.

Apart from Palin’s speech-making ability, she is quite the unique package — with many other attributes.

For starters, Palin is not the typical politician. She’s a mother of five children. Like Palin, her children run the gamut; one is an infant with Down syndrome, another a pregnant yet-to-be-wed teenager, and, perhaps inevitably, she has one military-serving son. She’s raising the typical All-American family with ups and downs all its own.

Along with raising a family and furthering her career, Palin has a broad range of experience. She has served as a small-town mayor and as a governor; she is both hockey mom and PTA leader; former beauty queen and high school basketball state champion; avid hunter and member of the National Rifle Association; former oil commissioner and whistleblower.

With an approval rating of 80 percent as governor of Alaska, it’s obvious that people are drawn to her — most likely because they can relate to her small-town values and experiences.

Palin’s approval is not only high in Alaska, but in the nation as well. A recent Us Magazine poll of 233,896 people showed that 84 percent think Palin would make a good vice president.

It also seems the American public is more interested in her than in Joe Biden, the Democratic nomination for vice president. A reported 37.2 million viewers tuned into Palin’s speech compared to the 24 million viewers of Joe Biden’s speech.

Overall, Palin is an exceptional, down-to-earth woman with a fresh face in Washington politics and can relate to the blue-collar of the United States.

The next highly-anticipated event on her agenda is taking on Joe Biden during the vice presidential debates on Oct. 2, during which her political knowledge and savvy will be tested.

In the meantime, she has already passed the test of appealing to the American public during a high-pressure political moment and proving herself as the “right choice” for McCain.