Charlie_Brennan's Blog

With apologies to the great philosopher Yogi Berra, in politics, you don’t know nothing.

The former New York Yankee legend said that about baseball, alluding to the fact that through its century-plus long history, the game has routinely humbled the wisest men for its propensity to confound all expectations and routinely show us that the previously unthinkable is often the next thing coming around the corner.

Speaking of the Yankees, look no further than the fact that the anemically-funded Tampa Bay Rays have a 10-game lead on the Yankees as I write this.

And so it is with many voters’ burgeoning love affair with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The day that Arizona Sen. John McCain announced her as his running mate, I ridiculed the selection. I wrote that it was bold and surprising and daring – but that it would also be bold, daring and surprising for me to wear a dress, but that would not necessarily be a good idea.

McCain’s pick of Palin was more than bold. It may have been a stroke of genius.

This is several days late in coming, but still needs to be said. I covered the McCain-Palin appearance in Colorado Springs this past Saturday, and the public’s response to this pair was unlike anything I have previously seen on the Republican side of the aisle in this campaign season.

Saturday marked the fourth McCain event I have covered in Colorado this year. Each of those prior appearances in what is said to be a battleground state struck me as notably lacking in genuine passion on the part of folks who turned out to see him.

Granted, none of those three previous campaign stops were in settings that would naturally lend themselves to the type of receptions that would typically be fodder for the next campaign ad. One was a sober town hall discussion on health care; another was an even more sober presentation by McCain on the dangers of nuclear proliferation; finally, there was a speech to a Hispanic veterans group, which included no shortage of Democrats in the audience.

But in Colorado Springs on Saturday, the reception to the McCain-Palin ticket showed a level of excitement and passion that can’t be manufactured. When we arrived shortly after 6:30 a.m., for a speech not scheduled to start until noon, there were already hundreds of people clutching coffee and coats against the pre-dawn chill, eager to get a good place in line.

By 9 a.m. when the three-sided airplane hangar where the rally was held opened up, there were thousands on hand. By noon, the number massed there appeared to be on the far side of 10,000, and would have taken someone far more qualified than I to estimate with any accuracy.

“Hockey Moms for Palin,” “Read My Lipstick,” and other signs amplified the rock-star caliber celebrity which already attends this political meteor that has winged in from left field to dominate the discussion early in the homestretch to Election Day 2008.

Oops, did I just say, “celebrity”? The McCain campaign until very recently was mocking Illinois Sen. Barack Obama with that very word, suggesting that he has arrived where he is courtesy of little more than a lot of glitz and glamour backed up by a deficit of substance. That may or may not have worked well for the Republican cause.

Far better, it appears, to go out and find a celebrity of your own to excite the previously unmoved. Who would have thought the McCain campaign would have to go to Wasilla, Alaska, to find one?

The polls are fluid, and the only one that matters will be taken at the polls on Nov. 4. Oct. 2 looms as a key date. That is when Palin will be debating Obama’s running mate, Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden.

I expect, due to her more modest background, that the expectations for Palin will be set low. And if that’s the case, her key mission will be to not do badly – to hold her own.

If Palin manages to acquit herself at least moderately well in debating Biden – and, based on what we’ve seen of her so far, who would bet that she won’t? – and if no additional surprises appear out of the backwoods of Alaskan politics, Palin could be a decisive asset to the Republican ticket.

Shows what I know.