Brits Don't Get it, but Wish they Could

It is always interesting to gauge the opinions of other world citizens. The Brits seem highly approving of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate. Even a little envious:

By Bruce Anderson
Telegraph.co.uk

It was the most important Convention in American political history.

Everything is in flux. Last weekend, I phoned around my Republican friends. Who is Sarah Palin and what do you know about her?

I was told that she is focused, energetic, able and determined. But in British politics, it would be like meeting a bright girl at a Tory conference, who was fighting a safe Labour seat with ferocious energy and whom it would be easy to imagine as a junior minister, in 10 years' time.

America is different. Despite an increasingly urbanised society, the founding myths still overshadow the political system: virgin soil, the open frontier, log cabin to White House. Even though most recent candidates have been multi-millionaires with a campaign budget the size of a second-world country's GDP, Americans insist on believing that anyone can aspire to the presidency.

Enter Sarah Palin, a woman designed to be the central character in an epic.
Think Virgil, Wagner, Tolkien; the heroic journey through a menacing, God-haunted wilderness, in which success is bought at a terrible price. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Not in our heroine's case.

She comes back from the wilderness to the checkout queue in one of the cheaper supermarkets, swapping stories about price increases with all the other housewives. Sarah Palin has a quality which will guarantee her a high place in politics. She is an extraordinary ordinary person. In old Europe, no one can understand her success. In America, her story has great political power. She is the most important vice-presidential candidate in American political history.

Cont. Here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/07/do0703.xml