It's Going To Be Palin's September

I'm indebted to CBS News's Steve Chaggaris for inspiring this bit of thinking. What an incestuous lot we journalists play in.

Sarah Palin is, quite simply, the celebrity of September. Interest in her will be enormous. Just as Democrats painted on Barack Obama's blank canvass in January and February of 2007, Republicans and independents will get the chance to fill in their view of Gov. Palin. She's the new thing. The object of curiosity. The press and the larger media will obsess over her and her family and her life.

Every word she says will be subject to parsing and semiotic analysis. The late night comics will be ferocious. (Craig Ferguson called her a "sexy young nothing" last night.)  There will be front-page stories on her accent. She'll be the top story everywhere she travels; every new market she sets foot in will be hers to own for the day. She'll draw enormous crowds...much larger crowds that John McCain. The demand for new facts and information about her will be insatiable. I bet that Adam Nagourney, the Times's chief political correspondent, will spend some time on the trail with her.

So where does that leave the McCain-Palin ticket? 
For one thing, the attention won't be on Obama. He's kind of yesterday's news. And there will be lots of competition in the race to take her measure. Democrats will portray her as a radical; against contraception, in favor of creationism, weird in her habits and culture. Republicans will rush to defend her. A worry for the McCain campaign might be that as details trickle out about her life and her career, they're bound to be unflattering. The reasoning here is that the good stuff is already out there. The good stuff is what McCain wants you to know about her now. 

And in the end, as much as Republicans love Sarah Palin, John McCain is at the top of the ticket. Maybe Palin raises his game; maybe she reinforces his age and disposition. Maybe the fact that a lot of delegates were joking about reversing the ticket last night becomes less funny the more you hear it.

Or maybe the ticket flummoxes Obama, cuts into his momentum and peels away enough women for John McCain to make a stand.