When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.<\/p>\n
Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.<\/p>\n
Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that\u2019s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain\u2019s brain, because she seems so much like himself.<\/p>\n
The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to \u201d\u201d not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.<\/p>\n