Iyow - in your own words

Now that all the excitement from the historic 2008 U.S. Presidential election has died down, Yuval Levin’s ‘The Meaning of Sarah Palin’ is the best analysis I’ve read yet on Sarah Palin and her symbolism, and why people reacted as they did to her. (And I’ve read a lot of them.)

It’s a fair and sober piece that understands the depth of Palin’s strengths – a stubborn belief in the importance of ethical government and the redeeming virtues of fair competition – as well as her (and more centrally McCain’s) electorally fatal deficiency in painting a full vision of why their beliefs would make Americans better off: “Palin’s potent combination of cultural populism and social conservatism might provide the roadmap a Republican politician will need in the future to make headway against the Democratic tide. But that roadmap will only take that Republican politician so far. The rest of the journey requires the articulation of a broader vision for American families, American prosperity and freedom, and American security; a vision of conservatism, not only a nimbus of populism.”