Sarah Palin returned to her home state this week to bid farewell to her son Track as he headed to Iraq. She got a hero's welcome and took another step on her remarkable journey, writes Denis Stauntonin Alaska
THE SNOW WILL begin to fall next month on Fairbanks, Alaska's second city and home to Fort Wainwright, where Sarah Palin stood this week to bid farewell to 4,000 soldiers deploying to Iraq, including her 19-year-old son Track.
But it was almost balmy on Thursday as the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, known as the Arctic Wolves, marched in formation behind their colours and recited the Wolf Creed.
"Strike fear in the enemy's hearts and minds; I am a lethal and skilled warfighter with unmatched intestinal fortitude," they said. "Tough, both physically and mentally, and instilled with the warrior spirit, I can accomplish any mission - anytime, anywhere."
As Alaska's governor, the Republican vice-presidential nominee is a familiar figure at Fort Wainwright and, as the mother of Pte 1st Class Track Palin, she's a member of the brigade's family readiness group. She agreed to give the keynote address at the deployment ceremony months ago, long before her addition to the Republican ticket had turned the US presidential race on its head.
While the soldiers stood for 90 minutes on a vast airfield, a succession of generals spoke about the importance of their mission in Iraq to America's national security. When Palin's turn came, however, she spoke as a mother, her voice cracking as she addressed the departing warriors.
"As you depart today, don't mind us - your parents, your friends and family - if we allow for a few tears or if we hold you just a little closer once more before you're gone. Because we're going to miss you. We can't help it. We're going to miss you," she said.
"This is one of the moments when we have to face the fact that you may not need our protection anymore. In fact, you're the ones who will now be protecting us."
PALIN WAS BACK in Alaska for the first time since John McCain astonished the political world two weeks ago by choosing the almost unknown 44-year-old as his running mate. Since then, she has become a national sensation, electrifying the Republicans' conservative base and paralysing Barack Obama's usually sure-footed campaign.
Palin continued to dominate the headlines yesterday with her first major interview since she joined the Republican ticket, telling ABC's Charlie Gibson that she didn't hesitate before accepting McCain's invitation to be his running mate.
"I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink," she said.
Palin defended remarks she made to a church congregation when she prayed that the Iraq war was "a task from God", adding that she was not sure if her son was doing God's work in deploying to Iraq.
"I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision," she said.
"I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer."
It's been an unlikely journey for a woman who spent most of her political life in a modest, two-storey building with a clapboard façade, tucked between a couple of strip malls. This is Wasilla City Hall, where Palin was mayor from 1996 to 2002, managing the municipal affairs of about 7,000 people who live in the dormitory town 35 miles north of Anchorage.
Nestling in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, in the shadow of the Talkeetna Mountains, Wasilla has doubled in size in recent years, attracting families from Anchorage with lower property prices and easy access to lakes and forests for fishing and hunting. The local economy is based on retail stores, with Wal-Mart as the biggest private sector employer and a local sales tax ensuring a generous revenue stream for the city government.
Despite its endless strip malls, Wasilla retains a small-town atmosphere and when I visited the current mayor, Diane Keller, this week, she sold me a book of raffle tickets for a local youth project and told me how proud everyone is of Palin.
"She's our home town gal," she said. "She's the same Sarah that she was before she was mayor, before she was governor. She's been able to keep that same feeling and still be open and accessible to people, no matter what job she's been asked to serve in."
As reporters swarmed around Wasilla in recent days, locals have been protective of Palin, especially when it comes to questions about her 17-year-old daughter Bristol's pregnancy and Bristol's decision to marry the child's father, a school friend.
"I've been telling my staff, you know, Sarah puts her pants on the same way today as she did before. She puts her pants on the same way I do, the same way you do. Her family is a normal American family. You know, you have good days and you have bad days," Keller says. "All kids make mistakes. It's not the fact that you made the mistake. It's the fact of what you learn from it and what you do with it that counts."
AS CLOSE TO Beijing as to Washington DC, Alaska calls itself America's Last Frontier, its 600,000 people occupying a state the size of Texas. With some of the most spectacular topography in the world, including America's tallest mountain, Mount McKinley (known to Alaskans as Dinali) and a rich population of bears, moose, caribou, seals and polar bears, Alaska is a nature lover's paradise.
For Alaskans, however, the state's natural resources have been, above all, a source of wealth, starting with the Klondike gold rush in the late 19th century and more recently with the discovery of huge oil deposits in the Arctic Ocean 40 years ago.
Oil is not only at the heart of Alaska's economy but at the centre of its political life and some of the state's leading politicians are currently under investigation for corrupt dealings with big oil companies. Revenue from the North Slope oilfields accounts for more than 80 per cent of Alaska's state budget and finances a $36 billion fund that pays out more than $2,000 each year to every man, woman and child in the state. Palin has topped up this year's cheque, which reaches most Alaskan homes this weekend, with an extra $1,200.
Alaskans pay no state income tax, there is no state-wide sales tax and property taxes, which are levied locally, are low.
"This week, my family of four - my wife, my two children and myself - will get about $13,000 just for breathing here in Alaska," says Peter Van Tuyn, an environmental lawyer who has fought oil companies over conservation issues. "So you tell me what you think the general populace is going to think about the oil industry here when it allows us to have a $36 billion bank account, which is more than most countries have in the bank."
If the oil companies have dominated Alaska's economy, the Republicans have dominated its politics, especially through Ted Stevens, the state's 84-year-old senator. Stevens was indicted last July on charges of falsely reporting $250,000 in gifts from an oilfield service company, including an extensive renovation of his home, a massage chair, a stained glass window and a sled dog.
Stevens's son Ben, a state senator, is under investigation by the FBI and Alaska's sole congressman, Don Young, is also being investigated for taking bribes. When former senator Frank Murkowski was elected governor in 2002, he appointed his daughter Lisa to succeed him in the US senate.
"They were so unchallenged, there were so few countervailing powers that they just thought they didn't have to answer to anyone," says Michael Carey, a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News.
"This was essentially one-party rule, where they became so confident of themselves they just did what they wanted."
Palin challenged Murkowski in the Republican primary in 2006, defeated him and went on to win the gubernatorial election, sweeping into power with a promise to clean up Alaskan politics.
She renegotiated a taxation agreement with the oil companies, sidelined them by contracting a Canadian company to build a new gas pipeline and worked with Democrats to introduce new ethics rules for state politicians.
"People saw her as a modern, suburban woman who was taking on not just the male establishment - but sort of the world," says Carey. "She was sort of a cult figure. People really just got turned on for different reasons - new, fresh, tomorrow, sex appeal, all of that."
Palin has always been upfront about her Christian faith, her opposition to abortion in almost all cases and her support for the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools. But as governor of a state with one of the lowest levels of religious observance in the US, she has been careful to avoid pushing a socially conservative legislative agenda.
On environmental issues, Palin has been a fierce advocate of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and has angered conservationists by ignoring scientific reports about threats to Alaskan wildlife. She has authorised private hunters to shoot wolves from the air as part of a predator control programme to protect moose and caribou.
"There's no science base to that programme. It's outrageous," says Van Tuyn. "I have a small plane, let's say, and you like to shoot at wolves. So we go up in my plane after the state tells us, this is your area where you get to go kill the predators.
"And you're hanging out the window of the plane as I'm swooping down on them in the spring when the snow makes them easy to track and you're blasting away at the wolves from a plane. What is that? This is ridiculous."
Lindsay Holmes, a Democratic state legislator, says Palin deserves credit for standing up to the Republican Party establishment but suggests that major reforms were inevitable once the bribery scandals broke. She believes that Palin's remarkable popularity among Alaskans (her approval rating is above 80 per cent) is due partly to her personal qualities but also to profound political cunning.
"She's got a very Alaskan image. She comes off as very personable, friendly and very approachable," Holmes says.
"She's very, very good at getting out in front of issues. The momentum is already there, they're already heading that way and she kind of is able to step right in front and take ownership of it. She's got very good timing and very good political instincts for identifying an issue that's starting to move and jumping out in front of the bandwagon."
PALIN MAY BE popular among voters but the governor's relationship with legislators has become increasingly strained as politicians in both parties complain that they are left out of big decisions.
"She takes a lot of major initiatives on without any sort of discussion whatsoever with really anybody, which is a little surprising," Holmes says. "So I think that's led to some of the rockiness."
Others in Anchorage mutter that Palin is too quick to bear a grudge, treating policy differences as personal conflicts and depending on a small circle of advisors dominated by friends and family.
Palin's family has been intertwined with her political life since her days as mayor of Wasilla, taking her younger children with her to work and, in recent months, nursing her four month-old son Trig, who has Down syndrome.
Palin's husband Todd, whom she refers to as Alaska's "First Dude", sometimes sits in on official meetings, raising questions about his political role.
State legislators are investigating claims that Palin sacked a police chief because he refused to dismiss her former brother- in-law, a trooper in the state police force.
The trooper had been involved in a bitter child custody battle with Palin's sister and the Palin family accused him of everything from "Tasering" (a taser is an electroshock weapon that causes temporary paralysis) his stepson to shooting a moose without a permit.
This week, it emerged that Palin has been claiming per diem expenses for days spent in her own home in Wasilla because her official residence is the governor's mansion in Juneau. She also took her children on official trips to other parts of the US, charging the state for their air fares.
The media have been combing through Palin's past in search of political, financial or personal scandal but Carey says that, so far, nothing has risen above the level of the embarrassing.
"I still think they're not going to find her in some real estate deal like Ted Stevens or some of these other politicians. It's a matter of her age and she's taking care of her family, not trying to make money," he says.
"I think the problem is going to be the family getting mixed up in policy. Apparently, that's something she just can't stay away from. And she doesn't ask people for advice, that's my impression."
HAVING NOW GIVEN her first major interview, she faces an important test early next month when she debates her Democratic counterpart, senate foreign relations committee chairman Joe Biden.
Carey believes the Democrats would be foolish to underestimate Palin as "a pretty airhead who's going to self-destruct" but he acknowledges that between now and election day, Alaska's charismatic hockey mom will need all the strength and resolve that have been the hallmarks of her political career to date.
"She's a very determined person but she's on the biggest stage of her life and this is a totally unforgiving environment," he says. "You don't get to make one mistake. You get to make no mistakes."