In Defense of Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin has been the target of a lot of cheap shots in the past 10 days.

Certainly, she was not qualified to be a septuagenarian heartbeat away from the presidency. The long and rugged American presidential campaign has the virtue of revealing such shortcomings, and it did.

But it's not just me being gallant, or contrarian, to wonder at the blithe way that the press is promoting anonymous Republican dime-droppers about her fancy clothes, or debate prep. It's a failing of Internet news that, these days, nasty tidbits appear to flow straight from "a source" into general circulation—seemingly without much verification.

Stories about Palin's considerable (albeit raw) political skills and accomplishments, meanwhile, are running against the powerful tide of conventional wisdom.

Today's papers, for instance, carried a story from Alaska, about scientific advancements that could provide Americans in the lower 48 with massive amounts of natural gas—a relatively clean and environmentally preferable energy source. Indeed, by one estimate, the new process could provide enough natural gas to the lower 48 states to heat 100 million homes for 10 years.

It will take a while to develop the new gas fields, and in that time, a pipeline will have to be built to convey the fuel to the rest of us.

Fortunately, a pipeline is in the works. But it is not until the final paragraph of the story in today's Washington Post that we learn that this would be the pipeline now scheduled to be built because of the foresight and diligence and negotiating skills of Alaska's governor—Sarah Palin.

• Click here to read more by John Aloysius Farrell.
• Click here to read more about Sarah Palin.
• Click here to read more about Campaign 2008.