Best of Freshman Writing

Volume 15

Table of Contents

Alana Augello 

Sebastien Kelome 

Ariel Mansfield 

Katie Rice 

Brandon Longe 

Sophia Reed 

Steven Lysomirski 

Heather Meier 

Svetlana Lewis 

Nader Mekheal 

Greg Shields 

Susan Cruz 

Candace Tilley 

Joe Pilling 

Amanda Crossett 

Cheryl Evans 

Joel Underwood 

Warren Levi Hursh 

Josh Stewart 

Heather Taylor

Sam Pickerine

Jared Martin

Christopher Brown 

Alexandra Pearce

Jacob Held

All materials on the Best of Freshman Writing site are copyright protected. Permission to reproduce the information on these pages, in any fashion, must be obtained from the authors.


Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania State University

This page created and maintained by Jim Manis
jdm12@psu.edu

Last updateded June 26, 2010.

 Christopher Brown 
English 030
Brandywine

In Praise of Palin

The past year in politics brought about one of the greatest and potentially most exciting dualities ever witnessed. The United States of America was to have either an African American president, or a female vice president; an electoral first was inevitable. Our country ultimately chose Barack Obama to lead the nation, not only for his standpoint and grass roots know how, but for sheer disgust of the opposing party. This disgust was uncanny, the type of putrid disgust one might stir upon eating caterpillars or forfeiting their stomach contents to a bathroom sink. Whoever was responsible for repulsing such a massive positon of the population would never have intentionally done so. This is evident: one would never knowingly let that amount of power seep through the cracks in their political platform.
    Consider the following: instead of earning support through eloquence and leadership, why not earn support through relation, relation to the common man. Relate to say, an average Joe, every average Joe. Find support not through majesty, but through friendship and a deep unexplainable nostalgic emotion, like a Wind Song blowing over the plains of Alaska. Now with every Joe, whether he be of the six pack OR plumber variety relating to the candidate and placing trust in her or his every belief, can the chasm of a divided nation be bridged? This radical and, for all practical purposes, stupid idea would require a massive amount of guts and instinct to pull off. This is where our female vice president hopeful entered the stage. Sarah Palin, that hockey mom of a vice presidential candidate pulled out all the stops in what was one of the most brilliant and gutsy political maneuvers of our millennium. Sarah Palin single handedly reversed everything anybody thought was common sense in political strategy by downplaying her intellect and acting basically “unpresidentially” to a country that was simply not prepared for a move of that magnitude.
    Palin started from an ideal childhood, winning the Alaskan basketball championship in high school and moving on to win Miss Congeniality in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant. She attended six different colleges in the next five years for reasons unknown and eventually eloped with her  childhood boyfriend, Todd Palin. Sarah, having no political experience but simply a degree in communications with a minor in journalism, somehow managed to get herself elected to the city council of Wasilla. How did she manage this? A better question, how did she continually work her way up the state pyramid becoming a mayor and then governor of Alaska? There are no hidden details, no side stories or anecdotes to explain this. The only possible explanation is that Palin moved against the grain and united the masses of Alaska to support her ideology using psychology alone.
    This psychology, or psychological analysis, is the one trait all of humankind is born with to some degree; this is the ability to judge the reactions of others  based on one’s own actions.  Some of us may be able to win over friends or judge the character of others well, but could we ever become governor of our own state using this alone? How about a vice presidential candidate? This is Palin’s brilliance, her forte. She clearly has a natural gift of understanding people and their desires, and she exercises her ability by offering to mirror these desires in governmental positions. If this lends to Palin’s credibility as a person focused on people first, consider this: Palin, while the mayor of Wasilla, kept a jar on her desk filled with all the names and phone numbers of the 6,000 plus people in the city. Every day, she would draw a name from the jar and call the person she drew to ask them, “How’s the city doing?”
    Sarah Palin knew, as any bi-pedal mammal usually would at this point, that she was different. She, like some rare academic geniuses, worked her way to the top of the social ladder on brains alone. From her position as governor of Alaska, Palin could see the traditional, conservative way to garner political support (as well as that of Putin). A male Senator usually talks of experience and knowledge in evaluating the state of a certain area and if he convinces enough people he is on their side, he would be elected as governor. Palin, keeping up her consistent bi-partisan trends, laughed in the face of conservatism and radically chose not to talk of experience and personal ability, but of things people seemed to already know about. Palin based her campaign for governor on, as she said, “resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development.” These areas of action are basically obvious and neutral in regards to political affiliation. In other words, Palin ran a substance-less campaign. She was able to be elected to governor without really deciding on any actual values to support! This is truly amazing as she began her term with 93 percent popularity among the entirety of Alaskan voters. Palin clearly wished  to represent the American people and knew how to do it better and more mavericky than any citizen was ever used to.
    Finally, the big break came when John McCain, in an attempt to pull in the female demographic, asked Palin to join him on the Republican ticket. Palin gleefully accepted and did something we could really all expect at this point. She chose a different path than the one suggested by her party and began acting as though she were no more knowledgeable about the vice presidency than any guy on the street. To the Republican Party and most of America, this was a complete and total disaster. Most thought that McCain had doomed his campaign upon selecting Palin, but nobody was prepared for what happened next. Palin, not McCain AND Palin, slowly but surely started gaining supporters using her old technique of acting on instinct. She told America who she was and what she stood for, with no intellectual or logical base, but it worked! People began supporting Palin in masses, and they weren’t only women. Remembering her days as a beauty queen, Palin was sure to keep an attractive  public appearance to gain the male vote as well! From her previous experiences, one might have conjectured at this point that McCain would win the election and Sarah would be our new Vice  President. For some reason this never happened.
    In the end, Sarah Palin stepped out into the political sector to outsmart us all in the name of average people all over the United States. She was undeterred, immoveable and uneducated—but this combination was exactly what her special psychological talents could utilize to achieve fame and fortune. Either everything I just said is true or she has the IQ of moss. The answer is obvious.
Christopher Brown's essay appears here with his express written permission and cannot be reproduced in any manner or fashion without his express written permission.