Working-Class HeroHow the Palins' enviable blue-collar lifestyle could help the McCain campaign.
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008, at 1:44 PM ETSee Slate's complete Republican National Convention coverage.
Most of the initial reaction to Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate has focused on her youth, gender, and conservatism—and more recently, her daughter's pregnancy. But the pregnancy (which could help swing voters identify with Palin) threatens to obscure a seductive and misleading subtext in Palin's biography that may play a key role in the election: the way she embodies the hope of a blue-collar life without economic insecurity.
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StumbleUponPalin's background reminded us of an Alaskan we met several years ago. We had just moved to Anchorage for a temporary job in the state court system and struck up an illuminating conversation with a bricklayer while on a hike outside town. He made a surprising amount of money—he had moved to Alaska because its wages were so high. He also had enviable stretches of leisure: He worked long shifts during the short construction season, then spent all fall and winter riding his "snowmachine" (Alaskan for snowmobile), panning for gold—yes, people still do that there—and hunting and fishing. He exuded optimism; his life was good and he knew it, and there was no resentment of yuppies like us.
Palin's family, warts and all, has some of the same features. Husband Todd's two jobs—commercial fisherman and oil production manager on the North Slope—required little formal education and provide ample time off. Yet they pay extremely well. If you include the permanent fund dividend that Alaska distributes to its residents as a way of sharing oil tax revenues, the family made about $100,000 last year, not counting Sarah's $125,000 salary as governor.
Mr. Palin's income alone would put the Palins at about the same level as many well-educated, white-collar workers we knew in Anchorage. It is also enough money to enjoy a quality of life that is, at least to a certain taste, superior to what is enjoyed almost anywhere else, either in cities or in the countryside. Like the bricklayer, the Palins can hunt and fish in a place of legendary abundance. Their hometown may be a dingy Anchorage exurb, but it has cheap, plentiful land bordering a vast and beautiful wilderness, which is crisscrossed by Todd (the "Iron Dog" champion) and the Palin children all winter. (By comparison, in the Northeast many leisure activities are brutally segregated by income: Martha's Vineyard vs. the Poconos, the Jersey Shore vs. the Hamptons.)
This free and easy life is radically different from the desperate existences depicted in Barack Obama's speeches. The main policy thrust of Obama's acceptance speech (and of both Clinton speeches) was that middle-class families, and particularly blue-collar families like the Palins, are in crisis because of stagnant wages, unemployment, foreign competition, and growing inequality. But these problems, which are a statistical fact, seem a world away from the Palin family.
This disjunction between the good life for many Alaskans and the not-so-good life for working-class families elsewhere suggests several strategies for the McCain campaign. Palin certainly has more credibility than McCain to attack Democrats' economic policies. More subtly, Palin embodies a notion that Republicans can create a society like Alaska—where the culture has a heavy working-class influence, state taxes are nonexistent, economic prospects are good for people regardless of formal education, and bricklayers can make the same money as urban lawyers (and have more fun in their spare time).
While Democratic policy tries to help blue-collar workers by making it easier for them to attend college and get office jobs—that is, by encouraging them to cease to be blue-collar—Palin's Alaskan story offers hope from within the blue-collar culture. She validates the goodness of life in rural America because she has embraced a particularly exotic, turbocharged version of this life. Her biography, bound to be emphasized by Republicans, thus makes a powerful appeal to one of the country's most decisive constituencies.
The rub, of course, is that however genuine it may be, Palin's family life may not be possible outside Alaska. The harsh and remote conditions that make Todd Palin's oil and fishing jobs so lucrative are unique to Alaska. And Alaska's large negative income tax (and outsize share of federal pork) is not something that can (or should) be duplicated in other states. So maybe the lesson is that, if you find Sarah Palin's blue-collar lifestyle enviable, you shouldn't necessarily vote for her—but you may want to consider moving to Alaska.
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Comments from the Fray
Alaska calls itself the Last Frontier. Its as close to the America Jefferson dreamed of -- a homogenous, socially egalitarian country of independent farmer-owners and craftsmen - as it is possible to find. For some people, like Sarah Palin's parents, it's where you migrate to for a fresh, independent start when even Idaho becomes too constraining. For others in the Lower 48, it plays the same role in their fantasy life as the Pendleton shirt in the closet or the SUV in the mall parking lot. That Palin's nomination has proven so popular within her party tells us a good deal about what Republicans think the real America is and dream about what the country ought to look like.
Unfortunately, that imagined America has little or nothing to do with a country where most people live in suburbs or cities and will spend their entire lives working as employees for some large organization or other, at the mercy of economic developments around the world. People like Palin's parents move to Alaska because they want to get away from life as it is lived in the Lower 48. Maybe that's why Palin was involved with the Alaska Independence Party when she was younger.
What Palin exemplifies is the Frank Capra - Jimmy Stewart sentimental populist wish-dream, seen in movies like Dave, and on every daytime tv judge show, that all would be well if a regular person, just like ourselves, only a little bit better, ran things instead of professional politicians, lawyers and intellectuals. I don't underestimate its appeal.
--jack cerf
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Timber, oil, mining, tourism, fishing, etc. are all federally subsidized. The land on which many of these activities occur is owned by the people of the United States. So, they're making all that money cutting your trees, hunting your moose, drilling your oil, etc. Sure, Alaskans (not all of them) think those resources belong to them because they're tough and rugged enough to tramp around the frozen tundra, bounce around on the waves, whatever, to extract the bounty and sell it to the rest of us. They forget we bought Alaska from the Russians in the first place, then paid people to settle there in the 1940s and 1950s.I guess I can see why they hate the federal government. Without it, there would be no Alaska, no oil pipeline, no fishing industry, no tourism, no nothing. They'd all be back in Arkansas, making moonshine. Who wouldn't resent a government that tore you away from poverty and ignorance and made you live in a recreational paradise?
--Arlington
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I find it interesting that the article writer never mentioned that most likely the reason the Palins can have such a lifestyle is because of union membership. Please give some consideration to the fact that Alaska has a high union density which drives the rest of the wages. Funny how the conservatives forget that the trade unions helped build the middle class of this country.
--mpmartinez153
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(9/3)