The Godzilla from Wasilla

Let's recap the tale so far. Former beauty-queen and graduate in Communications gets elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (a satellite city of Anchorage for those of you weak on geography). She takes on the good ole' boys with a folksy style, a great smile and a "I am not another Juneau politician" motto.

The Gov is extremely popular and gets chosen to help balance the Republican presidential ticket with an extremely experienced but very old guy. The Governor is youthful and plays well with the religious right for among other things not aborting her fifth child who was born in April 2008 with Down-syndrome.

Rumours from the local librarian and church are that she speaks in tongues on the weekends and believes that dinosaurs and man walked on the earth at the same time (those northwestern liberals can be so vicious). She gives a great speech at the Republican convention, which excites the party base and the midriff of more than a few men.

Then disaster strikes: she is interviewed by two major league US journalists for television: Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. The Couric interview is so good CBS TV released it in sections over a number of days. The governor sounds totally clueless about foreign affairs and cannot name one magazine that she reads to keep up with current affairs.

But here is the real campaign trail gold: one of the funniest women in America (Tina Fey) looks uncannily like Palin and does her accent (particularly Palin's growling "r") and her wink superbly well.

Americans start to doubt the newbie from a small town is up to the job of being a heart beat away from the president (before Cheney, the VP role was essentially to be the back-up president, but when the VP has the dicky heart then you really need to watch out!).

This domestic drama however had an international dimension. Palin is a great hit with the international press. She plays to that old American stereotype the "ugly American" (gormless about world politics). I know, she is hardly unattractive, but ironies abound, in the 1958 novel The Ugly American, the ugly guy is the culturally sensitive hero.

During the 2008 campaign I tracked the coverage Palin received in the international print media compared to Joe Biden (remember anything about him?). Fake photos of Palin in a bikini holding a rifle and fake claims that she thought Africa was a country (it was President Bush who actually said that, not Governor Palin) were constantly printed in the global media - including in Australia.

The Age was particularly guilty of splashing falsehoods about Palin on the front page of its website. Reporting her actual words would have been a more effective and honest indictment of Governor Palin as presidential material.

Does this tell us anything new about the US? Not really. The plain speaking frontiersperson still has strong appeal to Americans. In America like most political cultures the fantasy that rural living cleanses the sins of urban life is potent and there is nowhere quite as pure in the American imagination as the Alaskan wilderness.

Palin's populist style and anti-cosmopolitan persona played poorly with urban and university educated Americans, and this negative so-called "northeast coast establishment" view of the frontiersmen and women has long been echoed in global opinion of the US.

It's an old story told as far back as the 1830s by the American James Fenimore Cooper and the British Frances Trollope. Palin fits the stereotypes neatly; however, as the Mississippi novels of Mark Twain remind us sometimes the so-called rubes from the frontier end up with the treasure and the joke is in fact on us foreigners.