HANSON

Posted at 7:08 p.m. ET

We're now about three hours away from the most anticipated speech by a vice-presidential candidate since Richard Nixon introduced us to his kids' cocker spaniel, "Checkers," in 1952.  Sarah Palin speaks at 10 p.m. ET, according to the current schedule.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson examines why so many Americans seem already to like Palin.  Don't expect Hanson to get any offers from Ivy League schools because of this column, but he doesn't seem to care.  He states it well:

Much has been written why Palin both brings strength to the McCain ticket and is a gamble at the same time. Why then the growing wave of popular sentiment in her favor?

Various reasons, but one I think is that millions of Americans are simply tired of being lectured at by smug elites. Jetting Al Gore made tens of millions finger-pointing at us about our global warming. Obama's America, apparently unlike Rev. Wright's Trinity Church, is a cruel, downright mean and dysfunctional place. John Kerry's United States is one of the half-educated in need of Ivy-League enlightenment and tutorials.

Applause.

Palin's symbolism is the antithesis of the metrosexual wind- or body- surfing politican, and hair-plugged, neurotic TV pundit So at this time, right now, millions apparently like Palin's atypical 19th-century profile. Again, it's a pleasant change of pace from Harvard Law School, DC politics, "community organizing" and the can't-do, 'they raised the bar on me' collective complaint.

Yes it is.  But the MSM will never recognize that.

If she can beat off the frothing Newsweek/MSNBC/New York Times inbred rabid wolves, and do it with the grace she has shown so far, she will fill a deep yearning among Americans for someone like her. A lot of Americans, if they watch reality shows, prefer truckers on ice or Bering Sea crab fishing to endless psychodramas of thirty-something suburban whiners.

Finally...

Right now, there are millions rooting for her in a way not true of Biden—and many who are criticizing her don't have a clue why that it is so.

Thank you, Professor Hanson.  Well stated.

September 3, 2008.