Elisabeth Shue -- The blond actress from Adventures in Babysitting and Leaving Las Vegas shares many of the traits that make Ms. Palin so enticing: She's beautiful, in her mid-forties, and a mother to several young children. Shue, however, attended Wellesley College and Harvard University, earning her degree in government. Palin has a degree in "journalism" from the University of Idaho. Shue was nominated for an Academy Award. Palin placed second in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest. Shue was raised in a political household and had a father in the U.S. Senate. Palin's father woke her up at 3a to hunt moose.
My mother -- Neither Jackie Leo nor Sarah Palin have fancy degrees, but the former founded Child Magazine, served as Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest (whose U.S. circulation is more than 10 times the population of Alaska), and was the Editorial Director of Consumer Reports. My mother was an active member of the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences for ten years. Sarah Palin doesn't believe in evolution and thinks global warming isn't man-made. I might also add that my mother came to all my ballet recitals, so there "hockey mom."
The lady Sarah Palin lost Miss Alaska to in 1984 -- Maryline Blackburn, a singer and entertainer, was born to a career military family and spent her youth in Fairbanks Alaska. She has performed in Spain, Argentina, England, Ireland, Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Switzerland, Russia, and Japan while touring for the Department of Defense. Sarah Palin lives kind of near Russia.
Everyone else on John McCain's short list -- I am loathe to praise Mitt Romney, but at least he was governor of a real state. Carly Fiorina ran a major business, she ran it into the ground, but none the less was in charge of 172,000 people world wide, 20 times as many people as there were in the town that Sarah Palin mayored. Tom Ridge was the Secretary of Homeland Security, Sarah Palin protected us against thinking polar bears were cute.
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