When the decision of John McCain about the running mate of his presidential formula was made public, my first impression was that he was compensating for his lack of youth and trying to match Barack Obama at the condition of belonging to a minority with a mate of another minority.

But after heard and read about Sarah Palin’s first speech as a candidate for Vice President, now I think that the intention of McCain was to reach a part of the electorate that commonly has few things to identify with the typical candidate in the United States: the media class women.

The best moment of the speech was when Palin made a joke about the hockey moms (What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick) and identified herself as one of them. What really means to be a hockey mom? To running a home with enormous kids’ expectations and demands and very limited budget. Politics so frequently forgets about the common person, a person who can not follow the big themes with the attention and awareness that that need because is attending to the daily life, full of demands.

Politics prefer to reach that common people with populism and maniqueism, for example feeding their fears, as George Bush has done since 9-11. But Palin looked as she believes she can talk with the normal people from their normal lives about the most important issues of a country.

My guess is she is going to lose freshness, because is so difficult to maintain that kind of two levels on the speech. To introduce herself as a hockey mom is easier than to talk about national security budget with hockey mom jokes and metaphors. And some detractors are already giving the first step to show the difference and probably to force her to do the same.
Timothy Noah wrote that as Governor of Alaska, Palin is not an example of an administrator with limited resources. That means that Palin maybe can be a hockey mom, but she is not governing like one.