A primer on "Palinism"

NY Times Op-Ed Columnist

Palin’s American Exception

By ROGER COHEN

Published: September 25, 2008

Sarah Palin loves the word “exceptional.” She may be onto something in her batty way: the election is very much about American exceptionalism.

Here's an excerpt:

I’m going to try to make this simple. On the Democratic side you have a guy whose campaign has been based on the Internet, who believes America may have something to learn from other countries (like universal health care) and who’s unafraid in 2008 to say he’s a “proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.”

On the Republican side, you have a guy who, in 2008, is just discovering the Net and Google and whose No. 2 is a woman who got a passport last year and believes she understands Russia because Alaska is closer to Siberia than Alabama.

If I were Obama, I’d put it this way: “Senator McCain, the world you claim to understand is the world of yesterday. A new century demands new thinking. Our country cannot be made fundamentally secure by a man who thought our economy was fundamentally sound.”

Read the article in full here