Politico has an exhaustive, heavily linked post documenting all the back-and-forth between Begich and Franken, with pdfs of both men’s letters (Begich cited his familial-political roots on Minnesota’s Iron Range), including a dot-to-dot puzzle that Begich sent along as a guide:

Franken traces the source of his talent to another kind of puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle from his youth:

First of all, let me be clear that I am very well aware that Alaska and Hawaii are states. It’s just that when I was a child, my parents gave me a wood puzzle-map of the United States, which then included only the forty-eight contiguous states.

It wasn’t until years later, sometime in the early to middle sixties, I believe, that Hawaii and Alaska became full-fledged members of the union. Please know that I have assigned a staffer to get me the hard data on this.

Anyway, the point is, I learned only the forty-eight states on the wooden puzzle given to me by my hard-working parents. To include Alaska and Hawaii, while certainly common-sensical, would, I am afraid, dishonor the memory of both my mom and dad.

However, since you are a colleague that is a sacrifice I’m only too happy to make.

Below is the YouTube of Franken drawing the (lower 48) states in three-and-a-half minutes, at a April 28, 2007, DFL fundraiser in Rochester, just two months into what became a two-and-a-half year struggle to reach the U.S. Senate. In the course of drawing the map, Franken keeps up a running commentary:

You know why Minnesota is so windy? The Dakotas blow and Wisconsin sucks. … Here’s where my wife’s from: Maine. No, it’s not the northernmost state. Don’t be ridiculous. We [Minnesota] were until– By the way, I will not draw Alaska and Hawaii. I refuse to. … I don’t know about you but I’m incredibly impressed. … Watch it speed up as we go out West where the states have too many electoral votes for [their] population.

On a personal note (and maybe I should send an actual personal note as Begich did), I’d like to ask Franken to include a dot for Mount Steller, in the Aleutian Islands — from which, as Begich says of Little Diomede Island, you can see Russia.

Alaska’s result has reverberations in Minnesota mostly because both states have yet-undecided races on which Democrats’ chances for a 60-vote filibuster-proof bloc in the Senate depend.

But another echo between Minnesota and Alaska has been sounding this year, as Stevens’ trial and conviction increased the likelihood that his colleagues might soon bounce him from his seat should he win it again. And that would leave Gov. Sarah Palin in a situation somewhat akin to Wendell Anderson’s when he was governor of Minnesota and U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale was elected vice president in 1976.

Anderson resigned and was appointed to replace Mondale in the Senate by his own replacement in the governor’s mansion, Rudy Perpich. Voters punished both men two years later, denying them re-election. Alaska law seems to allow Palin to appoint a temporary replacement but requires a special election within three months.

If Stevens is the winner after the last Alaska vote is counted tomorrow, what advice would Anderson have for Palin? Reached at his office today, Anderson asked to be reminded about the scenarios in the Far North, then demurred for the time being. “Let’s wait and see what happens,” he said.

More intriguing to Anderson at the moment is the possibility of a victory for Stevens’ Democratic rival, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who is a relative of the politically active Begich clan of northern Minnesota. His uncle, Joe Begich, was mayor of his hometown of Eveleth, Minn., before nine terms representing District 6A in the Minnesota Legislature. (Joe continues to serve the area as a member of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board.)

Gov. Wendell Anderson was on what became an iconic Time cover Aug. 13, 1973, illustrating the story, "Minnesota: A State That Works."

But the idea that Palin would be wise to study Anderson’s precedent has been rampant on the Internet at least since her star began its rapid rise in August — and to a surprising degree for what some might consider a significant footnote on the national political scene. And Palin has apparently done that homework, or has at least considered the choices that Providence might put before her: whether to appoint herself to the Senate (temporarily) or run in a special election. Last week she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the latter option was a possibility, but not the former (video, Senate discussion at 6:00 mark).

The high cost Anderson paid for his two years in the Senate can’t be his favorite topic of discussion. But he agreed to talk again after the dust has settled in Alaska.

With the nation on the verge of electing Barack Obama to the presidency, I decided to spend the evening surveying the political mood in Juneau, the city to which Sarah Palin would soon be returning as a defeated vice presidential candidate. Palin has never been especially popular here. She’s barely disguised her well-known preference for moving the state capital from Juneau to the Anchorage area, a departure that would devastate an already-struggling regional economy. Indeed, one of the interesting details to emerge from the “Troopergate” investigation was the revelation that Todd Palin had, on his wife’s behalf, urged at least one state legislator to revisit the idea of a capital relocation. Apparently, these are the sorts of things that mavericks do from time to time.

Palin’s reputation has not been enhanced by the 10 weeks she’s spent in the national spotlight. Though she remains quite popular as a governor, her bizarre stint as national ringmistress for the low-information base of the Republican Party has not served her well in certain quarters of the state. Still, I was curious to see how my fellow townsfolk would greet the end of Palin’s inarticulate and costly run for national office.

Time: 4:15 p.m.
Location: Downtown Juneau

Most polls on the East Coast closed about an hour ago. I probably haven’t felt this jittery and weird since October 2004, when the Boston Red Sox teetered on the brink of winning their first World Series since Woodrow Wilson was president. I spent that evening drinking beer at my favorite local restaurant, which is quite literally an old, converted floatplane hangar. For the sake of good luck, I thought I should begin the evening on familiar turf.

The bar is sparsely populated when I arrive. Two televisions are tuned to CNN at extremely low volume, while a third carries a muted Fox News. I take a seat at a small table next to a couple of women who are drinking wine and obsessing over an electoral scorecard. NPR has just called Pennsylvania for Obama, but no one else has followed suit.

Since my wife and I haven’t had cable since 2006, I’m more or less unfamiliar with the latest contours of cable news campaign coverage. As a consequence, I had no idea that Bill Bennett and Paul Begala were still relevant in some way to the national political dialogue. Who knew? But there they are, hanging out with Wolf Blitzer and two other people I’ve never seen before. Bennett appears to be a few warm cheese curds away from a massive coronary event, and I make a quick note to add his name to my 2009 Dead Pool list.

Suddenly, Blitzer begins chatting with a hologram. Freaked out, I turn to my neighbors and strike up a conversation.

Both are avid Democrats, and both are grateful to Sarah Palin for pushing several Republican friends and relatives into the ranks of Obama voters. One of them tells me about her father, an 82-year-old Republican from Norfolk, Va., who cast what may have been the first Democratic vote of his entire life. As Fox News calls Pennsylvania for Obama, she tells me that her father’s switch had much to do with the presence of our governor on the national ticket. Though he spent his career in the Navy, she tells me, he was never enthusiastic about John McCain. And Palin, so far as he was concerned, was a terrifying choice for a running mate.

“My father has a lot of respect for Colin Powell,” she explains, “and that endorsement pretty much nailed it for him.” Her sister, she adds ruefully, doesn’t share her father’s disappointment with the GOP.

“It’ll be a few weeks before we talk.”

Conversation segues to the question of impeaching Palin — hope swims upstream tonight — and then to a prolonged debate about whether our governor is smarter than George W. Bush. Before we can sift through all the evidence, Fox News — officially drawing a curtain on the era of Joe the Plumber — projects an Ohio win for Obama. A light volley of applause fills the room. A guy at the bar announces that he’s going to call his Republican friend in Cincinnati. A few minutes later, he’s gleefully shouting into his cell phone.

“Say it!” he laughs. “Say it with me! Say it! ‘PRESIDENT BARACK — ‘ Say it, you fucker! PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA! COME ON, SAY IT!”

It takes several minutes, but his friend apparently complies. A one-man rapture ensues.

Time: 6:45
Location: Mendenhall Valley

Before long, I find myself at Henry’s, a bar located in the more conservative section of the Juneau borough, about 10 miles north of downtown. I’m trying to find some devoted Republicans, to no apparent avail. The small congregation at Henry’s is significantly less animated than the folks I’d been hanging out with downtown. A few people are sitting around a table, watching the coverage. I can’t tell if they’re dejected or just bored. Blitzer is speaking with another hologram, so I figure it’s the latter.

I overhear a middle-aged man predicting optimistically that if nothing else went well for the Republicans, at least Ted Stevens stood a decent chance of being re-elected. I nose my way into the conversation, offering the unsolicited observation that the latest polls have shown Stevens to be pretty far behind. Another guy at the table dissents.

“Stevens is a winner,” he grunts. “You’ll see. He’s tough.”

Practically on cue, Lisa Murkowski — Alaska’s other U.S. senator — appears on the television, looking stern and explaining that her colleague has been railroaded by a federal court and that his seven convictions will be overturned in due time. She’s pissed. For the previous 48 hours, the airwaves in Alaska have been bombarded with sympathetic campaign advertisements from Stevens and his supporters. At the bottom of it all, they’ve been arguing that Uncle Ted is a state hero whose four decades of service have earned him the right to be the only felon ever elected to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

I ask, “So what if his conviction holds and the Senate boots him?”

“Oh, I think Palin will run for his seat,” a woman at the table suggests. A few heads nod.

Indeed, if Stevens won and then resigned or faced expulsion, a special election would be convened to select his replacement. A lot of Alaskans seem to believe that Palin would leap at the opportunity to assume national office. If she ran, I have no doubts that she’d win. But I happen not to think she’d actually pursue a Senate seat, for the simple reason that Alaskans expect their congressional delegation to do little more than retrieve armloads of pork for the state. Given the image Palin has tried to create for herself as an earmark reformer, she’d be something of an awkward fit for the office. Besides, I tell myself — not realizing what’s actually been happening in voting booths across the state — the entire scenario is moot, since tonight, Stevens is certain to be handed the second most humiliating verdict he’s received in the past two weeks.

Curiously, no one at the table thinks Palin would stand a chance of winning the presidency in 2012.

“I’m not a Republican,” the first woman explains, “but I think she’s an OK governor. I just don’t think she’d be able to run a campaign on her own.” The guy next to her agrees.

“Well, I am a Republican,” he says, “and I think this whole campaign thing has been great for the state. I’m sorry they’re losing, but she really doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s been saying what they tell her to say, and I don’t think she’ll be ready in four years. I dunno. Maybe she’ll get bored being back in Alaska, so she’ll probably run. She likes the attention.”

I turn back to the television. It’s a few minutes after 7:00. The polls in Alaska have closed, and Blitzer is now announcing that Virginia’s electoral votes will go to the Democratic candidate for the first time since 1964. Moments later, in a mass, near-simultaneous recognition of the obvious, every news organization on the entire planet calls the presidential race for Obama. One of the other men at the table whips out a camera, smiles and takes a few pictures of the scene in Chicago’s Grant Park, where a quarter of a million people are feeling their brains scramble inside their heads.

The mood at Henry’s is a little more contemplative.

“Well, it’s over,” someone else sighs. “So much for that.” Within two minutes, the whole table has settled their tab and wandered out into the parking lot.

As I sit there finishing my beer, I ponder the enormity of what’s transpired over the past few minutes. The United States — a nation whose founders could have owned a man like Barack Obama, a nation whose two major parties have at various times nourished themselves on white racist anxiety — just elected an African-American to the presidency, where he will succeed a man who has been almost inarguably the worst two-term presidency in the country’s history. The nation’s economy has been knocked into a cocked hat, and we’re nearly six years into a stupidly conceived war in Iraq. Our government spies on its own citizens and tortures people. And we just elected a black dude to lead us the fuck out of this terrible mess.

It might work, and it might not. But somehow the whole drama of Sarah Palin now seems beyond comprehension, as if it were simply a weird thing that nearly happened forever and a day ago.

And so once again, at least for now, Palin has become Alaska’s problem. Palin and her groundless ideas about science, Palin and her cavernous ignorance about the world, Palin and her peculiar species of the English language, Palin and her creepy husband, Palin and her right-wing fanboys, Palin and the whole goddamned lot of it — it’s over.

America spent several months with Sarah Palin and said, in a loud and resounding voice, “Thanks. But no thanks.”

America, as you prepare to watch this fantastically bizarre coupling of contenders on Thursday, I submit to you yet another study in contrasts–and perhaps the most striking yet.

In late-August of 1999 Joe Biden, acting in his capacity as ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Kosovo making headlines with a blunt warning to the Kosovo Liberation Army: disarm under the terms of a NATO agreement or lose the support of the U.S. Congress “overnight.” Back at home, he was fighting to keep Bill Clinton’s nuclear test ban treaty.

Sarah Palin was also making headlines in late-August of 1999–with tears in her eyes at a similarly exotic and distant local: the Wasilla Wal-Mart.

The headline from the Anchorage Daily News was “Wal-Mart rings up wedding; working couple walk down retail aisle after tying the knot in Wasilla store.”

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

He worked in the pets department. She was a cashier. A romance blossomed. And when it came time to say “I do,” they chose — where else? — an aisle next to menswear.

Jake McCowen and Rosalyn Ryan exchanged vows last week at the place where they met, work and fell in love: the Wasilla Wal-Mart.

A crowd of 200, including passengers from a tour bus and several dozen curious shoppers, watched the two employees tie the knot in an afternoon ceremony officiated by Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin.

“It was so sweet,” said Palin, who fought back tears during the nuptials. “It was so Wasilla.”

Thursday ought to be interesting. There is no reason a politician couldn’t go from weeping at a Wal-Mart wedding to emerging victorious from a vice presidential debate in the span of nearly a decade. Why not? After all, who knows what she’s learned in her study of foreign policy and other issues of national import over the years. One gets the impression, however, that maybe she’s only just begun…

For the past several weeks, Sarah Palin has aggressively harvested Alaska’s mythic cultural status on a national political stage. In addition to her near-daily odes to guns, hockey and mooseburger, Palin has also reinforced the perception of Alaska as a vast frontier land where environmental concerns and resource extraction converge harmoniously. By explaining, as she did to the right wing throwbacks at Newsmax, that Alaska would experience the consequences of climate change in unique ways, she has repeatedly implied that her leadership on climate change has been cautious and realistic.

It hasn’t. Though Palin and the legislature authorized $13 million for erosion control in a handful of the most vulnerable Alaska Native villages, the state has done nothing to reduce its carbon emissions. Palin did create a Climate Change Sub-Cabinet, but its duties are restricted almost entirely to gathering information that might help the state respond to climate change. More innovative policy suggestions have not been pursued. When University of Alaska marine biologist Rick Steiner suggested to Governor Palin that tax revenues from the oil industry be used to fund a Climate Response Fund, she dismissed the idea with the suggestion that that the federal government — that is to say, taxpayers from the rest of the country — might be able to fund Alaska’s needs instead.

For someone who boasts daily about her heroic confrontations with the oil and gas plutocrats, Palin has a remarkably pliant relationship with the hydrocarbons industry. It’s true, of course, that Palin and the state legislature raised taxes on oil profits from 22.5 to 25 percent. But it warps credulity to present this as evidence of Palin’s inner determination to stick it to the fat cats. Though she prides herself on evicting lobbyists from her offices, it’s hard to imagine why representatives from British Petroleum, ExxonMobil or ConocoPhillips would spend money to sway a public official who endorses nearly everything they do.

Indeed, when Palin came into office, her administration retained its predecessor’s opposition to a multi-state lawsuit that accused the EPA of failing to regulate emissions standards in new vehicles. Fearing that a successful case might bode poorly for the oil and gas producers on which the state’s economy depends, former Governor Frank Murkowski had filed a respondent’s brief in Massachusetts, et. al., v. Environmental Protection Agency, arguing with several other states — Michigan, Ohio, Texas and South Dakota among them — that the Clean Air Act does not permit federal curtailment of greenhouse gases. As a candidate, Palin had endorsed the filing; in the spring of 2007, the Supreme Court ruled against the EPA.

Meantime, Palin has blessed the extractive industries with her support for oil and gas drilling in ANWR, the Chukchi Sea, and elsewhere around the state. And though she avowed her opposition to the massive Pebble Mine during the 2006 campaign, Palin has show signs of having changed her mind on a project that would primarily benefit mining companies abroad while posing acute environmental risks to in Bristol Bay — home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery (and the waters for which Palin’s most famous daughter was named). A week before being tapped by McCain for the VP slot, she violated the spirit if not the letter of state law by publicly speaking out against a ballot initiative that would have jeopardized the mine’s future. Her Department of Natural Resources was also scolded by a state watchdog commission for publishing misleading and false information about the ballot measure on its own website.

More recently, and to great national derision, the state of Alaska filed a suit in federal court challenging the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Issued this past May, the federal polar bear listing drew on a large body of peer-reviewed scientific data demonstrating that Arctic sea ice coverage during the summer months had declined rapidly in recent years. The data also strongly suggested population declines in the South Beaufort Sea — located off Alaska’s North Slope — and the Western Hudson Bay in Canada. Additional studies have observed declining cub survival rates, as well as declining skull size and overall weight for cubs and adult males, all of which strongly suggest that nutritional and other environmental stresses are affecting the polar bear population.

The bear habitat of the Southern Beaufort sea resembles several others — the Chukchi, Laptev, Kara and Barents seas — where a third of the world’s bears reside. Based on computer modeling that has accurately tracked with recent summer ice data, the informed scientific consensus, described extensively in the 93-page final ruling, suggests that summer ice will diminish optimal polar hear habitat by more than 40 percent by mid-century. Unabated, these conditions could eventually threaten at least two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population.

Governor Palin, as promised, rejected the listing, arguing that it had not relied on “the best scientific and commercial data available.” In a New York Times op-ed piece that appeared in January, Palin deceptively wrote that “state biologists are studying the health of polar bear populations and their habitat” — implying that Alaskan biologists disagreed with the science behind the ESA listing. The state of Alaska, in fact, has not employed a polar bear expert for well over three decades. And as Steiner discovered recently through a federal FOIA request, the state’s marine mammal experts in the Department of Fish and Game actually endorsed the science behind the polar bear ruling as well as with nine US Geological Survey studies that provided additional support to the reigning consensus.

The Palin administration’s pro-development, anti-science approach to polar bears is typical of its overall approach to environmental policy. In addition to its repellent “predator control program,” the state is currently fighting efforts to protect the Cook Inlet beluga whale population, which has been reduced by 75 percent over the past two decades. Such a listing would prove inconvenient to oil, gas, and coal mining interests, which have been allowed to use the inlet as a massive industrial toilet. The listing might also impair the construction of the other “Bridge to Nowhere” at Knik Arm, a project that Palin continues to support, so long as federal funds can be used to build it.

Sarah Palin’s record on the environment is, in a word, terrible. If you’ve admired the Bush administration’s hostility toward the environment and were hoping for an additional four years of science-free public policy from the nation’s chief executives, the prospect of a McCain-Palin victory in November should send you into peals of rapturous praise. Where true believers hear in Sarah Palin the voice of an authentic conservative, others have discerned the faint soundtrack of circus music she brings to the campaign. Hostile toward data that might compromise her pro-development evangelism, Palin embodies a willful ignorance toward professional science that runs counter to her defenders’ insistence that she is a pragmatic leader. The possibility that Palin, as vice president, might be responsible for crafting a framework for America’s energy policy should set the nation’s teeth on edge.

David Noon is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, the author of the great, sort-of-on-hiatus Axis of Evel Knievel blog, and a contributor to Lawyers, Guns and Money.

“I simply refuse to believe there are no community organizers in Alaska.” That’s what Marjorie Childress wrote at the New Mexico Independent after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin maligned community organizers at the Republican National Convention (RNC).

Indeed, though their work may carry different job titles — “advocate” seems to be Alaskan for “organizer” — plenty of Alaskans do community organizing. In fact, Gov. Palin is currently hiring people to do the work of community organizers. At Workplace Alaska, Alaska’s Web site for recruiting state workers, there are two current job openings for this position:

Social Services Program Coordinator, in Anchorage or Juneau. From the job description: “The incumbent is expected to perform technical assistance, on-site community development … The duties of the position require frequent travel and strong community development skills … Your experience securing resources for youth-related programs and services, through grant writing, negotiating agreements and partnerships with a variety of organizations and agencies, and/or grassroots community mobilization.”

At ALEXsys, Alaska state government’s online job bank, there are two more community organizer-type positions advertised:

Village Advocate, Naknek, Alaska. Provide direct advocacy and crisis intervention services to adult and child victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, other crimes and related abuse. Provide systems advocacy to challenge and change institutional response and belief systems that allow violence to continue, including technical assistance and systems advocacy to village/tribal groups on community interventions in domestic violence and sexual assault.

Outreach Coordinator, Kotzebue, Alaska. Among the job duties: Disseminate information about suicide prevention, cultural strength and wellness through a variety of means. Coordinate and meet with local and regional organizations and bodies to keep them aware of outreach activities and to get their support and guidance.

On top of that, Alaska state government funds a dozen regional development organizations known as ARDORs, through a state agency that until last year was known as the Alaska Division of Community Advocacy. (Under the auspices of the Alaska Division of Community Advocacy, Sarah Palin served on the board of her ARDOR, the Mat-Su Resource Conservation and Development Council, while she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.)

What do these ARDORs, these emissaries of community advocacy, do? One example is the Bering Straits Development Council, which according to the latest ARDOR annual report helped recruit a VISTA volunteer to tackle, among other projects, “poverty alleviation.” The Bering Straits organization also worked with the University of Alaska to “provide rural citizens with cooperative technical and organizational assistance. The goal is to foster a cash-based economy by creating rural cooperatives.”

The nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate is perhaps the most bizarre thing I’ve witnessed since moving to Alaska six years ago, arguably surpassing the time a bald eagle dropped a flounder into my hot tub. Judging by the e-mails I received on Friday — half of which were some variation of “Who the f*** is Sarah Palin?” — almost no one outside this state knows who the f*** Sarah Palin is. Here’s a quick primer.

Her political career began ran in tiny Wasilla, where she defeated a three-term incumbent in a tough mayoral race that attracted hundreds of voters. According to legend, Palin campaigned aggressively and enthusiastically, knocking on every door in the city and writing personal letters to locals who’d actually bothered to show up at the polls in the previous four years. In office, Palin quickly began distributing a stable of severed equine heads to rivals and suspected foes. She slashed the city’s budget and fired a host of subordinates — the head librarian and the chief of police, most notoriously — while asking for the resignations of her entire court of managers to test their “loyalty” to a 32-year-old mayor. Arguing that the city’s $4 million surplus revenue would be best spent on roads and sewers, Palin hacked the appropriation for the Wasilla city museum, driving three septuagenarian curators into disgruntled retirement. When Palin proposed halving the city’s property tax assessment, one city council member — in a parody of the mayor’s small-government evangelism — proposed simply getting rid of it altogether.

So went her first ten months in office. Though Palin’s abrasive decisions sparked widespread grumbling, a move to recall her was bridled and a lawsuit by the fired police chief went nowhere. Palin survived a rocky initiation, and in 1999 more than 800 appreciative citizens bore her triumphantly aloft to a second term. From there, she moved on to a state resource commission and into the perennial rumor mill of potential gubernatorial and senatorial runs. When the flagrant ass-peddling that’s long defined Alaska’s Republican party finally backfired in 2006, Palin vaulted to the governor’s mansion, promising to reduce corruption and draw more hydrocarbons from the soil.

In most ways, Palin has been a vast improvement over her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, a world-renowned dope who managed to aggravate every possible constituency while presiding over a vast ocean of corruption during his single term in office. She approved a bill that squeezed oil producers for more revenue, and she called out fellow Republicans, including the party’s own state chairman, for their pliable ethics. Along these lines, Palin’s work has been commendable, though it bears noting that after corruption indictments had been laid against nearly a dozen public officials, lobbyists and corporate executives, legislative inertia was not difficult to overcome. “Troopergate” — which I suspect is going to turn out very badly for Palin — takes the shine off Palin’s image as a reformer. As with her approach to the mayor’s office a decade earlier, Palin has established a pattern of using public office to settle private scores and to retaliate against subordinates who have been deemed insufficiently helpful.

More substantively, Palin’s vaunted record as a budget-trimming “maverick” and a principled opponent of federal pork is also overstated. She has never opposed federal earmarks on principle, even for the patently absurd Gravina Island bridge (“to nowhere”). And while she hacked $270 million from this year’s budget, the “principles” she deployed were inconsistent and provincial. She left most projects in her home region of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley untouched (though she dismantled a funding proposal for a recycling center). And she allowed the state to fund an “academic based” conference to highlight the state’s unique argument that shrinking polar ice doesn’t threaten polar bear habitats. It’s true that she eliminated funding for a zamboni blade-sharpener — a budget item that was to state political snark what the “Bridge to Nowhere” was for the rest of the country — but to describe Palin as “anti-pork” requires that we overlook the basic point that for most people, “pork” is merely synonymous with “projects I don’t like.”

Since her nomination last week, other aspects of Palin’s conservative ideology received lots of exposure. She is fanatically anti-choice, a stance that the birth of her fifth child — and her own teenage daughter’s pregnancy — will only underscore as McCain rallies social conservatives to the tent. Her religious mentors in Alaska are genuine End-of-Days lunatics, and Palin has offered modest endorsement for the view that creationist superstition should be granted equal time in high school science classes. In keeping with her administration’s cautious approach to governing, though, Palin has not forwarded any legislation on these or any other issues. And while she personally opposes domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples, Palin vetoed a plainly unconstitutional bill that would have denied those benefits to state workers. These traits could be as effective a combination for McCain’s candidacy as they’ve been for Palin in Alaska. Social conservatives will recognize her as one of their own, while moderates may not be inclined to view her as a dangerous ideologue.

As a vice presidential candidate, though, Palin could be disastrous. She’s not a policy wonk, and she’s incapable of holding a press conference without a coral reef of staffers to feed her answers. Though amiable and charming in debates, she is staggeringly uninformed on most issues of national significance, and voters would do well to wonder how the erstwhile Mayor of Wasilla would manage the American imperium when President McCain strokes out over a third-tier international crisis.

More ominously for Palin, she’s made a tremendous number of enemies during her rise to power, folks who have remained more or less quiet about the less savory aspects of Palin’s professional and personal life. Given the McCain campaign’s apparent failure to thoroughly research Palin’s past, I would not be surprised to see some highly public score-settling over the next few weeks.

David Noon is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, the author of the great, sort-of-on-hiatus Axis of Evel Knievel blog, and a contributor to Lawyers, Guns and Money.