Sarah Palin 2.0

Posted by Bill on Jul 6, 2009 in MeshBlog | 0 comments

There’s a lot of conventional wisdom flying around in the news media among professional pundits and bloggers alike about how Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has killed her political career by stepping down early from the office she now holds. Conventional wisdom is often wrong, of course, but time will tell.

What we do know here in mid-2009 is that a lot of what we believed just three years ago about what “works” in politics was wrong. If political conventional wisdom circa 2006 had been right, a backbench senator of no significant professional accomplishment in or outside of politics, running on little more than a couple of vapid slogans seemingly borrowed from a network marketing convention session would not have won the Democratic presidential nomination, much less the White House, in 2008.

But Barack Obama upended conventional wisdom, leveraging the Internet and social media to win the presidency. Through social networking platforms, text messaging and other such tools, Obama sold himself to a slim majority of the American people much like Mary Kay’s network marketing reps sell cosmetics by pushing hopes and dreams.

Sarah Palin’s risky move is no more risky than a first-term U.S. Senator of thin resume declaring his candidacy for the presidency almost before he unpacked his bags upon arriving in Washington DC for the first time. She has the same social media tools Obama had. She has a passionate following in her party. She has name recognition. And, soon, the freedom to travel the country raising funds in eye-popping amounts for Republican candidates and organizations and allies, building offline connections while using the social media to both raise money and build connections online.

Will it work for her?

Conventional wisdom said Obama couldn’t beat Hillary Clinton and win the White House, so Obama ran unconventionally, and won.

Conventional wisdom has said a governor of a faraway state like Alaska could not win the White House for many reasons, including the very practical problem of being too far away to do much campaigning in the lower 48 without being criticized for not being at home doing her job. Palin has just solved that problem. And her rapid response on Twitter and Facebook to the criticism leveled at her in recent days shows she gets how to use the social media to impact and drive news coverage.

Where will the story end? I don’t know – but it’s going to be fun to watch.

7/7/09 Update: The Washington Post takes a look at Palin’s online army.