Palin energizes campaign of old 'what's his name?'

If you want to gauge just how integral Sarah Palin has become to John McCain's hopes of winning the presidency, consider this: On Tuesday, when the Republican nominee went before the cameras to address what, at that moment, looked like financial Armageddon, he repeatedly referred to how much better off people would be under "a McCain-Palin administration."

No major party candidate in living memory has campaigned under such a formulation, but McCain has his reasons. In electoral terms, Palin is McCain's meal ticket. She is consistently drawing larger crowds than he does, although his numbers also have increased since the Alaska governor's selection. And what can anyone call those knots of lipstick-waving women at her rallies except "Palinites"?

Perhaps more important, the vice presidential nominee is outstripping McCain in media coverage. Last week, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center's weekly analysis of campaign journalism, Palin figured in 53 percent of all stories concerning the presidential race. McCain was mentioned in 49 percent.

By way of comparison, Barack Obama came up in 61 percent of all the campaign coverage last week, while his running mate, Joe Biden, was mentioned just 5 percent of the time, despite a packed calendar of public appearances.

In an election cycle studded with the unexpected, Palin is a phenomenon whose outsized impact seems to rest on three factors.

The first is the culture of celebrity's increasing penetration of our politics. Celebrity long has been the dominant force in much of our popular culture but, up to now, has touched our politics only glancingly. It should be noted that Obama also benefited from this trend early in his race against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

Celebrities can be distinguished from candidates in a couple of ways. Candidates have a record to examine and a program to propose. Celebrities have a story to tell. In fact, a good story is the essence of celebrity.

Whatever your politics, both Obama and Palin have dynamite life stories — different, but each compelling. It's the infatuation with her life story that leads people inclined to admire her not to care when Palin repeatedly lies about her involvement with the so-called bridge to nowhere in her stump speeches. Nobody cares whether what she says about it is true, because it fits so neatly into her "story" — moose whacker, "hockey mom," PTA president-turned-governor, the common-sense reformer. (Anybody remember a movie called "Dave"?)