by Chris Moore

Created on: November 06, 2008   Last Updated: November 25, 2008

It's clear the Republican Party wants Sarah Palin as their torch-bearer for the next several years, hoping she'll be their candidate for the 2012 election. They obviously see her as their equivalent to Barack Obama a young, charismatic female to counter the Democrats' young, charismatic minority.

But for a Palin campaign to work, she will have to spend the next four years learning that national and world politics are much different than being a small-town mayor or governor of remote, rural Alaska. Without that, the GOP will need the next four years under Obama to be even worse than the last eight under George W. Bush. That may be too tall an order.

Obama was born and primarily raised in the even more remote state of Hawaii, but he then attended Columbia University and Harvard Law School, then taught constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. Yes, Bill Clinton went from governor of rural Arkansas to the White House. But Bill Clinton was an Oxford Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Yale Law School. Even the younger Bush is a Yale alum, as was his father. Clearly, education is important in a candidate's background. When you only have a Bachelor's in Journalism from the University of Idaho, you have a lot to make up for.

When John McCain selected Palin as his running mate, the campaign caught an immediate spark. That lasted about three weeks. The American people quickly saw she was brought up in backwoods, good-old-boy politics, highlighted by her hiring several old friends to key administrative positions. They just endured eight years of that under the George W. administration. It wasn't going to work.

And when she did talk about policies, she was clearly spouting the same Bush/McCain talking points: More tax cuts to corporations and not the middle class, no clear solutions to the wars or global warming. Did the Republicans really think the people would buy the same old song again if this time it came from a pretty face?

There's little doubt the GOP's attempt to energize its campaign through Palin was a failure. In a year of record voter turnout overall, Republican voter turnout was at an all-time low. McCain alienated the young voters and Palin alienated just about everyone else by Election Day.

If the Republicans want Sarah Palin to carry their party for the next generation, they'd better hope she gets more politically savvy. And fast.

Palin will have to explain better why she was part of a church where people "speak in tongues" and why her husband once joined a political party that wanted Alaska to secede from the union.

It's one thing to be a fresh face not having been beaten down, desensitized and brainwashed by the American political system. It's another to be separate from the continental U.S and its major cities, having no knowledge of its people and what they want.

Unless Sarah Palin gets on some fast-track program for political education, there's only one thing she can really provide four years from now: More Tina Fey joke fodder.

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