Is 'Palin Effect' already wearing thin?

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Saturday, September 20, 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blew onto the national political scene like a surprise hit movie - with an exciting script, a new landscape, a fresh face - that suddenly everyone wanted to see and talk about.

But now that the Republican vice presidential candidate has been seen and heard by millions - and parodied on "Saturday Night Live" before millions more - a question has been raised about the "Palin Effect." While GOP loyalists apparently still love the movie, is it starting to wear thin on the rest of America, particularly the legions of middle-of-the-road voters?

"Is she a one-hit wonder? Unless she does something radically different from what she's currently doing, yes," Cal State Sacramento political communications Professor Barbara O'Connor said this week. She said that in the 23 days since Palin was named the GOP vice presidential choice, her script has been a limited and increasingly predictable one. "It's fine to say she needed some time to get her footing ... but we're well past that."

Palin's decision to postpone a two-day fundraising and campaign trip to California this week also might say as much about John McCain's campaign troubles this week as it does about her own, insiders say.

Campaign officials said Palin will bolster her foreign policy credentials by appearing with McCain at the United Nations next week. But the Alaska governor has been rescheduled to be almost exclusively at the side of McCain until the election - in part because she boosts the size of GOP activist crowds that the party's presidential candidate can't attract.

Jon Fleischman, the Southern California vice chair of the state GOP, said Palin remains enormously popular with Republicans - and a huge plus for their presidential campaign message.

Strong with base

"She's very strong with the base," said Fleischman, publisher of the GOP Web site Flashreport.org, who said Palin is a fundraising magnet and a proven draw with many of the state's conservative voters who might otherwise have sat out the election. "She gets them excited."

But a new Field Poll released this week underscored that while Palin has excited the GOP's base in blue-leaning California, and helped McCain cut Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's lead to 16 points in the state, she has not advanced the ball for Republicans in winning over independent voters in the nation's most populous state. And those findings were mirrored in a New York Times poll this week that had Obama up over McCain by 5 points nationally - in part because Palin has not moved large numbers of independents to the GOP candidate's camp.

Political insiders say the "Palin Effect" might be waning, in part because her tightly scripted political rallies have become too familiar. She has delivered - more than 14 times to date - virtually the same speech she made to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. That speech always includes the claim, widely disputed by newspapers, editorial boards and independent fact-checking groups, that she said "thanks but no thanks" to the famed Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

Meanwhile, Palin has not allowed reporters to ask questions or appeared at a news conference to address a growing roster of questions about her views and her tenure as the chief executive of Alaska. Those have included matters regarding the Troopergate scandal, her use of a private Yahoo e-mail account to do government business and her positions on key issues like stem cell research.

Just two interviews

In the weeks since being named, she has submitted to just two interviews - one a soft-focus session with GOP-friendly talk show host Sean Hannity - while just one other reporter has been able to get in a shouted question at a rally.

"At some point, that gets old," O'Connor said. "Without more and greater depths of knowledge, they're not going to embrace her."

But Dan Schnur, a longtime GOP strategist who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said that increasing numbers of voters on both sides are getting their information from media sources that reflect their ideologies; Republican campaigns are well aware that party loyalists are inclined to distrust the mainstream media on such matters.

"At a time when more voters can get their information from ideologically tailored sources, it's an even easier sell," Schnur told the Miami Herald this week.

"Partisans on both sides have their favorite sources of information, and they get frustrated when the mainstream media doesn't follow the same talking points."

Still, "I think the luster is wearing off," said Democratic strategist Garry South, who has advised former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and former presidential candidate Al Gore. He says that in the age of YouTube, voters are making decisions quickly about their impressions of a candidate. And in the few days since she debuted, Palin so far has failed to deliver much more to voters than her big, impressive convention speech - a factor that has put her squarely in the sights of late-night comedians.

Pop culture's impact

"One of the things that's happened is that popular culture has come to inform politics. I'm convinced that one of the most damaging things to happen to Gore" was his skewering on "Saturday Night Live," where he was ridiculed for his stiff demeanor, he said.

"That ('Saturday Night Live') Tina Fey impression was more like Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin," South said. "Sometimes there's a crystallizing effect, and people hear something and say, OK, I get it ... 'I see Russia from my house,' " he said, referring to Fey's impression jabbing Palin as lacking foreign policy and travel experience.

"I'm not saying that 'Saturday Night Live' decides the election, but those kinds of popular-culture incarnations do have an effect. And I think this woman will ultimately be viewed as a lightweight."

Not everyone agrees.

GOP strategist Sean Walsh said Palin is "still a rock star" who can only grow as a candidate and as a draw by appearing alongside McCain at events. "You can't argue with the crowds and the excitement," he said. "Bush won the last election because they drilled down deep to the base - and to re-energize them allows McCain to go there too."

E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.