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Even if we accept the premise that people should vote for candidates who are "like them," I would suggest that neither McCain nor Palin qualify. Both of them have lived their entire lives, since birth, in bubbles that are far different from the reality experienced by the typical American.
As an admiral's son and grandson, McCain grew up and lived the first four decades of his life in the military bubble. This may be an admirable thing to do, but it is nevertheless an extremely insular subculture. When you're a career military man, or your father is, you socialize with other military people and their families on military bases. You don't stay long enough in any one place to form any community attachments outside that. The military is your only real community.
From there he moved quickly to the congressional bubble. Enough said about that.
Palin's case is in some ways more extreme. She was born in Alaska, the most backwater of backwater states, and lived her entire life there, except for four years attending college in Idaho. Nothing could be more foreign to the experience of the average American -- it's a state more than twice the size of Texas, with one tenth the population of Dallas/Ft Worth. A substantial number of people live off the land there. It's a state with seemingly endless natural resources. A state where instead of paying taxes, the government pays you just for living there. And a state where it's possible to make a lot of money in blue-collar occupations that don't require much formal education.
I must say that if I were a struggling blue-collar worker this would concern me a little. The rest of the country is not Alaska. Blue-collar workers in Cleveland are not building lakefront homes like Palin's. Does she understand this? Since the day he was born the roof over McCain's head has been provided by the U.S. government, or his spectacularly wealthy wife. Furthermore, his military career was handed to him on a silver platter, as was his political career. How could he possibly know anything about what average people go through finding employment in the private sector?
I'm not sure any of the above is all that important, actually. But it's interesting to me how oddly selective people are when they choose to see some candidates as "different."
