But despite her pre-feminist roots, Oakley remains an American heroine — a self-educated cowgirl born in a log cabin — who learned to outshoot almost any man in the West. She ended up touring the country with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and, when the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, the government turned down her offer to lead a volunteer group of sharp-shooting women into the war.
Interestingly, like Palin, Oakley had a running battle with the press — successfully suing William Randolph Hearst and others for contending falsely that she had been arrested for stealing to support a cocaine habit. (In another forecast of things to come, Hearst hired an investigator to try to dig up dirt in her past. He found nothing.)
The bottom line is that, as long as the Democrats and media focus on Palin, the more they ignore McCain, much to the GOP’s delight. Any debate about Palin’s qualifications, even if Obama wins that argument, is a loser for him in the long run because it deflects attention from the real issues in the campaign — issues that can help the Dems in November.
By campaigning against Palin, the Democrats are trying to run against an American archetype, competing for an office that the public thinks almost anyone can fill, even a modern Annie Oakley. Not a great idea.
ODDS
JOHN MCCAIN
Odds: 5-7 | this past week: 6-7
BARACK OBAMA
Odds: 7-5 | this past week: 7-6
To read the “Presidential Tote Board” blog, go to thePhoenix.com/blogs/toteboard. Steven Stark can be reached atsds@starkwriting.com.
