I don't know if Sarah Palin walks on water, but I'm pretty sure she can fly.

I mean, how often in the course of human events is one put in mind of the word "spunky". Until Sarah Palins' RNC speech, I hadn't thought of anyone as being spunky since Sally Field as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun.

But by the time Palin said that "a small town mayor is like a community organizer just with actual responsibilities", it had dawned on me that she was actually more like Sally Field in Punchline, a housewife who'd rather be doing stand-up.

And you know what: I really really like her.

But seriously folks. My willingness to identify with her made me realize quite how much my own self-image and identity have changed over the years. I quite justifiably always thought of myself as a rootless cosmopolitan. My parents were born on one continent, I was born in another, my kids in a third. I grew up in the heart of the world's most cosmopolitan city. Alienation is my stock in trade and cynicism is my middle name. I certainly know more people who edited the Harvard Law Review than shot moose in Alaska.

And yet. As Palin spoke, I realized that I now identify with those Americans who live in small towns, who love their country and feel deeply rooted in it, who carry guns for defense, who have large families, whose children fight its wars. That's my life now.

Obama is a decent person who seems like a really great guy to shoot the breeze with on the bench during a basketball game or in a dorm room. But, especially when contrasted with Palin, he and his wife and his hard-core supporters just seem like over-privileged whiners, self-obsessed careerists, for whom the poor serve as props in the tedious drama that is their quest for self-definition.

Obama is so yesterday. Bring on the spunky flying moose lady.