Dan has an astute observation (phrases bolded by me):
America has always romanticized rural life, and no doubt the McCain campaign has prepared all sorts of comebacks that will turn criticism of Palin into insults against anyone with a rural background.
But I want to talk about another "rural problem:" politics. Effective politics in rural America is based on person-to-person knowledge. You might run on an abstract platform, but you build roads and fix potholes and run sewer lines by knowing people who do stuff. It isn't the way things work in civics texts, but it's the way things work in Waynesville, NC, and Awendaw, SC.
During my 20-year newspaper career, I saw this pattern play out over and over: A small town hits a development boom, and within five years the old political order falls into chaos, typically because of a scandal. A judge fixes a speeding ticket for a cousin. A mayor gives a contract to a friend without opening it to bids. Invariably, the people implicated in these scandals can't understand why people are so upset. They typically get defensive and bitter.
Palin arrives on the national scene already equipped with her own ready-made podunk scandal. She just doesn't seem to grasp that this isn't the way other people do politics, that the rules that govern small towns just don't work when you are dealing with more outsiders than insiders.
Best-case scenario for McCain? Palin manages the learning-curve quickly. But she's going to have to adopt new ways of thinking on the fly. And if she makes a gaffe (which she will -- everybody does), she's going to have to avoid a small-town response.
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You are right ... "Effective politics in rural America is based on person-to-person knowledge."
But here's the larger problem. There is a huge information gap in rural America. This gap is caused by the demise of statewide newspapers; an over-dependence on community newspapers that don't have the resources to be watch-dogs on federal elections and how Washington (and state) policy-making -- when done right -- can benefit rural economies ... and just to complicate things, every time a rural citizen gets in his/her car to drive somewhere, their radio stations carry Rush Limbaugh and his friends preaching diatribes that (1) aren't true, and (2) hurt rural America.
This gap means that all too often rural voters are uninformed about how their elected officials actually represent them, and consequently, rural voters have voted against their economic interests (supporting right wing conservatives who talk a good game about abortion and guns, but who oppose children's health care, Social Security, veterans' benefits and the Farm Bill).