I resisted writing anything about Sarah Palin in much the same way that I resisted accepting that Palin is charismatic. On the evening of her debut at the Republican National Convention I was repulsed by her arrogance and mean-spiritedness. This temporarily blinded me to the fact that Palin is, in fact, a charismatic political leader, and a dangerous one at that.

I resisted admitting that Palin is charismatic in part because she actually has nothing to say. Clearly she runs her mouth, and just as clearly she has found words to offer that touch on a particular sort of anger that exists among many white people. Yet when you listen to her, there is no there, there. There is little substance. One does not pay attention to Palin to uncover the point of view of the political Right on Darfur, trade, or most matters of substance. That is not Palin�s role. She will address certain issues of the day, e.g., healthcare, but with nothing approaching a substantive analysis. Rather her approach can be found in sound-bites; actually demagogic sound-bites.

I resisted admitting that Palin is charismatic in part because she is something of a female Ronald Reagan. The Nicaraguan Sandinistas put it well, in the 1980s, when they were describing Reagan: they said that he was the political analogy to Colonel Sanders, an image behind which exist other players who were pulling the strings. The difference with Palin is that it is not entirely clear that there are others pulling the strings, though there is a powerful image. She seems to relish the lime-light and the articulation of right-wing platitudes. The other difference is that there is a mean-spiritedness in Palin that did not come across in the grandfatherly Reagan, despite his policies. In Palin one can see, just on the other side of her photogenic smile, the look of vengeance.

Yet Palin is quite charismatic. And the irony is that in many ways she represents much of what the political Right claims not to value. Take, for instance, the fact that she resigned from the governorship of Alaska allegedly because she was being criticized by the press. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if President Obama were to step down due to the criticisms that he has received, not to mention the implied threats on his life from the political Right? He would be laughed and booed to another country. It would be inconceivable. The Right would lambaste him as a �quitter,� and a weakling.

Palin was able to resign. She had not even completed one term and she was able to step down allegedly due to harsh and unfair criticism. She then went on to write a book, and start stomping for 2012. All this, and not a word from the Right, and not too much from liberals either. Would you want a political leader who stepped down due to harsh criticism?

Palin, probably more than any recent woman politician, tactically uses flirtation with her audiences and in her approach to the public. I was stunned, for instance, during her Republican National Convention speech, by her �cutesy� approach to the enthralled delegates. I sat there thinking that if Hillary Clinton had taken even a quarter of Palin�s approach, the political Right would have been on the warpath, suggesting that she was inappropriate and manipulative.

None of this matters, however, to Palin�s base. That is what has finally struck me. It does not matter that she is a quitter; it does not matter that she integrates sex appeal and her political appeal; it does not matter that she has little of substance to say. None of this matters because Palin is the Col. Sanders for an important segment of the political Right. She is an image, and with that image the political Right associates important and potent messages.

Palin is youthful and attractive, and was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She has a child born with disabilities. She seems to have led a life much like many white suburban women.

She is also shameless in her ignorance and has elevated that to nearly a principle. She does not feel that she has to articulate anything significant because her base wants her to make them feel good. They want her to make them feel good while their world is falling apart. They want to hear Palin target the media, who few people trust, but also to offer coded attacks on Obama that suggest that he is not truly �American� (interpret that any way that you might want to, is the subtext) and that �America� must be rescued from him. Her claim of affinity with Hillary Clinton is not only a not-so-subtle attempt at divide and conquer, but is more a message about what she thinks - or wants people to think - that WHITE women have in common, in contrast to what divides the so-called Real USA from the USA represented by President Obama.

Progressives do not have to be impressed with Palin, but she must be taken seriously in much the same way that Reagan could not be laughed off. The image for the political Right is just as important as is the reality. They are prepared to rally behind an image that gives vent to their anger, whether the anger of the unemployed white worker; the white small businessperson suffering as sales drop; the homophobic political activist; the paranoid xenophobe. The anger is not one unified anger, and much of it is the result of the decay in a US capitalism that can no longer promote the so-called �American Dream� to white people.

None of that matters: Palin is able to personify it all�while she also finds time to pose for a picture in a sports magazine that just so happened to end up on the cover of Newsweek.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.