Ross Douthat at the NYT makes an interesting point about Palin here.  (The N&O reprinted this op-ed with the wonderful title: “Doesn’t play well with elites.”)

Palin?s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with
ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack
Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal ? that anyone,
from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law
School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin
represents the democratic ideal ? that anyone can grow up to be a great
success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

This
ideal has had a tough 10 months. It?s been tarnished by Palin herself,
obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and
self-pitying monologues, she?s botched an essential democratic role ?
the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps
role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

But it?s also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.

What are the lessons to be learned by a female candidate following the democratic ideal who challenges the elites?

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring
politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go
through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and
misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better
parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did
not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for
special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male
commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female
commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You?ll be
sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You?ll
endure gibes about your ?slutty? looks and your ?white trash
concupiscence,? while a prominent female academic declares that your
?greatest hypocrisy? is the ?pretense? that you?re a woman. And eight
months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the
service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming
you for their defeat.

All of this had something to do with
ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin?s
gender and her social class. (emphasis added)

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions
because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American
aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be
true.

But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don?t even think about it.