Wasilla, Alaska, is currently the most famous small town in America, thanks to its former mayor Sarah Palin. A healthy part of her appeal is that she seems to embody small-town values, nurtured in Wasilla and America's other hamlets and burgs. As she said in her firecracker acceptance speech, small-town people live lives of "honesty, sincerity, and dignity" and "do some of the hardest work in America."

As Maryline Blackburn watched Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson last Thursday, she noticed something familiar. “She has in her eyes that look of determination--a look I remember from 24 years ago,” said Blackburn, who defeated Palin in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant. Palin placed second. “It is a thinking, calculating look,” Blackburn added, the look of a woman plotting “where to go to get ahead.”

Charles Wohlforth, a lifelong Alaska Democrat and occasional TNR contributor, gives us the word on Palin from up north.  

I first met Sarah Palin just after she'd been elected mayor of the little town of Wasilla, Alaska, in October 1996. My first impression was that she didn't seem up to the job.