Beyond the religious right, the governor of Alaska was a relative unknown. Palin introduced herself at the Republican National Convention as a real American from the small town of Wasilla, population ten thousand. “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity,” she said, citing “a writer.” This was remarkable not only because the writer was Westbrook Pegler — the ’30s-era John Bircher, anti-Semite, and isolationist who lives on in the far-right quotations of our era — but also because John McCain wasn’t grown in a small town or even in a state: he was born in the Panama Canal Zone when the Panama Canal Zone was a US territory. He grew up hearing his father recite Victorian poetry about empires and civilizing missions; now here he stood with a witless reactionary whose folksy-seeming family soon devolved into a reality show. He invoked Kipling; she foreshadowed Duck Dynasty.