At the spirited rally, T-shirts depicted Palin as Rosie the Riveter with the iconic slogan, “We can do it!” and posters decreed “Read my lipstick!” One bumper sticker for sale offered the crude slogan: “I would immediately pull out of Nancy Pelosi.” A lone sticker plastered on the concrete floor of the pavilion simply showed an unflattering head shot of Barack Obama with the word “Scary” written over it.

In her 20-minute stump speech, Palin reprised the greatest hits of her Republican National Convention speech. She presented herself as a reformer, insisting the “good old boy network of lobbyists” had no place in Alaska. She promised to end corruption in Washington, lower taxes and increase domestic drilling, inspiring chants of “drill, baby, drill” from the audience. She delivered her “thanks, but no thanks” riff about the Bridge to Nowhere, and the claim that she’d put the Alaska governor’s jet up for sale on eBay. Never mind that these parts of her record have been debunked by news agencies and bloggers, as the Bridge to Nowhere was dead before she killed it, and that luxury jet didn’t actually sell on eBay. Pledging that a McCain-Palin presidency would “shake up Washington” and “end corrupt practices,” she drank in the adulation of her throngs of supporters, a sharp contrast from her discomfort last week fielding Charles Gibson’s questions.

Some Palin rally-goers started lining up at 8 a.m. in the 90-plus degree heat to get into the 5 p.m. speech, which took place in a facility that hosts pickup roller hockey games, inspiring Palin to give a shout-out to her sister “hockey moms” in the crowd. In this capital city of 50,000, where even the local Safeway has slot machines, the pavilion stands just down the block from the El Mundo Latino Western Wear store. The overwhelmingly white crowd that gathered to see Palin speak included Boy Scouts, single moms, high school cheerleaders, retired oldsters and multigenerational families with infants and grandmothers in tow.

Recent polls show Nevada very much in play this November. In late August, a CNN/Time poll showed Obama up by 5 in Nevada. But a Rasmussen in early September showed McCain with a 3-point lead over Obama. An average of recent polls gives McCain a minuscule lead of just 1 point in Nevada.

Maybe a half-dozen Obama supporters stood outside the Pavilion with signs of dissent. One liberal California family — mom, dad and a 9-year-old girl — displayed grizzly images of butchered wolves, thanks to the governor’s wolf policies. Inside, a buoyant Palin introduced her husband, Todd, as “Alaska’s First Dude.” Praising McCain’s Iraq record, she invoked her son’s recent deployment to Iraq. “As the mother of one of those troops, that’s exactly the kind of man that I want as commander in chief,” inspiring loud cheers.

But it was her patriotic riffs praising all other Americans, especially veterans, where Palin got her biggest responses. The audience delighted in her telling them just how special they are: “America is an exceptional country and you are exceptional Americans.” She called for American pride: “You understand the need to put the pride back in America, and into Americans, because, we can do this again, we are an exceptional nation.” Her nod to veterans inspired chants of “USA! USA!” The crowd also ate it up when she made a veiled swipe at Michelle Obama, when she said that McCain is, “like you, like me, always proud to be an American.”

It was clear that Palin didn’t have to convince the rally-goers that she was the candidate for them. The audience seemed more excited about her than presidential candidate John McCain. Many supporters said that they’d been lukewarm about McCain, or supported other candidates in the primaries, but were thrilled about Palin as the veep running mate. Attending the rally was a chance to see their “shero” in the flesh.

Many in the audience stressed that they’re excited about Palin for the very reasons that they perceive the “liberal media” to be gunning for her. They share her adamant antiabortion and pro-gun views but it’s her personality that has them fired up. Palin’s from a small town, a small state and part of a big family. Plus, she’s a graduate of a state school rather than “Harvard or Yale,” as one Nevada rally-goer said.

“She represents me. She’s real. She represents real people,” said flight attendant Charlene Bybee, 54, of Sparks, Nev., who wore a black T-shirt with the slogans “I am Sarah Palin” and “Real Women for McCain.” Bybee is a self-described “security mom” who has two sons, ages 20 and 24, and was once the runner-up “Miss Nevada.” She said she identifies with Palin as a former PTA mom and one-time beauty queen. Bybee, who has been an active Republican volunteer in the past was tepid about McCain’s candidacy. But she’s so energized by Palin that she’s now volunteering for the campaign. “You shouldn’t have to be from a major American city to represent most Americans,” she said.

Laura Tracy, 27, an unemployed barista from Yerington, Nev., held a sign that read “Hunter Chicks 4 Palin” on one side, and “Sarah Killed My Apathy” with a drawing of a deer rifle and a target on the other. Tracy, who had supported Mitt Romney in the primary, said that she cried the day of Palin’s acceptance speech. “I think that it’s great that the American people finally have a candidate who they can relate to, with morals,” said Tracy, who said the issues she cares the most about are pro-life and the right to bear arms.

Deaun Parker, a 41-year-old single mother of five living in Carson City, who works full-time in workers comp insurance, attended the rally with her 16-year-old daughter Erica, and 12-year-old son Justin, a Boy Scout. “I think that she is a terrific role model for my daughter. She’s a role model for me,” said Parker, who supported Romney in the primary. Parker described her family as among the “working poor,” and said she doesn’t want a Democratic administration, which would bring universal health insurance, because she says she doesn’t want to pay the taxes for it.

But it was hardly just the women in Nevada who said they identified with the GOP’s veep candidate. Men were crazy about her too.

Sloan Venables, 41, who works for a software engineering company in Reno, and lives in Virginia City Highlands, Nev., who was holding his 14-month-old daughter Savannah at the rally, said, “She’s like me,” noting that Palin’s from a small town, and a big family, and a member of the NRA. His top issue: independence from foreign oil from the likes of Venezuela and the Middle East. And while he sees drilling domestically as only a temporary solution, he said it’s a necessary one.

Ron Brandow, 67, from Houston, semi-retired from the school fundraising business, said he’d never been to a political rally before. Yet he had to come out to see Palin from his vacation home in nearby South Lake Tahoe, since she’s the first “common person” he’s seen rise to this level in politics. “I love her. Everyone can identify with her — a working person.”

A number of supporters decried Palin’s treatment by the mainstream media, especially the recent interview with Charles Gibson, which one Palinophile called “an interrogation.” Ronald Karkela, an insurance executive from Casper, Wyo., said that he thought that Gibson made “a fool of himself, because of his snobbish, professorial attitude” when he interviewed the governor last week. The mainstream media “doesn’t understand that Palin represents the vast majority. She represents fly-over America,” he declared.

It’s not every day that you hear a retired Republican Marine Corps pilot and LAPD homicide detective reverently invoke the names of Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug. But Bob Lee, 73, of Reno, praised Palin as “the epitome of everything that I used to see Gloria [Steinem] and Bella Abzug promoting — American women can be all things.” He noted, “Sarah didn’t make it on the coattails of her husband. Hillary [Clinton] rode the coattails of Bill.” Lee had a phrase for the excitement that Palin invokes in conservatives, exemplified by the throngs trying to shake Palin’s hand, take her photo or have her autograph their cowboy hats or baseball caps, just behind him: “I refer to it as Palin pandemonium,” he said.

Mindy Southard, 52, a housewife, mother of five and dog-breeder, called Palin’s address “electric.” Southard said her top issues are pro-life and opposition to same-sex marriage. She admitted that she wasn’t sure if she was going to vote for McCain or Obama until Palin joined the ticket. “I really do think that we have a candidate who is for the people,” she said.

Lucy Wu, 75, of Reno, who was attending the first political rally of her life, wore a rhinestone American flag pin and a “Women for Palin, You go girl!” pink button. She called Palin’s speech “wonderful! Isn’t she inspiring?” Laura Gremepel, a 29-year-old stay-at-home mother from Reno, who held her 9-month-old daughter, agreed. “She was very inspiring.” Gremepel described her baby as a “Republican in training,” adding, “I can’t wait to vote.”

So Wallace, following a 92nd Street Y panel last night, said this:

“There will be pressure to elevate a woman but there will be an equal amount of pressure to pick someone who is prepared,” Wallace said.

And then she said this:

Wallace flagged one female official in particular who she thinks would be a good choice this year.

“Nikki Haley — she’s great,” she said. “She’s the most effective surrogate Romney has.”

If the Sarah Palin problem was a problem of preparation and vetting, Haley … might present some issues? Specifically an odd and mostly unsubstantiated sex scandal and also these rumors that she might at any moment be indicted on tax charges. The tax thing might be bullshit and the affair story was the product of a self-promoting creep but they’re “out there,” as they say.

More important, Haley has been governor of South Carolina since January of 2011. As in very slightly longer than one year. And slightly less time being a governor than Sarah Palin had in 2008. It’s almost as if Wallace is making a pick not based on the principle of Who Would Be Best For the Nation but on demographics and optics?

Wallace also apparently suggested Carly Fiorina, which, lol. Romney/Ex-CEO who famously received a giant golden parachute when she was forced out of her company 2012, everyone! Just the ticket for the new economy.

That is sort of a shame. The Palin thing is the most heavily over-covered story line of the entire 2008 campaign, so focusing on it might be totally logical from a marketing perspective, but it’s unfortunate from an artistic one. The film re-creates various moments of YouTube campaign ephemera very well — remember when that old white lady called Obama an Arab and McCain looked uncomfortable? When it takes us behind closed doors, it’s to witness scenes any moderately close observer of the election and its aftermath could’ve dreamed up him- or herself. It might have been fun to see a TV movie about the Democratic primary fight; the personality clashes of the disastrous Clinton campaign would have made for entertaining television, and Mark Penn is surely a creature crying out for a grotesque Emmy-winning portrayal by, say, Paul Giamatti.

Instead, McCain has won the nomination three-and-a-half minutes into the film. Soon we’re watching Julianne Moore watch Tina Fey on TV. You remember the “SNL” sketches making fun of Palin, right? In case you don’t, “Game Change” airs lengthy chunks from most of them. It also has tons of actual footage from CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, and it re-creates debates and speeches and the Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview and a bunch of other things you saw either live or on YouTube when they happened.

Moore’s performance is not just fair but maybe even flattering. (For one thing, she doesn’t hit those flat upper Midwest vowels as gratingly as the real Palin.) Woody Harrelson plays strategist Steve Schmidt — the film’s protagonist — as a grizzled, “too old for this shit” campaign veteran called back to the trail against his better judgment. Jamey Sheridan is given barely anything to do as Mark Salter, McCain’s “conscience.” Salter, the primary author of his “Maverick” mythos, is limited, after the Palin selection, to making a hilariously over-telegraphed face of concern as everyone else in the war room applauds her first speech.

But the film is about Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace because they were pretty clearly Halperin and Heilemann’s primary sources, and we watch them become horrified by the depths of Sarah Palin’s ignorance at exactly the same time as everyone else in America became horrified by her ignorance.

Because it’s Hollywood, there’s very little politics in the film’s depiction of politics. Policies are simply things for Sarah Palin to write on note cards and not memorize. Operatives confidently declare, in faux Sorkin-ese patter, that if this or that meaningless decision is made, it means “we’ll lose by five.”

There is a sheen of faux cynicism (McCain swears like a sailor!) but it masks complete naiveté: Everyone is basically honorable and decent. Nicolle Wallace — a member of the Bush administration communications team — is sincerely alarmed at the prospect of someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Palin in the White House. On election night, she breaks down in tears as she admits to Schmidt that … she didn’t vote. They embrace.

The film subscribes to the simplest theory of Sarah Palin: That she is childlike, vain and incredibly ignorant but also an essentially decent person and wonderful mother. The moments that come closest to “unfair” — Sarah Palin doesn’t know that the head of Great Britain’s government is the prime minister, not the queen — are basically plausible. This isn’t Andrew Sullivan’s conniving, dangerous pathological liar. It’s an overwhelmed working mother whose most unhinged moments are explained by a crash diet. Her convention speech is largely stripped of its snarling attack lines, imagining a world in which it appealed to “the base” because of Palin’s heartfelt commitment to special-needs children and not because she was very good at saying mean things about Obama. (The film actually repeats the bullshit story that her teleprompter broke midway through, and she kept going.) Even when the film has her take a major heel turn — “if I am single-handedly carrying this campaign, I am gonna do what I want!” — after “winning” her debate with Joe Biden (played by video footage of Joe Biden), she is still basically an innocent seduced by the adoration of riled-up crowds and national attention. (Todd Palin barely does anything.)

The constant use of actual news footage adds a bit of verisimilitude but also constantly raises the question of why this lightly fictionalized version of the election actually needs to exist. “Game Change” is not really for serious political junkies, who remember all the stuff that did happen and will scoff at the stuff that didn’t. (At one point, John McCain answers his ringing iPhone in the middle of the night. He used a BlackBerry, HBO.) But if casually politically involved people want to see their assumptions about Sarah Palin reinforced, well, there are still those “SNL” sketches.

In the end, the Republican operatives who foisted Sarah Palin on an unprepared nation are rightly horrified that they created a monster, but at no point does anyone act concerned that their actual candidate was himself an angry, warmongering old crank with extremely fungible principles. Sure, Sarah Palin didn’t know what the Fed did. Do we have any proof John McCain knew what it should’ve done? Maybe everyone actually was totally unfair to poor Sarah Palin.

Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!

America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.

After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.

Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.

There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)

Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.

Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still  un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.

The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.

Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.

In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:

In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)

Oh, the Washington Times.

Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”

As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.

Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.

Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.

But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.

*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.

The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.

So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.

(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)

Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:

This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.

If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)

Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.

A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!

Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.

Sarah Palin might not be smart.

The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.

Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?

How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.

I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.