Analysis: McCain risks being eclipsed by Palin Analysis: Running mate's sudden celebrity threatens to eclipse star of the show

Women hold up signs in support of John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and vice presidential pick Sarah Palin. Women hold up signs in support of John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and vice presidential pick Sarah Palin. Photo: Stan Honda, AFP / Getty Images Photo: Stan Honda, AFP / Getty Images Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Analysis: McCain risks being eclipsed by Palin 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took a live road test before the entire nation Wednesday night, and she didn't crash.

Whether she broke Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's record of 38.4 million viewers for his convention speech in Denver last week remains to be seen. The bigger question could be whether she will outshine the man who put her on the GOP ticket.

Sen. John McCain, who accepts the Republican nomination tonight, has been engulfed by the Palin gale since he plucked the obscure 44-year-old governor from the farthest reaches of the continent to be his running mate. In the five days since, Palin has managed, without doing anything, to steal the focus from both parties' nominees in what was already a historic election. Even Republicans were calling Palin "the hottest ticket on the convention floor" among delegates more interested in her than McCain.

Now an overnight celebrity herself, Palin delivered a homespun justification for her candidacy that sought to hit the touchstones of ordinary voters and play up the likeability quotient that has made her the most popular governor in the United States.

Looking at the signs in the audience declaring, "Hockey Moms 4 Palin," she ad-libbed with a smile, "Know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

Palin came out like a pit bull. She leveled a swipe at Michelle Obama, saying people in small towns "love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." She took aim at Obama, saying people in small towns like the one she grew up in "don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk to us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

The crowd devoured it.

A rocky start

It was Palin's first chance to define herself and push back against a media onslaught that has raced from her beauty queen past and mooseburger diet to investigations of her earmark requests and fundraising for indicted Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. Things got off to a rocky start as she arrived on stage an hour past her scheduled time, at 10:30 p.m. on the East Coast, but she dove straight into the task, defending her family by way of introducing them.

If a first rule in politics is to define yourself before others do, Palin had a difficult task reintroducing herself to a public that has already begun forming strong opinions of her character and her positions. She attacked the assignment with gusto, burnishing her reformist credentials by way of mocking criticisms of her experience.

Looking increasingly at ease on stage as she warmed up, Palin described Obama as "a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform" and "who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word victory except when he's talking about his own campaign."

The Obama campaign has been scrupulous in leaving the attack on Palin to the media and left-leaning allies, who have sought to paint her as another Dan Quayle, a former vice president intended as a fresh young conservative face who quickly devolved into a caricature of a callow dolt.

As a woman, Palin may be more difficult to deride, and her performance Wednesday night was superior to anything Quayle delivered. Yet, like Quayle, Palin has distracted attention from her running mate. The familiar and less telegenic McCain faces an enormous hurdle Thursday in breaking through the hubbub. And with new e-mails leaked about Palin's pressure on a state official to fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper, questions will continue to dog her, as they did Quayle, through the rest of the campaign.

Palin dove into the attack role traditionally assigned to vice presidential candidates, despite questions about her qualifications to step into the presidency, made more acute by McCain's age and history of melanoma.

National gut check

As a former sportscaster and as a governor, Palin knows cameras, but nothing in any of her previous incarnations could compare to her debut before a national television audience and millions of voters waiting to see and assess for themselves what stuff she is made of.

Her next big national televised event, an even more herculean assignment, will be her Oct. 2 debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden at Washington University in St. Louis. With 36 years in national politics as a Delaware senator - a seat he won at just 29 years old, 15 years younger than Palin is now - along with two runs for the presidency and chairmanship of two high-profile Senate committees (Foreign Relations and Judiciary), Biden is as thoroughly versed in national policy as anyone in Washington. Palin, by contrast, will be cramming until the day of the debate.

From Minneapolis, Palin probably will be heading to battleground states to fuel the fires of conservative fever that were lighted the moment her name was announced, as well as shore up support among female, blue-collar, rural and independent voters. She also will headline fundraisers as a star draw for McCain's coffers.

"She's attractive, she speaks well, and ... it's who she is that's her great advantage" in the setting of the GOP conclave, said Marion Just, a Wellesley College political scientist and media specialist at Harvard University. "It's also her disadvantage outside of that setting." Former supporters of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are probably unreachable, Just said, given Palin's positions, but "among independents, and women who are conservative on social issues, I think she has a good chance."