Analysis: Task ahead: Clicking with wider audience

Gov. Sarah Palin could not have asked for a better setting for her solo debut on the national stage: An audience enthralled with her selection as Sen. John McCain's running mate even before she walked onto stage to roar of applause, after three days in seclusion with some of the most skilled political counselors in the country to write, hone and practice her speech.

She drew applause as she described her life as a "hockey mom" in Alaska and introduced her family. She heard cheers as she promised an aggressive energy policy that included more drilling. And she ignited full-throated booing directed at what she denounced the news media and "Washington elite" that, she suggested, had ganged up against her since McCain announced her as his running mate Friday.

But her speech at the Republican convention may prove to have been the easy part. From here, Palin moves into a national campaign where she will have to appeal to audiences that are not necessarily primed to adore her. She will have to navigate far-less-controlled campaign settings that will test her political skills and her knowledge of foreign and domestic policy.

And she will have to persuade the country that she is prepared to be a vice president at a time when the definition of that job has been elevated by the current and prior occupant to the status of governing partner -- something the nation might have been reminded of Wednesday by images of Vice President Dick Cheney embarking on a mission to war-torn Georgia.

"The people who are in the hall -- they've already been sold, they are choir," said John Danforth, the former Republican senator from Missouri, who had never met the candidate or heard her speak before he saw her on television last week. "Now the question for her and for McCain and for everybody who is inside the hall is, how to clarify their message to the American people?"

Jumping into No. 2 attack role

Her speech left no doubt that she would take on the traditional role of the No. 2 on a ticket, attacking the top of the other ticket, which she did with gusto. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities," she said, a slap at Sen. Barack Obama's work as young man working on anti-poverty programs in Chicago.

The question is whether someone who is so little known and has what even Republicans describe as a scant résumé has the authority to make those attacks credible -- unlike her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden, a veteran of foreign and domestic policy who attacked McCain last week.

"It's more difficult with someone of her background to go on the attack than it would be for Joe Biden," said Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire. "Before she attacks someone, she has to get out there and define herself."

Clearly, her big task Wednesday and in the days ahead was to drive home the image the McCain campaign has meticulously sought to attach to this unexpected pick: The corruption-fighting, maverick governor from outside Washington, a socially conservative mother of five who can easily connect with working-class Americans in a way that Obama has so far had trouble doing. She scorned the trappings of elitism -- driving herself to work and putting the former governor's plane up for sale on eBay -- as she signaled that she would serve as McCain's ambassador to Americans who think the government has lost touch with their values and needs. She went as far to compare herself with a haberdasher from Missouri who became vice president and later president, Harry Truman.

"Gore-Cheney series" has set new bar

The problem for Palin is that story has been tripped up by disclosures about her professional and personal life, enough so that at least until Wednesday night, she had become a bigger figure at the convention than McCain.

In her speech, she tried to address that by belittling what she disparaged as the Washington elite and the media and invoking her experience as a reformer. Yet she made no attempt to explain what she might do as vice president in a McCain administration, no small question when her lack of a national or international portfolio suggests she would not slide easily into the kind of partner role enjoyed by Dick Cheney and Al Gore.

"The Gore-Cheney series of vice presidencies have changed the nature of the job," said Gary Hart, a former Democratic senator from Colorado and a friend of McCain. "What McCain has done is to try to revert to the 19th century model, early 20th century model of vice president ... which means you don't do anything."

On CNBC a month ago, Palin went so far as to disparage the job of vice president, saying, "What is it exactly that the VP does every day?"

There is one role that she is going to play -- and one that Cheney played -- is helping to motivate the right wing of her party. The uproarious applause that capped her speech left little doubt that she had already moved easily into the job -- a boost for McCain. The question for her as she heads out on her first national campaign, is whether she can do for McCain in a general election what she did Wednesday night with the audience of delegates at the Xcel Center.