NEWSWEEK PRAISED PALIN IN OCTOBER OF 2007

NEWSWEEK:

In Alaska, Palin is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state's political culture.

"The public has put a lot of faith in us," says Palin during a meeting with lawmakers in her downtown Anchorage office, where—as if to drive the point home—the giant letters on the side of the ConocoPhillips skyscraper fill an entire wall of windows. "They're saying, 'Here's your shot, clean it up'."

For Palin, that has meant tackling the cozy relationship between the state's political elite and the energy industry that provides 85 percent of Alaska's tax revenues—and distancing herself from fellow Republicans, including the state's senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, whose home was recently searched by FBI agents looking for evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation. (Stevens has denied any wrongdoing.)

But even as she tackles Big Oil's power, Palin has transformed her own family's connections to the industry into a political advantage. Her husband, Todd, is a longtime employee of BP, but, as Palin points out, the "First Dude" is a blue-collar "sloper," a fieldworker on the North Slope, a cherished occupation in the state. "He's not in London making the decisions whether to build a gas line."

In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Palin said it's time for Alaska to "grow up" and end its reliance on pork-barrel spending. Shortly after taking office, Palin canceled funding for the "Bridge to Nowhere," a $330 million project that Stevens helped champion in Congress.

The bridge, which would have linked the town of Ketchikan to an island airport, had come to symbolize Alaska's dependence on federal handouts. Rather than relying on such largesse, says Palin, she wants to prove Alaska can pay its own way, developing its huge energy wealth in ways that are "politically and environmentally clean."

AND IN THE LAST YEAR PALIN DELIVERED. AS A RESULT, SHE HAS AN 86% APPROVAL RATING.

• PALIN IS EXACTLY WHAT WASHINGTON NEEDS: A CRUSADING, PORK-BUSTING DOER.

• WHAT'S WRONG WITH WASHINGTON IS ACTUALLY PERSONIFIED BY OBAMA AND BIDEN: THEY'RE NOTHING BUT BIG TALKING POLITICIANS LAWYERS WHO HAVE NEVER TAKEN ON THE SYSTEM OR REFORMED ONE DANG THING.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.