I've seen Palin called the "Republican Obama" quite a few times recently, both by TV pundits and bloggers.  It's an interesting comparison.  It makes sense to the extent that there is, as there is for Obama, tremendous enthusiasm for Palin.  But there are also several key differences that we'd do well not to overlook.

For those of us who have been freaking out a bit over the generally positive reactions to Palin's sneering, self-aggrandizing speech at the Republican National Convention, this piece should help assuage some of our worries.

1) The Rise and Fall of Enthusiasm

Palin's enthusiastic base of support is comprised of largely of the religious right.  There's little controversy on this point.  Yet there is also fairly broad concensus that the religious right as we know it has already reached its apex of political influence and is now on the decline.

Interestingly, Palin doesn't seem to represent a fresh, reformed embodiment of core religious right principles; rather, she is just a younger advocate of precisely the same ideas that Bush used to motivate the evangelical base in 2000 and 2004: no abortion under any circumstances, global warming is not the result of human activity, creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

If anything, Palin is more of an extremist than Bush on these issues.  In one way, that's good news for progressives because, for example, consistently over the past 12 years, less than 20% of the American public has supported making abortion illegal in all circumstances.  From a common-sense standpoint, it's hard to believe that Bush has not fully mined the ranks of the religious right in the past two elections, especially given the host of anti-gay-marriage state constitutional amendments that brought out the base in 2004.

On the other hand, it's also well known that a very large part of Obama's enthusiastic support comes from young people.  Today's young people will of course gain a growing share of the electorate as they age and older people pass away; Obama inarguably has demonstrated an enormous appeal to high schoolers who are not yet of voting age.  Those young people who can already vote will continue to support the progressive policies Obama advocates as the youth vote swells with additional new voters coming of majority.

In short, unlike religious-issue voters, young voters are not already a tapped-out resource.  I'm sure that, by virtue of her youth, Palin appeals to a larger number of young voters than McCain.  But Obama has a full-blown youth movement supporting him in addition to his other bases of support.  The dynamics of the campaign may change, but for now it's important to conflate Palin's personal youth with broad support from young people.

2) Record of Skill as a Campaigner

This is another salient difference between Obama and Palin.  Obama's skill as a campaigner and politician has been tested with extreme thoroughness.  I was quite upset with Hillary's campaign by the time we got through North Carolina, but I'm now grateful for the opportunity she gave us all to fathom the political abilities of Obama and his campaign.  That Obama survived the Reverend Wright debacle is nothing short of a miracle, and it demonstrates that both he and his campaign advisors are at the very top of their game.  (As a side note, I must admit that Hillary and her campaign were right in suggesting that airing all of Obama's scandals—both real and fabricated—before the general election campaign was to the Democrats' advantage. I was furious with Hillary and her supporters at the time, but you all were right on that point.)

We also know that Obama is a relatively poor performer in debates and a superb orator and speechwriter, and we have been able to weigh his strengths and shortcomings in deciding to put our support behind his candidacy.  He has also shown us that he is able to endure the grueling pace of the Presidential campaign, which isn't something we can take for granted.

On the other hand, Palin's campaign skills on the national stage are still largely an unknown quantity.  We now know that she can deliver a particular type of speech well, but we don't know about her speechwriting skills or her ability to defuse potentially explosive scandals by speaking to the nation and the press.  The latter skill, especially, is likely to become important for her future career given the number of scandals and controversies threating to torpedo her ticket.

We also have not seen whether Palin is able to keep up with the pace of the Presidential campaign.  Juggling a the care of a special-needs newborn with this campaign is going to be a Herculean feat.  Palin also does not appear to be a particularly skilled debater in that she does not seem to have a very good handle on policy specifics.  If the expectations for her performance are set low enough, her lack of skill may not matter, but Biden clearly realizes that.

3) A Dearth of Fresh Ideas

Even among Obama's detractors, those who are intellectually honest (and there are plenty of them) admit that he is a brainiac who has been thinking seriously about national policy issues for a long, long time.  Furthermore, he contemplates complicated new approaches to problems that break with both Democratic and Republican orthodoxy.  On a more concrete level, we have seen his campaign deftly take advantage of viral videos, social networking sites, and online fundraising—they have masterfully used fresh ideas to keep apace with the changing dynamics of what is possible in a presidential campaign.

Obama's resume underscores the depth of his intellectual resources.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but consider this: according to recent statistics, the median Law School Admission Test score at Harvard Law School was at or above the top 1% of test takers.  Obama graduated from law school magna cum laude, which is awarded to the top 10% of the law school class at Harvard.  Many people seem to enjoy mentioning affirmative action upon hearing this, but consider that final exams at Harvard Law, which are usually wholly determinative of a student's grade for any given course, are blind-graded, meaning that the professors do not know, and are not allowed to know, whose exam they are grading at any given point.  To summarize: Obama is very, very smart.

I'm not going to bother going into detail about Palin's educational history.  Suffice it to say that, while Palin obviously is intellectual capable in some respects, people with Obama's level of intelligence are very, very rare to begin with.  Palin is obviously not one of them.  We know that Palin managed to leave Wasilla $22 million in debt at the end of her 6-year tenure.  We know that her solution to our energy crisis is to drill, drill, drill for oil, that very recently she didn't know what the Vice President does, and that she heard about the surge in Iraq "on the news."

My point is not that she is dumb; her success in politics is enough to prove that she isn't.  But it's impossible for anyone to argue with a straight face—unless we're talking about Karl Rove or some other willful liar—that she compares intellectually to Obama.

Obviously, this point does not necessarily speak to who is going to win this election.  Indeed, the Republicans are clearly trying to make Obama's intellectual prowess into a liability.  But this speaks to what I see as a potentially larger issue: Obama and Palin are both quite young relative to politicians of comparable prominence.  Regardless of who wins the upcoming election, they each have the potential to spend decades as a national presence, advocate, and leader.

Win or lose, after this election, Obama will unquestionably remain a power player within the Democratic Party.  He will continue to infuse the party—and, at times, the nation—with fresh, progressive ideas based on intense, reasoned analysis and a synethsis of various traditional approaches to the pressing problems facing the nation.  It's hard to imagine Palin occupying a similar policymaking, visionary position in the Republican party of tomorrow.

In a way, it feels like by writing this I'm validating the preposterous idea that a comparison of Obama and Palin is justified.  But it is worth noting that, upon a reasoned analysis, claims of Obama-Palin equivalency seem to be rooted in what Josh Marshall has adroitly termed "ascending heights of reactionary delerium."