It was not Sarah Palin but her double Tina Fey who said “I can see Russia from my house.” In her interview with CBS’s Katie Couric the real Alaska governor noted “That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was. . . .
“Couric: Mocked?”
Declining to elaborate, Gov. Palin should instead have stuck to her geographic guns and wiped smirks off of faces!
Americans do have different perspectives about the world, based on where they live. Let’s start with the old, false, but widely held tale that midwesterners are isolationist, because they don’t live on an ocean, which would widen their view of the world and America’s responsibilities in it. Nonsense: Midwesterners tended to be isolationist because of the high concentration of ethnic Germans, who weren’t eager to shoot Uncle Fritz in either World War. The old political journalist Samuel Lubell pointed this out years ago in his
Future of American Politics.
But that stereotype aside, we can note many examples of how geography affects political consciousness, some quite familiar. Americans in the original 13 states may have a distinct historical consciousness shaping their view of the country. Southerners, as displays of the Confederate battle flag remind us, may have a different view of the Civil War than their fellow citizens. Westerners, especially those who are near the Mexican border, view illegal immigration more intensely than those who live elsewhere. See the anecdote-rich
How the States Got Their Shapes for less well-known political consequences of State boundaries.
In Harvey Mansfield’s edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic
Democracy in America, there is a map (p. xvi) showing the American continent,
Amerique Anglaise. Alaska is labeled as
Amerique Russe. (Keep in mind Tocqueville’s famous conclusion of Russia and America dividing the world between them, based on their radically different visions of politics.) Signs of Russian presence — in forts and Orthodox churches — can still be found throughout the state. In World War II Japan occupied some of the Aleutian Islands, where fierce battles were fought and Alaskans were taken prisoner and shipped to Japan. Hundreds of Aleut Indians were relocated, their villages razed, ostensibly to protect them from Japanese capture. More recently, Soviet and Russian planes have tested Alaskan/American air space. And Alaska is home to our only ground-based ballistic-missile defense site.
Everyone agrees that Alaska remains our last frontier state, even boasting an independence party and a liberal drug policy. Could its geography promote attitudes about foreign relations as well as domestic politics? Indisputably, state history and geopolitics shape the political consciousness of citizens. But do they inform the political awareness of its governor?
We don’t know the answer to this crucial question; the campaign will tell. But that geopolitics exists in every state and has shaped political attitudes and awareness is beyond dispute. “I can see Russia from my house” may in fact make a great campaign slogan, if it signifies a profound understanding of America’s place in a dangerous world. Gov. Palin needs to reach for her inner Alaska, stick to her guns, and turn her hunters into prey.
— Ken Masugi is co-author, co-editor, or editor of seven books on American politics, including two on California. 
