A plea for patience with sour, conventional conservative pundits who are still getting their minds around the Palin pick

I've gotten more than a few emails urging me to take up the cudgels against David Frum or Charles Krauthammer or other conservative pundits who've expressed anything from serious reservations to outright alarm at the Palin nomination. One, whom I won't mention by name here, said that if the Palin nomination excites the GOP base, we ought to "get a new base."

That's smug and unattractive and out-of-touch, of course. I love to argue, and some of these sour-pusses have opened themselves to potentially devastating counter-snark. But I'm trying to suppress that instinct.

Sarah Palin is indeed an unconventional choice, and a risky one. Her own words at the announcement rally acknowledged that, when she said that a ship in harbor is safe, but staying in the harbor is not what a ship is built for.

Presumably those pundits approved of Bob Dole's 1996 campaign. Well, maybe they faulted him for his "risky" selection of Jack Kemp as his running-mate, although Kemp certainly performed as well as Dole did — which is to say, nobly and consistently in an obviously uninspired and electorally foredoomed cause. McCain shares more than a few traits with Dole ("old" and "often grumpy" and "war hero" among them). But he's obviously concluded that he's not going to stand there motionless as he watches a called third strike. And I applaud McCain for that.

The opening splash of the Palin announcement has been all I'd hoped it might be, and I thought she was terrific at the rally. And something that just thrilled me, that hit me at a very emotional level, was at the very end of her prepared remarks, when she turned to face McCain again and shake his hand. You couldn't hear her over the music and the roar of the crowd. But you could very distinctly see her lips say to John McCain the words, "Thank you, sir!"

Oh, my! A national candidate who doesn't just profess humility, but actually still possesses it, and who displays unselfconscious respect for the older generation of which McCain is a part! What a fine, fine thing, that "sir" — as she thanked McCain for giving her this chance, for taking a risk on her. And you could see in her face the determination to do her very best not to let him down.

Oh, that's good stuff. That's so American. That's "Put me in Coach, and get me the ball!" Notwithstanding her stress fracture in her foot, when the other team fouls her, she'll sink the free-throws to score the game's final points to clinch the state championship. And yeah, that's what actually happened to Sarah Palin in her senior year of high school.

So now, she has to perform, figuratively and literally. She will not shrink from the challenge. The glare will be harsh, the microscope will be cranked down, and some of the interlocutors will not be acting in good faith. But most of the American public will be watching in good faith, and many of them will find her easy to identify with.

Let Sarah Palin win over the Charles Krauthammers and the David Frums. Let her win over the skeptics of all stripes and colors. Let us, who are already her admirers, avoid alienating those skeptics in the meantime. I do not expect a pitch-perfect, error-free performance from her on every day between now and the election. But I believe that the basic qualities that have brought her conspicuous success in Alaska will bring her success on a national stage too, not overnight, but over time. To finish horribly mixing my metaphors: This isn't her first rodeo, it's just her biggest.

In the meantime, abide by her, and with the skeptics. They're not bad people, they're just unconvinced. Let Sarah convince them.