McCain’s Mrs. Right

Sarah Palin posed for a photo spread in Vogue, but that's about as far as the glamour goes. She piles her hair up in a librarian's bun and wears what she calls "schoolmarm" glasses (one blogger compared her to "Tina Fey's sexier sister"). She was at one time a beauty queen, Miss Wasilla 1984, in her hometown, population: 7,000 or so. "We were really surprised when she wanted to do it," her father, Chuck, told the Vogue reporter. "That wasn't her thing." Basketball and hunting were more like it. Palin regretted the whole beauty pageant experience. "They made us line up in bathing suits and turn our backs so the male judges could look at our butts. I couldn't believe it!" she told Vogue.

She tried being a sportscaster for a while, but ended up as a politician, or rather an anti-politician. She seemed to love to take on the good ole boys, to get in the face of the state's Republican political establishment and Big Oil, the two dominant forces in Alaska, at least until Palin came along. She smiles a lot and has a thick skin, laughing off reporters who write about her black go-go boots or leering bloggers, like the Washington, D.C.-based Wonkette, which dubbed her "the hottest governor in all 50 states." She is fearless and natural, and it's no wonder she charmed a fierce contrarian like John McCain. "He saw a lot of himself in her," says campaign manager Rick Davis. Whether she can help or hurt his candidacy is another question. She is not just the first Republican woman to run for vice president. She is about as far from conventional notions of a safe, reassuring No. 2 type as can be imagined.

Palin is an American original. She calls herself a "hockey mom" and manages to juggle the lives of her five children (the last, born with Down syndrome, is less than 5 months old) while running the state of Alaska and routinely antagonizing the powers that be. Last fall a NEWSWEEK reporter visited her office in Anchorage. The governor's office overlooks the sparkling Cook Inlet, ringed by mountains, except right smack in the view is a skyscraper adorned with the name CONOCO PHILLIPS in giant letters, a reminder of the prominence of Big Oil in the state capital. The throw rug on her couch is the skin of a grizzly bear shot by her father, a retired teacher turned "nuisance-control specialist" (varmint hunter for hire) whose pickup truck bears the sticker VEGETARIAN—OLD INDIAN WORD FOR "BAD HUNTER." (Palin herself is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association; for years, she or her husband caught all the fish or shot all the meat that her family eats.) As she spoke to the reporter, she juggled two BlackBerrys and a cell phone, with one always buzzing. She seemed unfazed, indeed to be having fun. As strands of hair fell from her librarian's bun she deftly executed an intricate "don't drop the BlackBerry while fixing the bobby pin" maneuver, several times.

One of Palin's first acts as governor was to sell the governor's jet on eBay. She thought it was wasteful and, besides, couldn't even land on many of the state's short, gravel airstrips. ("It was for out-of-state trips," she said, disapprovingly.) She keeps a float plane, along with some snowmobiles, in her backyard in Wasilla. At the governor's mansion in Juneau, she got rid of the chef. The NEWSWEEK reporter asked her what working mother in her right mind would dismiss someone whose sole job was to cook for her family. She replied, "I don't want them thinking when I'm done being governor that it's normal to have a chef. It's OK for them to have macaroni and cheese."

She also trimmed down her state-trooper detail, which is why, when the NEWSWEEK reporter and the governor drove in a large SUV from her Anchorage office to her lakeside home, she was at the wheel—still talking and tapping on a BlackBerry , while seamlessly discussing the Alaska oil and gas culture; the FBI investigation into same; her views on stem-cell research (anti), abortion (anti) and gay marriage (anti, though she did say she'd uphold the law on gay-partnership rights). At some point she arranged a playdate for one of her daughters, Piper, age 6. Recognizing her, construction workers waved as she drove by. Clutching her cell phone, she cheerfully waved back.

Arriving home, she ran into the house, kicking off her shoes, grabbing her red sandals and yelling for her children. The reporter had to break it to her that she had just locked them out of the state car, and that the reporter's notebook and tape recorder were still inside. She called a state trooper from her cell phone to come unlock the car, but since she was running late (a not uncommon occurrence), they would have to borrow her son's car to head back to the next stop, the Alaska State Fair. She asked her son Track (a high-school hockey player then, now an Army private headed for Iraq) for his keys. Like any normal teenager, he dangled the keys over his head, just out of reach, and extorted a promise of a full gas tank when she returned. She took it all good-naturedly and was soon barreling off to the fair in her son's jalopy (a Toyota Camry with a cracked windshield), electronic gadgets buzzing in her pockets, still spouting her conservative theories on social policy to the reporter.

As a high-school basketball player, she was nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda." (The name makes her wince now, and she halfheartedly insisted it wasn't true.) She was an aggressive—some would say rough—point guard who never, ever, gave up until her team won the state championship. She became a kind of local goddess by the time she was 18, named "Miss Congeniality" at the same time she won the Wasilla Beauty contest (the off-putting bathing-suit competition didn't occur until she ran, unsuccessfully, to become Miss Alaska). She eloped with her high-school sweetheart to spare their families the cost of a wedding. Her husband, Todd, who is part native Alaskan, is a part-time commercial fisherman (a brutal undertaking in some Alaska weather) and has been a production manager in the North Slope oilfields. Palin has won the Iron Dog snowmobile race from Wasilla to Nome to Fairbanks—the world's longest—four times. The press now refers to him as "First Dude."