We haven’t had a northerner like Palin in the Vice President’s mansion since Jerry Ford. Dick Cheney’s a westerner for sure, and Lynne Cheney’s memoir, “Blue Skys, Open Fields,” makes clear that the Wyoming of their youth was plenty cold, but Dick Cheney, like Jerry Ford before him, came into office after long residence away from the wilds that surrounded them growing up. Their characters were shaped by the outdoors, and they enjoyed them still, but being fresh from the mountains and wind chills deep-below-zero is unique for Palin.

And it matters. A lot. In a lot of places.

I have written before about the other communities Palin is connecting with at an emotional level. Millions of women, of course, but especially mothers and specifically mothers of troops and mothers of children with special needs.

She’s also got the emotional wiring of a small business owner and a local elected leader.

She is, famously, a hockey mom and a moose hunter, a boater and the wife of an aging outdoors’ competitor.

She is connecting on so many levels because her life has been lived on so many fields.

Many of those experiences are distinctly northern, and largely unknown or forgotten to MSM-types who won’t know whom to ask for an opinion on Palin. Movement towards her in unlikely places may be tough to detect for the Beltway media mandarins, so watch those blue places to see if they warm to a kindred soul in the next 60 days.