As a former Alaskan who had a chance to interview her, I know Sarah Palin, both politically and her record as mayor of Wasilla.

The bottom line is that she is a typical Republican in many ways. She appears to me to be conflicted with a contradictory mindset that both openly values freedom and rejects it too.

The very best thing she ever said was that the government should be minimized and if even her father had to lose his job in the process, that’s too bad. In context, I believe this means that she believes in the Republican line of “limited government.”

However talk is cheap.

As mayor of Wasilla she presided over a very fat income from the taxpayers, who were forced to pay a 2 percent local sales tax to start up a police department which Wasilla did not have.

The police department was started and she was an early and vocal backer of the department and the tax to pay for it.

When a group of us objected that it would be abused and the tax would then be used for all sorts of government additions, she and others denied this.

They ended up with so much extra money beyond the cost of the Wasilla Police Department that she and others created a Wasilla Sports Complex.

I believe that shows her desire to see kids play hockey all year around trumped taxpayers who wanted to mind their own business.

When Sarah ran for governor, a friend of mine who knows better told me he was going to vote for her. I was incredulous. I asked him why.

He said all the others were too corrupt and she was so new at this political game that we will probably have at least four years before Juneau corrupted her. He had a point.

She has two political points in her favor, at least in Alaska:

She is very photogenic and knows how to use the cameras to her advantage.

And she is a genuine backer of the Second Amendment.

On the other hand, I believe she knows next to nothing about economics.

I once went to her office when she was mayor and showed her a very thick book called “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross.

The book is an exciting novel about what would happen in America if the Middle Class started shooting back against government goons from the various agencies that regularly conduct raids against innocent people for minor infractions of bureaucratic rules.

Sarah bought the book from me. But I sensed that she did so only to get rid of me and my enthusiasm for the book. I never saw any evidence that she ever read it.

Finally she is a very active Christian and uses that card openly to draw the religious crowd to vote for her.

I believe she won the governorship not because she had any great knowledge or experience with politics. She was a mayor of a very small town near Anchorage. Her opponents were seen as crooks.

She was classic example of the lesser of two evils.

Oddly, she ran for governor on a program of “change.” Like Barack Obama, who is also using this word, she never informed us of what change she had in mind.

Since she has been governor of Alaska, she has done good: She immediately sold the former governor’s expensive jet, getting it off the books and the backs of tax payers.

She has also done bad: She backed the passage of new taxes on the oil industry up there as if that would help them create new oil at lower prices.

And she backed a bill that would create a government financed or backed Gas Pipeline from the North Slope to markets.

A group of us advised her to back off this kind of state management or ownership of large industrial plants, giving her many, many examples of super-government programs that were economic disasters and cost Alaska taxpayers literally billions of dollars.

Palin rolled her eyes at this advice and forged ahead.

I don’t believe she fully understands the horrible results of government ownership and control of parts of the economy.

She would say she is not a socialist but she creates socialist programs as governor.

In a way she is a true example of America and its mixed economy, part free market and part government. She is a modern Republican who has all but abandoned most of the libertarian elements of being a Republican.

I see her as lacking the necessary philosophical ideas in her head to guide her in action. She will be a very malleable, young and attractive sidekick for John McCain. Good for him, bad for us.

But should they win, and should McCain die, I believe we would have a political child as President of the U.S.

I believe she would do much as the very symbol of the Nanny state to ratchet our few remaining freedoms away in the name of security.