At 44, and a mother-of-five, this self-confessed "hockey mom" has a pregnant teenage daughter, a potential son-in-law who calls himself a redneck, family feuds, and an oil-worker husband who looks as if he can't be relied upon to say the right thing in any given situation.

Pick up the Palin tribe, put them on a caravan site in Britain and they would fit in straight away, from the barbeque to the line-dancing night.

Standing next to the McCains at the Republican convention, they looked as if they had been dropped in from another
planet, even further away than Alaska, where Palin has been governor for less than two years. Palin's husband and kids were like the poor relations at a smart wedding, all primped up in their shiny shopping-mall clothes.

Cindy McCain was smiling at them through gritted teeth. No need for her to be snobbish. Sarah and Cindy have so much in common, both being former beauty queens. But, as far as we know, Mrs McCain doesn't shoot moose or spout off about creationism.

It all makes Hillary Clinton look even more like a particularly well-groomed social worker, and Michelle Obama a protected princess. Forget the soap opera, a four-way Wife Swap with that lot would break all viewing records.

I think this is what we instinctively like about Palin. Whatever else she is, we can see that she is real. Most women (and men) that I know are heartily sick of female politicians, with their factory-setting opinions and wash 'n' go bobs, who dare not step out of line. How glorious to encounter one who looks like a comedy librarian, and turns every cliché on its head.

Whether or not you agree with her beliefs – and many of them, such as the right to drill for oil in polar-bear territory, are questionable – you can't help but admire her courage for sticking up for them. And because she is a politician, the personal becomes political; she must
live with the consequences of every decision.

Palin gained widespread respect for going ahead with her fifth pregnancy, although pre-natal tests showed that her baby son had Down's Syndrome. But it has underlined her anti-abortion stance on the evangelical far-right, and this has provoked concern among pro-choice campaigners, especially if Palin should reach the White House. She might be a woman, but she is no sister.

Nonetheless, the hearts of millions of women went out to Palin this week when internet rumours circulated that Trig, at five months, was actually her grandson. And then, when it emerged that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was five-months pregnant to her high-school sweetheart, we questioned what kind of woman, what kind of mother, would put her own daughter on the world stage at such a traumatic time in her young life.

Well, it is the kind of woman who runs for Vice President of the most powerful nation on Earth, as a deputy to a 72-year-old man who has already had life-threatening cancer. It is said that Palin could be "a heartbeat away from the Presidency".

None of us, bedazzled by all the gossip and glamour, should forget that. Palin might have looked as shocked as a rabbit in the headlights when her candidacy was announced,
but running for state governor isn't like running for the PTA, where she started her
political ambitions. She has got to be as ruthless, tough and assertive as she keeps telling us she is, rising at 3am to shoot things an' all.

I would love to see a woman running America. But this woman? If I'm honest, no. I think she would do her sex a lot of favours, but in the end, she could do us none at all.

Fascinating and inspiring though her life is, there is simply too much of it, and too much of it that we don't really know very much about. At any moment, a thread could become totally unravelled and wreak serious havoc at the very top of the US administration. And that, surely, is the last thing that the United States needs – in a country so riven domestically and reviled internationally.

It is clear that her sex, closely followed by her age, class and personality, has led to her being chosen to pull off a complicated trick against the Democrats. But it is her political background and ability which should come first, not the way she ticks all
the boxes.

Her inexperience in government, her vehement moral convictions and her lack of foreign context – it is rumoured that she had to buy a passport for the first time last year – could mean that she ends up looking more like a comedy librarian. The first woman in the White House could be a joke. And what good would that do anyone, man or woman?