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In an interview a week ago, Sid Smith, Executive Director of the Republican Party in Idaho, said that, since Sarah Palin was chosen as the vice-presidential candidate, popularity has gone through the roof for McCain and Palin, and the Republican Party in Idaho has seen more contributions.

However, only some 100 meters from there, in the offices of the Democrat Party, Kassie Cerami, Director for the Obama Campaign in Idaho, confessed that Democrats were thrilled with the election of Palin as a candidate to the vice-presidency.

Kassie said that each one of Palin''s words, each one of her actions was a present for Democrats. And the thing is that, because of the many things Palin has said and done during the campaign, she has become an easy target for the US political satire.

It''s been more than once that I have entered into a coffee shop or a bar and I have heard the famous sentence "I can see Russia from my house". It refers to a parody about Sarah Palin in ''Saturday Night Live'' making fun of something she said when asked about her lack of experience on foreign policy. Well, certainly, it was not very smart of Palin to mention that she lived in Alaska, which is very close to Russia.

However, this has not been the only issue worth telling when talking about Sarah Palin. She has been strongly criticized for some clothing expenses up to $150,000 in a time when many Americans are struggling to cope with the economic crisis.

And this is not all.... there might be some kind of divorce or disagreement between her and John McCain. The Republican candidate has tended to lean to the center in order to put some distance between George W. Bush''s eight years of government and himself. Palin, however, represents the most conservative sector in the Republican Party. She is against abortion, she decided to give birth to a child even knowing that he was going to have down syndrome, she knows how to shoot a gun, she is a member of the National Rifle Association and she is completely against same-sex marriage.

Some newspapers in the United States are already wondering whether it was a good idea in the first place to select Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate to the vice-presidency. Some European media go even farther. One blogger at The Telegraph in the United Kingdom headlined "Sarah Palin: John McCain''s curse on the Republican Party" and pointed out that Sarah Palin had done more for Obama than for John McCain.

Democrats, in the meantime, keep calm. They are focused on November 4th, on not letting euphoria turn into over-confidence and on making everybody go out to vote.

So, there is one thing for sure. Palin will be the key: now and in the future. In fact, she has already openly admitted that, win or loose, she is already thinking about the 2012 election.