I am old enough to have remembered the Weathermen, and McCarthyism. By the time I was draft age, I lived in Alaska. I knew plenty of people who opposed the war, and did illegal things to resist the war. I had friends in a local war tax resistance movement, and I knew people who helped soldiers desert and go to Canada. There were few privileged and well educated radicals that would join Weatherman, but we did have our own relatively harmless local radicals with delusional dreams of overthrowing the government, including one that later converted to hyper free market views, and became a cabinet member for Governor Hickel.
Everyone in my generation had an opinion on the Vietnam war because of the draft, and there were a lot of crazy things going on. By the time Obama and Palin came of age, the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam and this era had disappeared.
Everything about Obama suggests a pragmatic reformer, and an ambitious politician. Obama didn't want to overthrow the government, he wanted a future in the government.
Like Obama, Sarah Palin missed the 60s and the Vietnam war controversies. She grew up when there was no draft, and when disco was more important than politics. She is discovering now her abilities to engage in the type of character assaults that one associates with Joe McCarthy -- guilt by association. Like McCarthy, she has no real boundaries or shame.
McCarthy and McCarthyism were distant and discredited by the Vietnam era, but support for both never disappeared entirely. There were always elements in society that wanted to bring this back. But few people with stature had the stomach to do so. Today, with Fox News, talk radio and a right-wing blogsphere, there is an atmosphere and core of support for this type of thing. Sarah Palin seems like the missing link. A high level political figure that has been elevated to a Vice Presidential nomination by one of the two main parties -- McCarthy's old party.