Palin the Usurper

While watching a Sarah Palin retrospective tonight, following her resignation as governor of Alaska, a question occurred to me:

Was the election of Barack Obama, a former president of Harvard Law Review and Senator from Illinois, as the first African-American President of the United States, almost upstaged/eclipsed (or was it upstaged/eclipsed?) by a former beauty pagent contestant who was an unsuccessful candidate for Vice-President of the United States?

On "This Week with George Stephanapolous" on 7/26, conservative commentator George Will complained about the continuing over-exposure given to the pronouncements of Barack Obama on every subject. But hasn't Obama at least been elected to a national office? How do we explain the continuing attention given to the utterances of Sarah Palin?