Sarah Palin

As I stated at the time, one reason that I decided to support Obama in the last election was because the idea of Sarah Palin becoming president scared me. It still does. With respect to the current circus, Eugene Robinson, a man with whom I agree with infrequently, states it well:

You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously -- or pretended to take her seriously -- should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate. Imagining Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency should be enough to make even die-hard Republicans shudder. . .

The thing is, Palin's unsuitability for high public office has been obvious all along. Tina Fey got it right; the rest of us were far too reluctant to state plainly that the emperor, or empress, has no clothes.

There are basically two reasons the political class and the commentariat continue to speak and write about Palin as if she were a substantial figure whose presence on the national stage is anything but a cruel, unfunny joke. The first is fear -- not of Palin and her know-nothing legions, but of being painted as elitist and sexist. . .

The other reason Palin is taken more seriously than she deserves is that she has a constituency. Heaven help us.