Mooselini Brings Quite A Lot To The McCain Campaign

Courtesy of Guzzi Studios

So what if Palin doesn't know that the Supreme Court was founded in 1789 and that John Jay, a revolutionary who she and her fellow conservatives would have been very much against, was the first Chief Justice? And so what if she doesn't know Marbury v Madison or the Dred Scott Decision from Brown vs Board of Eduction or Bush vs Gore. She knows Roe v Wade and that's all any contemporary "conservative" needs to know about the Supreme Court anyway.

And, in any case, McCain didn't pick her to vet Supreme Court judges (or lead troops through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan). Obviously McCain's only real interest whenever he imagines himself in the Oval Office is fighting wars. So where does Palin fit in? One thing all Americans can agree on is that we need a vice president who has less to do with public policy. If Bush's approval rating is now 19%, can you even try to guess how low Cheney's is! Palin is the perfect antidote to a VP who stood behind the curtain and ran the show for 8 years. There is nothing she knows about and nothing she is capable of doing. Nothing. As long as McCain defies the actuarial odds and survives for 4 years, who cares? And if something happens to him... well, in that case he won't be around to explain what he meant by "country first" anyway. Fareed Zakaria:

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"?

...Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. ("We mustn't blink.") But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

Couric asked her a smart question about the proposed $700 billion bailout of the American financial sector. It was designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up, and that that's why, in the estimation of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, the government needs to step in to buy up Wall Street's most toxic liabilities. Here's the entire exchange:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

This is nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head. Some commentators, like CNN's Campbell Brown, have argued that it's sexist to keep Sarah Palin under wraps, as if she were a delicate flower who might wilt under the bright lights of the modern media. But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb.

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Zakaria must hate McCain, as according to McCain's lobbyist brigade, the entire media does. He points out that McCain's claim to always put the country first has been utterly shredded" "it is simply not true."

As for Palin, they may not like her any longer in the battle ground states, especially ones that are traditionally safe Republican havens like Colorado and North Carolina, but McCain is certain she'll razzle and dazzle 'em once they get to know the real her.

Hard to tell which is the Tina Fey spoof and which is the cynical joke on America: