Sarah Palin is an empty suit. It was difficult to understand where she was going in her meandering answers to Gwen Ifill’s questions the other night, but at the time I thought I was having some attention deficit problems and I just wasn’t getting it. I was getting plenty of “Joe Sixpack, God bless her, Say it ain’t so, Joe, now doggone it, darn it,” and “aw hec,” with lots of winking at me. (Then I thought, she’s not winking at a person, she’s winking into a camera. Who does that?) As I have begun to read over the transcripts of what she said, I have discovered that there was nothing wrong with me. Her sentences didn’t make any sense.

This is an actual quote: “Say it ain’t so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”

The italics are mine. Reread the italics carefully. What does this sentence mean? And don’t you find the condescending comment about teachers offensive. It is like saying, “Well we aren’t going to pay you a decent wage, bless your heart, but surely God will take care of ya.” This is a load of crap.

If we had grabbed a bright kid from any local high school, spent 3 weeks coaching them, written all her answers on index cards, told her to disregard the questions that she didn’t have an answer for and just to give one of her programmed answers that she had on a card when they hit her with a puzzler, couldn’t an 18 year old girl have done better than Palin did? Anne Buckle would have been better by far. Craig Kleimeyer would have been better.

I’ve taken a few tests. Sometimes you sit down and open that college final exam and whew, the essay questions aren’t quite what you studied for. You have 4 or 5 great answers in your head, but the professor only asked 2 of those questions. The third question is from outer space. Ugh. You have to decide. Leave it blank? Write the two sentences you know about this question and try to fill in with a load of crap? Or Sarah Palin’s choice, just write down the answer to a different question, one that you knew the answer to.

When your knowledge base is grossly insufficient, you can’t discuss a subject coherently. This resulted in the deer in the headlights answers Governor Palin gave Katie Couric, “Well let’s see Katie, since I’ve never heard of any Supreme Court cases, I’ll just say there’s probably lot’s of them I don’t agree with . . . maybe.

You know Palin may be a nice person, even though she goes to a holy roller church and has taken blessings from witch chasers. Forgive her for her upbringing. She may be intelligent, even though it took her 6 years and 5 colleges to get a degree. There is no doubt she’s cute and folksy, has a bunch of kids with hippy names (aren’t you dying to find out what their middle names are?), and is a beauty queen. (Cue wolf whistle). But does any of that qualify her to run the United States of America. I’m pretty smart. I’m educated, keep up with current events, and have some time on my hands. But if Barack Obama came calling at my door and said “Billy Bob, I think you should be my Vice Presidential running mate,” I’d have smiled, gotten an autograph, and told him “Thank you, Barack, but no. This is way out of my area of expertise.” Sarah should have done the same when they came to her.

At some point John McCain sold his soul to the devil. He’s risking our world so he can be president. Please, God, don’t let them win.

See this link to Bob Herbert’s incisive commentary in the New York Times.