Sarah Palin makes me want to scream. Part 1

If I have to listen to one more media type seriously and respectfully discussing Sarah Palin’s “qualifications” for office, as though there were any remote way on earth she has the intelligence, education, skills, or background to be even a cabinet member, I will just scream.

Sarah Palin is lamentably ignorant, narrow-minded, uneducated, small-minded, and lacks ANY experience in the kinds of thinking, analyzing, compromising, or big-picture seeing that a president or vice president does.
Let’s put aside (although it’s hard), the lies and misrepresentations in her speech, her ethical lapses in Alaska, all the family & baby dramas, and let’s even set aside (although it’s hard), her extreme right wing views on so-called “social” issues.
Putting all that away, the real problem is that there is NO indication that she has ever taken even a passing interest in foreign affairs or international relations, or has EVER engaged in thoughtful study of economic  policy, environmental science, globalization of labor and production, the social dynamics of largely Muslim countries, climate change, constitutional law, the role of the judiciary in our society, financial markets, the structure of our tax code, health care, space travel, infrastructure repair, educational issues, effective consensus building (she’s been a bully in Alaska), or any of the other issues that the next president & vice president will have to deal with.  Does she even speak a foreign language?
Honest-to-Pete, I could care less who is more “down to earth” or who has a “story” I can “relate to.”  Haven’t we learned anything from eight years of a president chosen on the basis of who would be more fun to have a beer with?
What is “elite” anyway, besides the newest insult?  If elite means more intelligent, better educated, more practiced and adept at analysis of complex multi-faceted issues, better spoken, better able to interact appropriately with world leaders, possessed of a greater fund of general cultural knowledge, and being the Law Review editor of Harvard – then, yeah, I want the elite one.  Field-dressing a moose, watching kids’ hockey games, firing state officials who won’t fire your sister’s ex-husband – these are neither the things the president does, nor are they preparation for being vice-president.  It’s not who has more “executive” experience, or who is the best speaker, whose family is the most engaging, or who is “just like us.”  Leading the free world – damn right, I want someone in the top percentile of everything.
Far as I can tell, Palin was overmatched as mayor of Smallville, Alaska.  I shudder to think of her with potential responsibility for the whole country.