The Wrong Kind Of Stupid

I think Team McCain-Palin has contracted a terminal illness and is going down, down. We mustn't be too hopeful, of course. We've all been hurt so many times before. But I think Sarah Palin may have made a critical, even fatal, mistake. Now there are many flaws in McPalin, but until now they were the kind of flaws that aren't only acceptable in American politics, but even beneficial. You can be as stupid as a high school football coach and succeed in politics. In fact, it's often necessary. You can believe man walked the earth with dinosaurs. You can believe Noah built an ark and packed it with every living species in existence. You can believe zebras have stripes 'cause that's just the way God wanted 'em painted, by golly, and if it's good enough for Jesus it's good enough for me. Not only will such inanities not hurt your career, they will help it. They can even make you president. Hell, combined with enough blood lust they can even make you a "great" president, and someday you might get lucky and have an airport named after you. Ignorance and stupidity is not and has not been the problem. But Sarah Palin showed us all the other day that she is the wrong kind of stupid.

Fundamentalist Christian, check. Historically illiterate, check. Hasn't travelled and doesn't know jack shit about the world, check -- hell, that last qualifies her to be an expert in the American foreign policy establishment. So far, so good, grease the rails to the White House . . . What's that? She can't name a single newspaper that she reads? Uh oh. We have a problem.

Don't get me wrong. We don't care if she reads or not. George Bush bragged that he doesn't read any newspapers. Warren Harding preferred the sports pages. Can anybody honestly picture such fine presidential specimens as Gerald Ford or Calvin Coolidge curling up with a volume of Tacitus? That's just not the issue. But when asked what papers she reads, Sarah Palin answered that she reads "all of 'em," yah knohhh? Then she couldn't name one. Not one. Any experienced politician, any pro, could have knocked that one out of the park with his eyes closed. You don't even have to think. New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, just name one, any one. Can't do it? Play to the base by taking a stab at the press: "Newspapers are biased. I prefer to get information and advice from my advisers; who says you can learn anything from reading newspapers, Katie?" Politics 101. Katie tossed her a softball and she whiffed it, badly. She got caught lying and looked as dumb as a mule doing it. She did try to turn it around and imply that the question was some elitist attack against Alaska, but it was a clumsy, obvious dodge and fell totally flat. Most people don't care if she's ignorant, dishonest or even kind of stupid. But they do insist that she have political smarts, gut instinct, and can think on her feet, otherwise how will she combat the legions of evil menaces that constantly threaten the Homeland? If Katie Couric runs circles around you, how can you possibly get the better of Putin? You can't. Now everybody knows it. Furthermore, why hadn't any of the sharpies at team McCain prepared her for such obvious questions? Or have they, but she just can't quite get it right? Either way, it doesn't look good, and now the high-brow George Will type conservatives are walking away from the impending crash. Team McCain has been wounded. After Thursday night that wound just might become gangrene.