Obviously not smart enough to be VP

Sorry, haven't seen Palin's interview with Katie Couric from this week. I've heard she didn't exactly cover herself with glory. But unless she claimed that in 1929 president Roosevelt went on TV to address the depression (for those keeping score, Biden said that... and in 1929, Hoover was president and TV was science-fiction), she is not guilty of the dumbest thing said by a veep candidate this week.

And there are others--a claim that president Bush sent a negotiator to Tehran (he didn't), that his helicopter was "forced down" in Afghanistan (it was... by snow), and even that Biden's family was killed by a drunk driver (he was sober). But Joe makes so many gaffes, he doesn't get called dumb. If Palin (or Bush, or Dan Quayle) said the same stuff, they'd be crucified. If McCain did, he'd be called senile.

Look--nobody who supports Palin (including me) doesn't wish she had been governor for 10 years instead of two. And nobody should pretend that she has foreign policy experience. Neither did Reagan, or Clinton, or any other governor. And I don't recall anybody saying that Howard Dean (governor of Vermont, smaller than Alaska) was unqualified. Nor John Edwards, who actually got nominated for VP (but he did have excellent hair). All I know if that if there's going to be inexperience on the ticket, I want it in the veep slot, not the top slot. Obama has never run anything but his mouth.

Obviously, if a president McCain dies, she'll be president. But if he dies after even two years, she will have had two years as VP, with all that entails. And if she, God forbid, were to succeed to the presidency even earlier, she could always go out and get an old, wise, foreign-policy thinker as her VP. That's what we'll get if Obama wins, a rookie in the oval office with the experienced guy at the bottom of the ticket. Only I'll bet whoever she would pick is not the goofball Joe Biden is.

All that said, I still like Joe. And I still don't know why.