Why is politics entertaining again?

I've realized over the past few days that the long period has ended during which I found American politics not at all entertaining. Sarah Palin and fools like William Kristol have changed all that. I was glum and out of sorts because we (the country) were hamstrung with Bush, Cheney, etc., including an opposition party unable to take decisive action and even unwilling to pursue seriously the question of impeaching the ba**ards. Now that I find reason to hope that the Democrats will win the White House in November, I have become less glum, even to the extent of being relaxed enough to laugh at the folly of fools. The lifting of glumness seems to be the reason (or at least a prerequisite) for my now finding politics entertaining again. Palin (Alaska's proximity to Russia being the source of her foreign policy experience, her fear of bewitchment and all) can only have been sent to entertain us. May she not be dumped but remain on the ticket through Election Day!

By the way, 1,087 comments have now been posted to Kristol's Times column yesterday. Here's #1,087:

Palin has amply demonstrated by now through her Couric and Gibson interviews her ignorance and lack of ability to think logically. (Ignorance and lack of ability to think logically are two distinct characteristics, each highly bothersome individually.)

Whatever coaching McCain campaign operatives might desperately provide to Palin at this late hour is their application of—hmm—lipstick on a pig.

I have an idea that on both accounts, Palin's above incompetence and McCain's display of incompetence just in her selection as his running mate (leaving aside [many other] matters), the candidacy of the McCain-Palin duo is going to implode before too long.

And from # 1064:

This snooty elitist (and yes the rich republicans are the reel elitist here) says Obama is liberal. What does that mean? That he grew up on food stamps? Saw his mother die of cancer while fighting insurance companies? That he put himself through school? That instead of taking a job on Wall Street for 7 figures he returned to Chicago to take a $12,000 a year job working in the community to getter the lives of everyday people as opposed to the richest and most powerful? That he joined, at no pay, two Chicago school boards and was instrumental in helping that city turn around a failed school system? Is that what you call liberal?

I call that being an American. An up from the boot strap American. Not some prep school, last in his class Annapolis legacy, serial adulterer, intemperate, impetuous, social climber who married the rich blonde heiress. That doesn't sound like my neighbors.

Flash! This just in, from The Smirking Chimp¹

This political season has even brought out voices reminiscent of the sixties magazines Ramparts and Mother Jones and the rhetoric of Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin:

Then there's the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush "come from hell," and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama's Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a "refuge state" for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born-again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oilpipeline deal was "God's will." She also described the Iraq War as a "task that is from God" and part of a heavenly "plan." She supports teaching creationism and "abstinence only" in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, denies the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All of which tells you about what you'd expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She's a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the Constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you'd think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules.

Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out. The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job—but not in America.

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1. From the article, "The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn't how unqualified she is—it's what her candidacy says about America," by Matt Taibbi.