Like many Americans over the past week, I've been in this state alternating between amusement and terror watching a woman who in all likelihood, if there were a meltdown in common sense and ended up occupying the White House, would spend a great deal of her time sneaking up on her boss with a balloon and a pin and shouting in her whiny voice "Surprise!".
The snippets of her interviews with Katie Couric cause me to just sit there stunned with my mouth hanging open and a total lack of control of the muscles of my jaw.
The one that keeps haunting my dreams the most is when Katie asked her to specifically name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe v Wade that she disagreed with.
Any college professor that has sat at a desk across from an unprepared student during an oral exam knows where her answers are coming from. They've all heard the rambling attempts by young men and women to just fill a space of time with meaningless drivel hoping beyond hope that some word will connect and bring their grade up from an F- to perhaps an F.
I had to pick up my son from school after an event last night after being treated to more clips on Keith Olbermann's and Rachel Maddow's shows of Palin doing her best impression of the South Carolina beauty pageant contestant and reached my tolerance level. I did an experiment.
My son is 15 years old, a freshman in high school, a member of the marching band. He's not a straight A student but only because he has properties of a short attention span from too many talents and interests and a propensity to be as social as he is studious.
So I asked him on the ride home from a school event. "Name me a Supreme Court decision." He was a bit confused more from the change of subject and asked what I meant. I said. "Tell me the name of any Supreme Court case that you know of throughout history". He replied without hesitation. "Oh you mean like Brown vs The Board of Education?".
These are the moments in life when one goes from being more than just a biological breeder and takes on the role of beaming parent.
I smiled and explained to him what had transpired in the interview with Palin and Couric and told him that I had no idea if he'd be able to answer the question but that I was proud he had opened up a place in his mind for such important information. We talked about other decisions that had shaped our country including Bush v. Gore and how that had so helped to cause the mess we're in today. That's one that he didn't really have knowledge of since he was very young when it happened and I'm sure it's a political hot potato in public school history classes.
So Sarah, if you needed a bit of help on your preparation for tonight's debate, instead of holing up in McCain's Cornville, Az compound, you could have instead just popped into the Phoenix valley and spent a few hours with my teenage son. His knowledge about how our government works would have far eclipsed what you garnered from the journalism degree you struggled through and the wealth of data you had in front of you in the Wasilla newsstands.