How about that Sarah Palin? Has anyone else noticed that what is often called “the mainstream media” is not pointing out that she looks like a wild ruminant caught in the headlights of a car when asked a question that doesn’t come with a ready-made slogan?

Almost nobody hesitated to make this observation about George W. Bush when he was a candidate, even though it took longer for him to spawn a list of “Bushisms” than it took her to launch a list of “Palinisms.”

I think it may be that nobody wants to be accused of sexism, not even other women. Palin has been allowed to slide, for the most part, no matter how dim-witted she appears. There are exceptions, of course.

Maureen Dowd recently wrote: “With her… sing-songy jingoism, Palin can bridge contradictory ideas that lead nowhere: One minute she promises to get ‘greater oversight’ by government; the next, she lectures: ‘Government, you know, you’re not always a solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem.”’

So what if Palin can’t remember any Supreme Court rulings other than Roe vs. Wade? What if she can’t remember what she has read recently? She’s so darn cute, even when she isn’t answering the question.

And what does it matter if a person who wants to be the second most powerful person on Earth has only a vague grasp of history?

The Eagle Forum of Alaska -- a family focus group -- sent all candidates for governor in 2006 a questionnaire with the following question: “Are you offended by the phrase. Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?”

Palin’s answer was, “Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me…”

Of course she wasn’t offended; most people are not offended -- but the founding fathers didn’t write The Pledge of Allegiance. It was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy and the words, "under God," were not added until the 1950s.

Hey, what’s a century-and-a-half discrepancy on a question she could have researched at leisure -- or had someone else research -- if her heart’s in the right place?

Once when President John Kennedy hosted a group of Nobel Prize Winners at the White House, he referred to the gathering as “…probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.”

What caused us to suddenly elevate the mediocre to a place of high honor?

The answer, I believe, is that somehow the word “elite” was so contaminated by political operatives that we all forgot that it simply means “the best.” It’s not a sin to be intelligent and it’s not a virtue to be slow.

It’s been long understood that verbal skills are directly linked to the level of intelligence. It’s time to start pointing it out again. If Sarah Palin were brilliant, she would be able express it in words and thoughts -- and would not resort to winking and quoting slogans.

The American people have spent the last eight years pretending that most of what the President says makes sense. Even the staunchest Republican should know by now that we need a genuine thinker in the White House before more damage is done.

If McClain is elected, we might very well end up with a former beauty queen running things. Beauty queens are no more noted for intellect than cheerleaders -- and we’ve already had one of those.