Charles Krauthammer on Palin

I have no love for Krauthammer. I have in the past characterized him, accurately I think, as being a member of the criminally insane foreign policy wing of the Republican Party (luckily a dying breed) and a certified partisan hack (which is why it drives me crazy that the Deseret News insists on printing prominently every word he says). When even he sees that Palin is completely unqualified, you know we're in trouble.

Some excerpts:

The vice president's only constitutional duty of any significance is to become president at a moment's notice. Palin is not ready.
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So why did McCain do it? He figured it's a Democratic year. The Republican brand is deeply tarnished. The opposition is running on "change" in a change election. So McCain gambled that he could steal the change issue for himself -- a crazy brave, characteristically reckless, inconceivably difficult maneuver -- by picking an authentically independent, tough-minded reformer. With Palin, he doubles down on change.

The problem is the inherent oddity of the incumbent party running on change. Here were Republicans -- the party that controlled the White House for eight years and both houses of Congress for five -- wildly cheering the promise to take on Washington. I don't mean to be impolite, but who's controlled Washington this decade?

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The gamble is enormous. In a stroke, McCain gratuitously forfeited his most powerful argument against Obama. And this was even before Palin's inevitable liabilities began to pile up -- inevitable because any previously unvetted neophyte has "issues." The kid. The state trooper investigation. And worst, the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.

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