Going from Bad to Worse -- from Bush to Palin

Sarah Palin has the same world view as my 7-year-old!
By Bonnie Fuller

When Sarah Palin started babbling to Katie Couric about the "good guys" and "bad guys" in the Middle East, I had one immediate terrifying thought — she has the exact same worldview as my 7 year-old son, Sasha. He too in his childish mind, sees the world starkly divided into the two camps.

He also believes in superheroes with superpowers and monsters under the bed at night.

Now, while you expect 7 year-olds to play "good guys" and "bad guys" — and they do — you don't expect the person who could be a heartbeat away from the presidency to think this way.

That was just one of the shocking revelations in Sarah Palin's second sit-down interview. The other alarming revelation — she is astoundingly inarticulate, ill-informed and NOT a quick learner.

It had been 12 days since her last aired interview with Charlie Gibson, in which she first claimed that her state's proximity to Russia gave her an understanding of that complex nation's politics.

Yet here she was, almost two weeks later, still untutored — or so it seemed — and claiming the very same thing. The McCain-Palin camp hadn't even bothered to prep a better answer to this obvious question. Which makes you wonder if she and her handlers didn't realize how inane she sounded in the first place, or if Palin truly believes that she gave a perfectly sound response.

My 7 year-old also wouldn't be capable of seeing the world in a more complex way, but then again, John McCain hasn't selected Sasha to be his running mate.

Speaking of quick studies, or lack thereof, it took John McCain at least three days to read the two and a half page, 700 billion dollar bailout proposal. If anything, Sarah Palin is even less clued in. When she and Couric discussed her running mate's plan for reforming Wall Street and how he has led the charge for more regulation, Couric asked her to cite specific examples of his push for more regulation, Palin could only lamely promise to "try to find you some and I'll bring them to you." That had to be a first for Katie.

What's becoming totally obvious is that Palin is a terrific actress. Give her a good speech/script, a Valentino jacket and a great pair of patent pumps and she can deliver with gusto. She looks and sounds perfect for the Lipstick Pit Bull VP part. No Hollywood actress could do better.

But once she has to go off script, in the Gibson and Couric interviews or even in her first four questions and answer session with reporters in NYC, recently, she can't string together an intelligent-sounding answer, if her life or the election depended on it. The "Great Communicator" she is not. She makes George Bush sound like the leader of the Oxford Debating Team.

Now there is one way that my 7 year-old does have an edge on Sarah Palin. He knows for a fact that dinosaurs walked the earth millions of years ago. He also knows that human beings were not around at the same time.

But then my son isn't a creationist like our potential Vice President.

Now all of this begs the questions: if Sarah Palin ever becomes president and has to deal with complex political, economic and social issues and crisis, both domestic and foreign, will she be able to see these worlds in terms beyond just black and white and "good guys" and "bad guys"?

Will she be able to inspire Americans to be leaders in science and technology or will her non-scientific views about science get in the way?

And finally, will she be able to multi-task a myriad of often unexpected issues and crises and speak intelligently and articulately about them to the American people or will she have to get back to us?