DCFOUNTAIN.COM

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Sen. John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin lately have begun offering a new refrain aimed at countering those who dare to question Palin’s readiness to serve as president, should the situation so require. It goes something like this: Those who question her readiness simply have never met her.

Interesting argument, considering that Palin has never met Obama. Yet since the day she was tapped she has gone into full pit-bull mode in viciously attacking both his professional as well as personal qualifications. By her own logic, maybe she should just meet him and she would feel differently.

The clear hope of team McCain-Palin’s assertion is that her undeniably charming personality somehow would compensate for her well-documented operating deficiencies, which have grown scarier by the week since her debut two months ago. Yet, an ex-beauty queen slathering on layers of charm — from folksy little witticisms to quirky if not seductive winks of the eye — will fool only a fool…and possibly a few sexually repressed males.

Last time I checked, meeting a candidate — or anyone else for that matter — in person is hardly a prerequisite for judging their intelligence, and specifically their suitability for leading the nation. Most Americans have never met George W. Bush, but his words and deeds certainly have served as more-than-adequate metrics of his mental capacities for us to know he isn’t the sharpest tool in the leadership shed.

Former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Lawrence Eagleburger — the latter who happens to serve as McCain’s foreign policy adviser — are among the more prominent Republican officials who have gone public with their pronouncements that Palin is not at all up to taking over the role of commander-in-chief, which, as Powell notes, is the central purpose for having a vice president in the first place.

During a recent ABC interview, even McCain himself seemed momentarily appalled at the very thought of Palin ascending to the presidency (see video below).

Let’s pray that Americans are too smart to be taken in by the Palin ruse — both in 2008 and in 2012. But don’t count on it. As columnist George Monbiot observed in Tuesday’s The Guardian, the growing trends of home schooling and religious fundamentalism have enabled a dumbing-down of the democracy our founding fathers — all great thinkers of their time — so painstakingly created.

One wonders if they ever would have bothered to create this shining beacon of liberty for the world, if they had known what one day would pass for intelligence among their successors — to say nothing of the degeneration of the American electorate itself.

Considering that the cable news network with the largest number of regular U.S. viewers is Fox News, which serves as the primary — and often only — source of news for an astonishing number of Americans, is it any wonder?

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