Saturday Night Live Every Night

Asked for her thoughts on the $700 billion financial rescue proposal, Ms. Palin responded, “But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy helping the – oh, it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is part of that.”

I’m not making this up. Or even playing back the transcript of last week’s hilarious Saturday Night Live, whose writers must be daily on their knees giving thanks to the gods of comedy for delivering such a bountiful gift. Nothing doing. This is the real, unvarnished stuff, straight from the mouth of the would-be next but-one-heartbeat-away President.

Careful examination of this partial peroration reveals no less than six major issues all desperate for serious attention. And that’s counting tax reduction and tax relief as the same thing, which they aren’t necessarily.

Poor Sarah. Plucked up from relative obscurity governing a state with the population of a mid-sized lower 48 city, she’s parachuted into the maelstrom of the Presidential campaign and she hasn’t a clue. Coached by consultants, experts, minders, aides, and other hangers-on, she responds to reasonable one-topic questions with the whole laundry list of popular concerns in the hope that at least one will be taken as having some remote bearing on the matter at hand. If the question is of a more personal nature – her getting her first passport two years ago, for instance – the answer is simultaneously aimed at eliciting sympathy and stoking the fires of the culture wars. Hence: ” I'm not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world.”

But appallingly enough, this kind of gibberish is currently pervasive in what pretends to pass for political discourse. Shortly after the $700 billion bill of which Ms. Palin spoke so eloquently was defeated in the House and the stock market promptly cratered, Representative Virginia Foxx exalted, “The market may be down, but the Constitution is up!” No doubt shares in the document, were they available, would have soared on this endorsement. And one of Rep. Foxx’s compatriots, the logic-challenged Rep. Paul Ryan explained his vote in favor thus: “This bill offends my principles, but I’m going to vote for this bill to preserve my principles.”

Well said. Now try “Live from New York. . .”