Nucular Sarah -- ya betcha

They told Sarah Palin to say Maverick as much as possible, and she did. As apparently contradictory as it is to call two people a "team" of mavericks and as questionable as maverick status may be in someone who is supposed to lead and to unify disparate interests, She continued to work the metaphor into every misrepresentation she made in her backwoods dialect.

Much is being made this morning of her "misstatements" such as denying that Gen. David McKiernan, says the "surge principle" won't work in Afghanistan. Not enough has been said about her calling him McLellan, a Civil War general often at odds with Abe Lincoln. Of course there is a bottomless well of humor in the very phrase. What after all, is a "surge principle" other than a very belated recognition that the generals who told Bush we needed a lot more troops were right -- and only after years of bloodshed and needless destruction. In retrospect, Powell's doctrine of massive and overwhelming force would seem to have been wise and would have saved a great many lives on both sides of the conflict.

Of course Palin was "in error," McKiernan did say it. Palin lied when she said Obama can't admit that "the surge" worked. He did. She raised sales taxes in Wasilla to finance a stadium and left the town in heavy debt.

The fact is that she either lied or heavily misrepresented the facts in everything she said and she did it with ebullient conviction because she was parroting, in most un-maverick fashion, the words of her trainers. Only an ignorant person can be so convincingly convinced. But that's Sarah Palin. Even with the new hair and the professional makeup and wardrobe selection, we still have the 44 year old woman who talks like a child, lies with a smile and who pronounces "you" as "ya" and nuclear as "nucular"

Most of all we have the candidate who can't afford any reference to the past lies, blunders, misrepresentations, failings and crimes of her party, John McCain and herself. She absolutely has to convince us that their past performance is irrelevant to trusting them for the future.

I'm sorry to say, Sarah, when what we have from you today is a department store window dressed with dummies and props, it's essential to look at your past and your party's past, witches and all. You betcha.