Beer Goggles

By now, there's a pretty good chance you've seen or heard this quote from an interview that Sarah Palin did yesterday with talk radio host and conservative human bullhorn Hugh Hewitt:

“I think they’re just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what -- it’s time that normal Joe Six Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency. And I think that that’s kind of taken some people off guard, and they’re out of sorts, and they’re ticked off about it, but it’s motivation for John McCain and I to work that much harder to make sure that our ticket is victorious. It's time we put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-pack like me."

If this populist horseshit sounds familiar, it should. It's the same basic theme that George W. Bush ran and won on in 2000 and 2004. The only difference is that, in Sarah Palin's "defense," she actually is the uneducated, underwhelming rube she claims to be -- as opposed to Bush and company, who were always aristocratic Ivy Leaguers playing dress-up, using the great unwashed as stage props in what was essentially nothing more than self-serving political theater.

Here's the thing though: There's a difference between representing Joe Six Pack and being Joe Six Pack -- reveling in your own embodiment of every incurious, average, underachieving connotation the term can imply.

I've said this before but it just bears repeating over and over again: I don't want the people who inhabit the highest offices in the free world to be average.

I want them to be super heroes.

They have more to deal with than you or I -- or certainly Sarah Palin -- can possibly fathom. They have to compete with leaders on the world stage and therefore need to be smarter, stronger, wiser and, yes, better in almost every way than the average guy. They should represent, literally, the best of us -- be the finest this country has to offer.

Sarah Palin doesn't just fall short of this standard -- she doesn't care that she's ordinary and often arrogantly ridicules those who strive to better themselves and who take the job infinitely more seriously than she does.

I don't want a Joe Six Pack in the White House.

I want a goddamned '97 Bollinger.