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I am astounded to watch interviews with potential voters who support Sarah Palin primarily because she seems a lot like them.

In the event John McCain is elected with Sarah Palin as his vice president, we will all have to pray that Senator McCain remains healthy despite his history of melanoma and heart disease.

By far the most alarming rationale offered for supporting Ms. Palin is her likeability. Recently, all but one of a group of hockey moms assembled by CNN for a debate event expressed support based on her down-to-earth qualities. Did they ask themselves, I wondered, which other moms they had met at the hockey games they would feel comfortable entrusting with our national security, our economy, and our constitution? Did any of them feel up to the task themselves? If not, what did their belief that Sarah Palin was a lot like them have to do with her qualifications to be vice president or president.

The McCain campaign, cynically, but, apparently correctly, expecting voters to accept and repeat pat answers, offers up easy retorts to the obvious criticisms of their candidate. Worried that she might not have what it takes to lead the United States armed forces and to decide when and whether to use military action? Don't be silly, they say. After all, her son was recently deployed to Iraq. If that doesn't work because we realize that having a child in uniform transforms no one into a brilliant military strategist or capable world leader, they add: oh, and, yes: she's already commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. While that may be technically true, it does not mean that Palin has one iota of experience managing the Alaska National Guard in any way, let alone making critical decisions regarding when, where, why, or how they should be deployed to solve world problems.

Is it possible that American voters could be so naive as to think that a candidate who never even left the country until 2007; who has a mediocre academic career (four colleges in six years), who cannot name a supreme court case with which she disagrees, who cannot remember or name which newspapers she reads, and who is not trusted by her own party to answer specific policy questions by reporters, might be just be good enough after all to lead this nation out of an historic economic and military crisis? Will it help, assuming John McCain survives his term in office that she is teamed with a commander in chief who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Acadamy and was shot

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