Palin for President?

Maybe not says Bruce Biolosky in his latest article. After taking some time to slag off Obama (kind of a requisite these days), he notes that Palin may not be an ideal candidate either.

As attractive as Ms. Palin may be as a political personality, she does not have any of these elements of a political resume. She may have done an extraordinary job as Alaskan Governor, but she did that for only two and one-half years. She may have electrified a portion of the electorate, but she has few political allegiances to call on if she becomes President. Most importantly, she has not spent the amount of time needed to work on the issues of the day. By her own admission, she has had to expand the scope of her political universe since resigning as Governor. She has started to receive daily updates on her Blackberry, but that is not the same as Reagan’s detailed policy statements in his own hand.

. . . Sarah Palin may turn out to be an excellent candidate and an excellent President. She has certain innate abilities that cannot be molded into a political figure. She just needs to spend a lot more time enveloping herself in the political process and understanding the issues and possible solutions facing our country. This will not ruin her – it did not ruin Reagan.

Unfortunately for Mr. Biolosky, Palin is getting her political tutelage not from the mechanisms of government, but from the political fringes. She is proving popular to the Republican Base, and those seem to be the people she most wants to talk to.

Republicans are quick to dismiss any politician (well, liberal politician) who has an extensive academic background as being from an Ivory Tower, as being out of touch with how real America works. Well Palin is building her own kind of tower, one made of conservative ideology perhaps, but a tower nonetheless.