Sarah Palin will leave the Juneau gubernatorial mansion of Alaska on July 26. Forever. She will not miss the Russian mainland. She could never have seen it from Juneau anyhow.
God willing, it is Palin's adieu to the political life. But maybe not. In which case, the Republican Party will again be tested internally as to whether its penchant for nutcases will override its lingering instincts as a political institution.
The greatest mistake John McCain ever made was to choose Palin as his running mate. Yes, there are some Republicans who are so kooky that she appealed to them as one of their own. But one has to hope that this cohort is still a minority in the G.O.P. This is the party, after all, that is one of the pillars of the two-party system. Sooner or later, it will come back to power. Unless, of course, it will turn itself over to the Palins in its ranks.
Let's be frank. The fact is that Palin is a know-nothing. In both senses. The first being that she actually knows nothing. And the second being her comfort in not wanting to know more. She is not just satisfied by what she already tells herself she knows. She is haughty about it.
Of course, such folk can always hire advisers. But the advisers they hire -at least the advisers Sarah Palin would hire- wouldn't be much different from themselves. Imagine a meeting between Palin and her counselors sitting around a big table in the White House discussing ways out of the economic calamity in which our country now finds itself. Just imagine.
Imagine George W. Bush, for that matter.
All of this is good news for people like Mitt Romney. Although that isn't particularly good news for the country either.
So, all my apprehensions about how feebly Barack Obama is conducting our foreign policy notwithstanding, I am glad he and his advisers are sitting around that big table at the White House. And not John McCain.