Magician McCain Pulls Sarah Palin Out of a Hat

America, as a nation, has not been able to regain its equilibrium since the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush as president in 2000, and since Bush then told Richard Clarke in early 2001 to go away and shut up about how al Queda was determined to attack the U.S. on its own soil using commercial planes. The disasters that ensued completed the political tailspin into which America was thrown and from which it has never recovered.

The actions and over-reactions of all three branches of government since 9/11 have left the nation deeply in debt; involved us in not one but two doubtfully winnable guerrilla wars (in which we must pay off the locals with borrowed tax dollars to make the claim "the surge worked"); and left our nation's citizens to fend for themselves against predatory lending practices, a failed housing and mortgage market, exorbitant healthcare costs or no healthcare at all, a lack of living-wage opportunities, empty municipal coffers, off-the-charts fuel prices, and an infrastructure that crumbles before their eyes.

The over-reactions of the Bush administration to their own failure to protect the nation and Congress's own failure to balance the intentions of the administration, have left American citizens flapping in the breeze to deal with it all and without the protectives afforded them by the Bill of Rights or the Constitution on which they could previously depend while boarding a plane, covering a convention, or expressing their opinions on their own telephones or computers.

So, the sudden advent of a Sarah Palin on the national political stage should serve as a hard slap across the face to thinking men and women everywhere in the U.S. Having cut her teeth a mere 12 years ago in both politics and civil management in a Wasilla, Alaska building that more resembles a lower-48 Dairy Queen than a city hall, Mrs. Palin was plucked from obscurity by the McCain campaign like a single crayon from a box of all reds, whites, and blues and thrust upon the national stage to serve as the shapely policy gams of the Republican party.

The press is all a-twitter at the new (hubba hubba) Republican smart-ass on the block. And yes, it takes one to know one. Smart-ass can come in handy, but it generally just adds to a problem rather than solves it. Like the magician who is never without the scantily dressed assistant on stage while the tricks are being performed, John McCain whose record speaks for itself, and many empty-walleted Americans were already pretty sure it wasn't speaking to them, has hired himself a good assistant.

Who wouldn't be flattered? The pay is great--akin to working Vegas. But still probably not a career move one wants published in the high-school-reunion newsletter. And while true that the assistant always comes to learn how the tricks are done, how many female magician headliners readily come to mind? Senator McCain is guilty of expedient use of a female. And Mrs. Palin is guilty of letting the sequins on her new costume blind her to it.

It has been said repeatedly that America now sits at a crossroads, and it appears for all practical intents and purposes to be the hard truth. America needs solutions to big, ugly problems if she is to right her economy, set all her people to constructive work, and find the political and practical equilibrium that once made and kept her great.

It was magic tricks that got America into this mess, but it is not magic that will get her out. And the last thing Lady Liberty needs right now is an assistant whose only experience is shooting and gutting the rabbit.