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Larry Eagleburger, pressed on whether Sarah Palin would be ready to serve as President:

"It is a very good question," he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: "I'm being facetious here. Look, of course not."

John McCain, in response:

Larry has never had a chance to meet Sarah. She's got more experience than Sen. Biden and Sen. Obama put together.

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard catalogs people who "respect" her versus those who don't, and wants us to believe that it's all about whether or not they have actually met her, in the flesh. If so, I'm starting to think Sarah Palin should be classified as some kind of munition, perhaps a psychological or biological warfare agent. Or maybe she's like that alien princess from OT. It seems that once you come in contact with her, your critical faculties are toast. Call it 'Caribou Barbie Infatuation Syndrome.' Symptoms resemble those of excess alcohol consumption, including a tendency to see little starbursts, perceive people on television as speaking directly to you, excessive gift-giving, and rationalization of or blindness to flaws or exaggeration of virtues in the object of infatuation.

Curiously, most heterosexual women seem immune. I wonder why.

Apparently it's never occurred to Barnes that meeting her, rather than not meeting her, might be the error.

Caribou Barbie Infatuation Syndrome, beergoggles, Elasian Tears

Deep in the middle of a surreal attempt at social analysis that reads more like a bad acid-trip, Mark Levin at the NRO stumbles upon one true thing: "Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it...."

Congratulations, Mr. Levin: You've defined Populism. To paraphrase Aaron Sorkin's great fake-president, the problem with an America where anyone can become rich is that everyone thinks they will, and makes their electoral choices accordingly. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean making a workable plan to become rich, or even necessarily working especially hard: It most typically means a lot of day-dreaming, lotto-buying, and planning to make sure that THE GOVERNMENT doesn't get a chance to take away any of your wondrous, hypothetical, chance-gotten gains.

Put another way: We act in the interest of the person we fantasize about becoming, instead of the person we actually are.

Of course there are a lot of people who work hard for what they get. But it's more or less never been true that wealth or status has a direct relationship with how hard you work -- or, for that matter, how smart you are. In fact, even some conservatives take great pains to make it clear just how much of it is down to the opportunities you have.

Cleverness, though -- now that's very important. You have to know how to work the angles, to work people. You have to have social intelligence, at a minimum, but that's not usually enough. No, to really become wealthy or important, you most often have to have a willingness to hurt other people to get what you want.