Fun while it lasted . . .

. . . so say the crowds of conservative columnists and bloggers as they jump for the lifeboats from the foundering Palin shipwreck. One of today's most prominent is Kathleen Parker, columnist for the National Review, emphasis mine:

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. . . .

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

Of interest here, taking a sharp-eyed view of all four candidates, is conservative columnist George F. Will's observations in his Sept. 3rd column on the necessary qualifications for the presidency: experience and character and good sense, both political and constitutional.

Will calls Obama "the least experienced person to receive a presidential nomination in the 75 years since the federal government became a comprehensively intrusive regulatory state and modern weaponry annihilated the protection the nation derived from time and distance."

Well, that may be so; and that's partly why I voted for Hillary in the primary last spring.

But having read Obama's Audacity of Hope and watching his performance in the campaign, I have faith that he will indeed rise to the occasion, as have other lightly-experienced Presidents in our history.

Lincoln's executive experience was rather short too, as I recall, when he got the job; but he earned a marble monument and a hallowed name in the annals of democracy.

Palin's name, I'm afraid, will go down in history as nothing more than the butt of wry jokes. And deservedly so.

But perhaps this manifest farce will spell the end of the "image politics" that began with Reagan's election: the triumph of style over substance.

Let us pray.