What if Sarah Palin Were President *Now*

With the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, Libya and Egypt, the President has a few things to worry about. Does anyone still think Palin was up for the job?

The economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.  Needless to say, the President of the United States has a few things to worry about.  It’s in light of these recent events that we must consider the way the GOP chooses its candidates for high office.  Not even four years ago, our party ran Sarah Palin on the ticket for the Vice-Presidency.  She lost, but one has to ask the question: what if she hadn’t?  Or worse yet, what if this were two years from now and she were President on, say, the day that our Japanese allies were rocked by a disaster the scale of which they haven’t seen since 1945, when the U.S. dropped “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s in those moments that politics stops being about ten word answers and polling data and starts being real.

In those moments, populism is useless if not downright dangerous. Intellect and prudence are the qualities that we want in our President for it's in those moments that one man or woman will be called upon to impact the future of the free world.  It’s these moments that make Sarah Palin’s apparent deficit in intellectual curiosity (and indeed perhaps even intellect) much more than easy laughs for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.  These lapses matter and speak to her credibility as a candidate.

A recent poll of Republicans demonstrates that many within the party are waking up to the reality that we cannot responsibly attempt to place former Governor Palin in the Oval Office. An ABC-Washington Post survey finds that for the first time in their polling, less than 60% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents see Palin in a favorable light, down from 88 percent immediately following the 2008 Republican National Convention and 70 percent in October.

This is welcome news, but from time to time, our party’s nominees will prevail.  In light of that possibility, every single Republican ought to ask themselves this question before they decide whom to support in the upcoming battle for the GOP nomination: is this a person we can trust when the s*** hits the fan and politics flies out the window?

Follow Jeb on twitter: @JGolinkin.

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