ms pea tart

It looks to me like a lot of us have been seriously misunderestimating Sarah P. I think she's cagey as hell.

She may not have academic smarts -- what edumacation bureaucrats call CALPS (cognitive academic language proficiency skills) -- but she's sure got plenty of what they call BICS (basic interpersonal communication skills). She knows how to work a crowd.

She's smart enough to know that in this political climate it pays to sound stupid.

She announced on Entertainment Tonight rather than a news interview show. Mary Hart has a bigger audience (not to mention shallower) than David Gregory ever dreamt of. And her announcement was a non-announcement. "Oh, I'll (run) if there's nobody else...tee hee."

She's been playing her hand like a poker genius ever since the day she lured a boat full of National Review pundits on an Alaskan cruise to the governor's mansion in Juneau. Siren-like, she tempted them with salmon and crab cakes, and then when they got there gave 'em the old leg show. That twit William Kristol got so aroused he spent the next six months talking her up on Fox News, and when McCain was looking for some way to revive his sclerotic campaign, Kristol jumped in and did the sales job on him.

That was the opening she needed, and she hasn't made a wrong play with it yet. She's the candidate from Wal-Mart, where everything is discounted every day, including the knowledgeability of the electorate.

Intellectuals can make fun of her all they want, because Palin's America never listens to them anyway. She's a real populist, through and through, and we might be looking at the most skilled American populist politician since Huey Long, who also knew that most voters vote according to strong feelings, not according to their estimation of facts, not even the facts that have an impact on them personally.

I wouldn't sell her short and say "Oh, that will never happen." It could, and stranger things have.