Vice presidents - chosen to ensure the safety of the president?

Spoken down to by dimwits

THE world trembled last year as a terrible prospect loomed: The next vice-president of the US might be a complete moron.

According to David Marr, speaking on the ABC's Q&A, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was "thick as a brick". Marr based this on verbal stumbles from Palin, such as the time she described two Christian preachers as "decent white folk" - only to discover that the men were black.

That sort of blunder can destroy a political career. Just as well, then, that Palin didn't actually say it. Marr did, however, in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Anyway, smart people were relieved when Palin's White House bid failed. But what if John McCain and his dimwitted running mate had been elected? Right now we'd be listening to some of the most spectacularly stupid speeches ever made.

Speeches such as a commencement address at North Carolina's Wake Forest University earlier this month, for example. Let's imagine Palin delivering it . . .

"Thank you very much. I say to all the faculty, this will be painless. They have felt like - I suspect they've heard 100 - all the commencements since the beginning of the school."The "they" to whom Palin refers is unclear. Is she saying that the faculty feels like an abundance of speeches?



"I had planned on driving my '67 Corvette up the middle of this area here. But the Secret Service said they wouldn't let me do it."Such disregard for the environment would be typical of an ignorant woman who shoots moose and wants to drill Alaska for oil.



"Well, I love today and one of the reasons I do is because of all of you. I believe so strongly, as you may recall when I was here in October, not in you particularly but your generation . . ."She doesn't believe in the students?



"I don't have a single doubt we're on the cusp not only of a new century but a new day for this country and the world."It's 2009. The cusp was eight years ago.



"You're about to graduate into a point in history where everything is going to change no matter what you do, but you can affect the change."That's reassuring. The next generation are a bunch of change changers. Potentially, changed change means everything stays the same.



"Throughout the span of history though, only a handful of us have been alive at times when we can truly shape history. Without question, this is one of those times . . ."And only a handful of people are alive. Just 6,800,000,000 or so.



"We're either going to revive and reverse climate change, or literally drown in our indifference."Why would anyone want to revive it? As for "literally drowning", the location for this speech is 280m above sea level.



"Non-action is action, unlike most generations."Can't argue with that.



"There's not a single issue on this President's plate that will not yield a change - just merely by ignoring it."She's really losing it. Remember, Palin is but a heartbeat from the presidency.



"Remember your physics class? You're driving along in an automobile and you move the wheel slightly to the left or right, and you send the car careening in the direction that absent another change will end up a significant distance from where you were aimed."My car generally goes where I aim it. What kind of comedy opposite-steering clown cars do they drive in Alaska?



"When I graduated, all had not changed utterly yet . . . and in the last 12 to 15 years, a terrible beauty has been born. It's a different world out there than it has been any time in the last millennia."Now she sounds like someone on oxycontin. Some more details on this "terrible beauty" born in 1997 or 1994 would be helpful (Bruce Willis's daughter?), but crazy Sarah has moved on.



"So embrace the moment. Don't shy away from it. You know how I feel. I'm confident you must feel the same way."Hand over some of that oxycontin and you might be right.



"It is to not sustain - we know we cannot sustain the way we're going now. So it's time to steel our spines, and embrace the promise of change, even though we cannot guarantee exactly what that change will bring."More reassurance.



"In the past, it's always been older generations, my generation speaking - standing up here at commencements telling the next generation the ways of the world Well, graduate, I'll have to admit, it's a lot different today. You've flipped the script, as you might say. You're, quite simply, teaching us."Someone has to. Did Dan Quayle ever deliver a speech this incoherent?



"You are the possible. That is not hyperbole. You are the possible."It isn't hyperbole. It also isn't anything close to making sense. Incidentally, you've just been reading a speech delivered on May 18 by US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Both nut jobs, Obama and Biden, make Palin look real good right about now.