Palin’s celebrity actually helps Democrats, because the vast majority of mainstream, middle-of-the-road Americans reject her as unqualified to be president, while the wild right looks dumb, dumber and dumbest for supporting her.

They don’t give civil service examinations for the job of president – and maybe that is unfortunate. It was said in the 50s that if they did give such exams, Eisenhower’s two-time opponent Adlai Stevenson would easily have been picked over the former general.

Obama would be in like Flynn with an exam system, but W and Palin would not have much of a chance.

The founders set up the electoral college system with the idea in mind it would choose the president based on merit, so they envisioned an exam, of sorts, to get the job. However, within a few years the electors were being chosen based on party, and the president based on party politics, which Washington had warned against.

The electoral college system does not function, and has not since the time of Jefferson, to find the Ablest Person to be the country’s chief executive. Occasionally we luck out and get a Lincoln, but most of the time we end up with popular, attractive but otherwise clueless individuals dependent on the usual crowd of Washington insiders to run the government during their tenures.

Obama is an exception to that rule, and likely he is precisely the president we need at this moment in time. But don’t discount the fickleness of American voters. Like any president, he is one major catastrophe away from being a one-termer, as Ford and Carter quickly discovered.

Is there a better way? Simon Bolivar wanted presidents elected for life in the Andean nations, and nearly got his way in Bolivia and Peru. But later, long-term presidents in Latin American nations, while providing stability and experience, also provided repression of dissent and unprecedented levels of corruption.

Although risky, having presidents elected to no more than two relatively short terms is probably the best arrangement, although, as noted, we frequently run the risk of having figureheads manipulated by insidious cabals.

Does Sarah Palin stand a snowball’s chance of ever being president? Likely not, and likely the Democrats should want her as the GOP nominee in 2012, guaranteeing a landslide vote for Obama.

But stranger things have happened: hardly anybody outside Georgia had ever heard of Jimmy Carter when the New Hampshire primary was held in January 1976. A year later he was taking the oath of office in front of the Capitol.