Hail to the Beauty Queen?

Over the last eight years, and especially the last four, comedians around the country have been blessed with joke manna from heaven because of the presence of our blundering and absurdly clueless president. George W. Bush has spewed forth a treasure trove of priceless verbal gaffs that show not only his incredible lack of command of the English language, but just how out of touch he really is with reality.

So, although it will be a blissful day for the country at large when, next January 20, he is finally replaced in office by the next president, it could be a downer for the comedians and late-night talk show hosts who won’t have Pres. Bush to kick around anymore.

But wait. There might be another Bushite waiting in the wings. If, heaven forbid, McCain wins his bid for the presidency, Sarah Palin will be right there with him. She will undoubtedly supply the comedy industry with the fodder it needs to carry on the Bush legacy as the hapless man in the White House, except that she would only be the vice-president. Well, that didn’t stop the jokesters from having a field day when Dan Quayle was in office.

And who knows, with an aging John McCain as president, it might be only a matter of time before the beauty queen from Alaska gets to sit behind the big desk.

But beyond giving a shot in the arm to comedy, there is not one single other reason to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket next month. If you care more about the economy than late night laughs, if you believe universal health care is of greater national interest than jokes about our leaders, or if you care more about getting us out of the dreaded war in Iraq than giving David Letterman and Jay Leno a bottomless barrel of Palin jokes, then I suggest voting for the Obama-Biden ticket instead.

On the other hand, if your biggest quest in life is to be entertained and if you really want to spend your late nights rolling on the floor in laughter at what a goofball politician had to say, then you might want to consider putting Palin in as VP.

Here is a preview of some coming attractions if she actually makes it to Washington:

“They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan.” Did they move Afghanistan to Canada?

Or how about this one? When she was asked how McCain has pushed for more regulations during his terms as senator, Palin replied, “I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.”

When she was mayor, she said, “I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.”

And, of course, Palin harkens back to the Jimmy Carter years with her relentless pronunciation of “nucular” instead of nuclear. At least Carter realized his lack of verbal expertise and eventually corrected himself.

Of course, if she does become vice-president, she’ll have to figure out what to do with her time, at least according to her own understanding of the position. “As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me, What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” she said in an interview.

Even if John McCain were a 45-year-old body builder I would have trouble putting him in office knowing that someone like Palin is next in line for the most important leadership role in the world. But McCain is an elderly man with a history of cancer. Do we really want to risk that he’ll survive for four years?

I cringe at the thought of hearing Hail to the Chief played for Palin, knowing it really should be retitled, Hail to the Queen; beauty queen that is. But at least she would be the first beauty queen in history to actually be in a position of bringing on world peace. Too bad the mix of her religious fundamentalism and a high political position would be more likely to bring on Armageddon. I’m sure that would please her just as much, seeing as how her church prays for the end of the world on a regular basis.