My Blog from SFGate today:

Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin  <http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=Sarah+Palin>'s performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the  needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most  effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here,  finally, was a performer who-being maternal, wounded, righteous and  sexy-could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant   a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly   intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy   smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could. Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=Charles+Gibson.

I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune-and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin
managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story-but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

Please Barack, Fight back this time. Calling the McCain campaign "desperate" or even "sleazy" is only the beginning of an effective response.

The connection has to be made between McCain and the Keating Savings and Loan scandal. This has the virtue of actually being relevant to the recent experience of average Americans, a financial scandal resulting in huge costs.