Thin Gruel....

How about that, the United Nations World Summit is to be Sarah Palin's coming-out ball. Her introduction, as it were, on home territory-at-a-remove to the international community. That will most certainly make up quite handily for her perceived lack of experience on the world stage. She'll go in one fell swoop from the image of "sheltered life" as a typical American who, until a year ago, did not possess a passport, to a global political insider.

She is scheduled to meet a predictable handful of foreign leaders, those who depend on the free-handed spirit of the United States, in pacifying the expectations of those who support the American agenda. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, for example, an affable and most appreciative supplicant for Western support against the predatory Taliban, and Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, an enemy of Venezuela's errant Hugo Chavez. And - and Henry Kissinger!

Oh yes, U-2's Bono, the pretentious world-saviour too. Will they test the cerebral mettle of this untried Governor of Alaska? Would they know how to, what to listen for, what to ask her, how to judge? Well, brilliant and canny former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger would know how to, what to, but would he kiss and tell? Oh, to be that legendary fly on the wall. Intriguing beyond imagination to quietly stand by and bare one's ears.

She is, truth to tell, a stage prop, a Republican phenomena, a symbol of what the party holds dear in all its rigid fundamentals. As some onlookers would have it, insufficiently intelligent, experienced, informed, objective, trustworthy. Despite which, her obvious robust self-regard and unfortunate lack of humility would have the public think otherwise. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Her credentials, or lack of them, are balanced in the studied opinion of her party, by her instant celebrity, her conservative exotic appeal, in a staid and arthritic old white man's perennial game of governing entitlement. While the president of her country addresses the world body, warning of the unsettling and immediate danger to the globe of regimes such as Iran's and North Korea's, all eyes will feast on Governor Palin's photogenic appeal.

To the so-unfair charge that she owns a deficit in international affairs, she admits never having met a foreign leader heretofore, defending herself by pointing out there is nothing unusual in that. Asserting that scads of other vice-presidential candidates were green in that regard, not only her. While nothing could be further from the truth, in reviewing the record.

She is her party's eye candy, fervently espousing the party's God-inspired agenda. A street-smart, assertive woman, confident of her place in society, given to control, entirely submissive to a fundamentalist reading of the Holy Book. She, like other spirit-haunted believers in the Almighty, has answered God's command to go forth and represent him in the corridors of political power.

And what political power, representing which country's interests is more relevant in the world than that of the United States of America? The choice of Senator John McCain, once seen as possible and probable, and likely to result in a passable governance, has suddenly reversed itself and become a problem, in its potentials, for the rest of the world.

Senator John McCain will languish happily in the background, satisfied that he has offered his country the best it can anticipate to replace him should the unforeseen occur.