You can watch some of the cringeworthy interviews that Sarah Palin has been giving and think one of two things, I believe:

• She is the idiot that some believe that she is, and she’s parroting these talking points without really understanding them. The old joke about Rudy Giuliani’s profile of “noun, verb, 9/11″ comes to mind, although Giuliani is, from what I can tell, a reasonably intelligent man. [A reasonably intelligent man who seems to be a raging asshole with poor judgments of character, but intelligent nonetheless.]
• She is a näif thrown to the wolves, and she’s been given these talking points as a rope to pull her out of the depths of her ignorance. And not ignorance in a bad sense—a mayor and a governor has to be focused on their local issues. There was talk prior to 2006, when a Democrat won the lieutenant governorship in Alabama and made the point moot, that my governor, Bob Riley, might be a good VP runningmate this time around. Bob’s like your kindly grandpa or great uncle, or maybe that nice old man at church. He’s nice, he’s safe. But I bet that, if you pushed Bob on Israel and the Wall Street meltdown and all that, he’d be iffy, too. Same for Bobby Jindal or Tim Pawlenty. These guys know the issues in their state and region, but rarely, if ever, do they have to think beyond that. And as an Alabamian, I’m glad that Bob Riley is focused on the issues of Alabama and isn’t expounding on American foreign policy every day [although, as a former Congresscritter, he's had to think about these things in the past].

The former gives Palin little benefit of the doubt; the latter levies the greater blame at the people who picked an unready VP. For the many who want to decry Obama’s lack of experience, I respond thusly: yes, he’s inexperienced, but he’s had 19 months on the campaign trail, talking with reporters, advisors, and voters about these issues. He’s had time to think it through, internalize it, and understand the issues at some level. He’s not as experienced as McCain or Biden; few are. But Obama’s had a long, long time to think all this stuff through, and as a lawyer, he’s got the background to have critically thought through the points.

In contrast, Palin has had about five weeks to figure this out. All signs indicate that she was a late pick and had considered herself out of the running—and she was busy governing her state in the meantime. She had other things going. And now, here at the end, she’s having to play catch-up. Even if she were as sharp as Bill Clinton, that would not be much time to have internalized everything.

Palin’s candidacy feels rushed, thrown-together. I would argue that these are not times where the American people can be rushed—and with nine of the 46 VPs becoming President, and McCain set to be the oldest man elected to the office … isn’t that just a little bit scary?

[Honestly, I think the truth is somewhere between the two points I laid out up above, but I was using that for framing purposes.]