Palin gloriously, fabulously unfit for duty

Dare to criticize Sarah Palin and you'll find yourself back in high school, with all the petty taunts.

"You're just jealous!" is the refrain filling my e-mail and voice mail in-boxes, and no doubt other female skeptics face a similar barrage. As if the presidency is about who has the hottest wardrobe, the best-coiffed hair and the attention of the hunky quarterback.

For men who question Palin's credentials, it's different. They're just sexists.

Sorry, but neither jealousy nor sexism has anything to do with the well-founded doubts about the Republican Party's choice for vice president. Anybody who cares about the future of this country had better take a long, hard look at her qualifications.

A lot of us anticipate what's around the bend for Palin, our own Eliza Doolittle awaiting her grand remaking. Many of us have already observed this diversity game in the workplace.

Here's how it's played. A person is picked to fill a job they have not been groomed for, a position outside of their usual domain of expertise. They are heralded as the perfect person for the job, but in fact everyone knows the real reason their resume was lifted to the top of the stack is a qualification conferred upon them at birth.

Sometimes it's race; in Palin's case it's gender.

There is nothing wrong with combing the ranks more thoroughly to bring a greater diversity of gender, age and experience to the workplace. My career has benefited from such thinking.

But the goal should be differently qualified — not unqualified.

There is one way in which Palin is qualified to be on the Republican ticket. Her pithy quips play fine from the podium as a form of campaign entertainment; she is fresh counter to the stiff demeanor of John McCain.

But the presidential race is not American Idol or a cheerleader tryout. Given McCain's age and the horrific stresses his body endured as a POW, it is not out of line to envision Palin stepping into the presidency.

And while the McCain-Palin campaign has the media parsing the meaning of "lipstick on a pig," Russia is reasserting its imperial ambitions. Our military efforts in Afghanistan are flailing. The global financial system is staring disaster in the face. The rest of the world continues to swirl with genocide, terrorism and natural disasters.

So Palin is a proud mom of a soldier. That's laudable. But if she ends up commander in chief, how would she handle the delicate issue of our Special Forces pursuing the Taliban and al-Qaida across the Afghan border into Pakistan? For that matter, does she understand the power struggle going on in Pakistan's army and intelligence service between Taliban supporters and supposed friends of the United States — and how it plays when we kill Pakistani civilians?

As ABC reporter Charlie Gibson reminded Palin in his recent interview with her, this is how she characterized the war in Iraq before her church: "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God. ... There is a plan and it is God's plan."

If God's taking care of the planning, does that mean President Palin doesn't have to? I believe in prayer but also want the guiding strength of a wise president.

Supporters like to point out that Palin governed a state "surrounded by two countries." Has she ever been to Russia or done much in Canada but hunt? How deeply does she understand the nuances of U.S. export-import markets.

The United States is in the midst of the largest real estate crisis since the Great Depression, but does Palin possess even a rudimentary understanding of how the U.S. mortgage market works? Apparently not. She told a Colorado audience that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." But Fannie and Freddie, as McClatchy Newspapers reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies." Yes, taxpayers may take a hit as a result of the government takeover of these entities. But the problem with Fannie and Freddie and subprime mortgages and all the rest has been regulatory failure — a gift from the GOP that keeps on giving.

I don't envy Palin — I pity her. The most humiliating experience a working person can have is to be plucked from the herd and placed into a job they are not able to fulfill.

The rest of us face the prospect of having to pick up the pieces when Palin inevitably fails. And we can't afford four more years of that.