So the other day I'm getting off a plane in Minneapolis — thanks to Al Franken and Norm Coleman, the long-awaited post-election chillout period never materialized — and I see Sarah Palin's face onscreen on a CNN broadcast in the Limbergh terminal.
As side note: It's been a tremendous relief to me personally to see that Sarah Palin has consistently stayed in the public eye since her walloping defeat at the hands of Barack Obama last week. It may be that no American politician will ever again match the comic genius of George Bush, but I have high hopes for the Palin era.
True, Bush was a once-in-a-century phenomenon: when he got tongue-twisted and said something stupid, it was also inevitably revealing in a very moving, very profound way. He was a like a cross between Yogi Berra and Confucius, with a dash of Vlad the Impaler thrown in. No matter how dumb future Republican Party nominee Sarah Palin turns out to be — and she's just awesomely dumb — she'll never be able to come up with stuff like "Just because you happen to be not rich, doesn't mean you're willing to kill," or "Make no mistake… I talk to families who die."
The truly unique thing about Bush was that his mistakes and malapropisms spanned such an awesome comic range.