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Those of us who have served our communities at the local level - on city councils, commissions, and other volunteer positions - as well as those who pay attention to what goes on in those forums, will recognize Sarah Palin as a type of person commonly seen there.
I don't have a name for that type of person readily at hand, but characteristics include employing juvenile sarcasm and mocking in making arguments, using tortured logic and giant leaps of faith, perceiving conspiracies as the basis of all problems, making sweeping generalizations with little or no evidence to support them, and above all, playing to the galley in trying to cast the members of the council or commission as bad or stupid. Somehow the mechanism of Democracy churns on for our local bodies and it survives despite their officious intermeddling.
My guess is that many of the "undecideds" will quickly recognize and be repelled by Sarah Palin as fitting this profile, and question why John McCain would bring this level of discourse to the national arena instead of rising above it to forge solutions to real national problems.
