Joe Klein on Sarah Palin Think. (February 17, 2010)

Joe Klein (64), a former Guggenheim Fellow, is a Washington, D.C. and New York journalist / columnist. Currently he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and since 2003 he has been a contributor to the current affairs Time news group.

This excerpt from his Time February 22, 2010 column on the 2008 Republican candidate for the US vice-presidency, where he suggests some of the thought processes of Sarah Palin:

Are you kidding me? "Oh, you betcha," she said -- and one might even argue that you betcha is American for "Yrs, we can." At least in a certain sort of America: the land of the simple truths, where nothing Barack Obama does makes sense. I mean, why bail out the banks when they're the ones that caused all the troubles in the first place? And why spend more money when you're already running a deficit? That's not what Americans do: they sit  -- inevitably -- around the kitchen table and tighten their belts. And what's all this about global warming? The White House is up to its Truman Balcony in snow. And why not just whack the Iranians before they get the bomb? The questions were the essence of Palin's Nashville speech and Fox interview.