Sundry thoughts that didn't fit into the narrative flow of Friday's post:

Yes, it does amuse me that Palin's name matches the consonant-vowel pattern I observed with Biden. (Her first name does, too.)

Those who study such things have noticed that, over the past few years, first names chosen for babies have become dominated by names ending with the letter "n". I wonder: Will we start seeing any newborn Bidens and Palins now?

I didn't set out to be contrarian, but I find myself in opposition to both halves of the conventional wisdom on Sarah Palin. It seems like everywhere I go people are saying something like: "Don't get me wrong. I think Sarah Palin is a marvelous woman. She's attractive, smart, charismatic. I really like her. I just don't think she's ready to be president."

As discussed before, I don't share the widespread concern about her readiness to serve. I think she'd probably be a pretty good president. I don't know that for sure, of course, but I don't really know it for sure about Biden or Clinton or Obama or McCain, either.

But where I wrote that I "like Palin quite a bit", I meant strictly as a governor. I think she's excellent in the job. On the pseudo-personal question where we imagine knowing her in real life, I don't particularly like her. She is not a joy to listen to, and from what I've seen she doesn't strike me as a likable person. And while I'm not above declaring which women politicians I find attractive, Sarah Palin really doesn't do it for me at all. In fact, I find her sort of icky. (Her husband, however, seems very handsome to me.)

I have no desire to "have a beer" with Sarah Palin. But I'd still vote for her for governor.

My departure from the consensus opinion about her readiness to serve may have something to do with my attitude toward foreign policy. As I've often noted here in Benzene, I pay almost no attention to presidential candidates' foreign policy views, since all of them are so far from my own that the differences between them are insignificant. I mean, I'm glad if Barack Obama is less likely to start a war with Iran than John McCain is, but either one of them is content to continue our century-old tradition of pursuing global hegemony, so I don't much care about the details.

Many of the complaints about Sarah Palin's unreadiness center around the fact that she has zero experience in foreign policy and hasn't shown much interest in it either. To me that's not a whole lot more relevant than her lack of interest or experience in, say, paleontology.

If she has no grand plan for imposing peace on the Middle East, confronting Russia, or fomenting democracy around the world, so much the better. I don't want us doing that anyway. She has shown a talent for cleaning up bureaucratic messes, cutting off bad programs, and saving money for her constituents. That's pretty much my foreign policy agenda.

That reminds me: My favorite Palin line so far is from Lindsay Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, when asked if Palin was ready to be commander-in-chief: "She stood up to Ted Stevens, she can stand up to the Russians."

Hmm. Maybe that's only funny if you're an Alaskan.

My favorite line from the convention (I didn't watch any of it, but I read some recaps) is from Ted Strickland, Democratic governor of Ohio. Observing that "it was once said" of George H.W. Bush that he was born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple, Strickland added the George W Bush was born on third base and then stole second. Ann Richards would be pleased.

Some Republicans are trotting out the fact that Palin has more "executive experience" than Obama and Biden combined. There's room for debate on exactly how relevant that is, but by the usual standard — where being a mayor or governor counts, but being a legislator does not — it's true enough. (It's also true that she has more executive experience than McCain, but for some reason they don't mention that.)

This serves as a reminder that Obama, McCain, and Biden are all sitting senators. A favorite observation of journalists during election years is that "no [insert descriptor here] has won an election since [insert year, the older the better]". A favorite descriptor from past years was "sitting vice president" which took you all the way back to Van Buren, until Bush Sr spoiled the fun by breaking the pattern in 1988. (Unwilling to let go, some writers still persisted in quoting it with an "only one exception" caveat.)

Senators, whether sitting or not, have had a pretty bad run for several decades. None has won since 1960. Barring an unexpected disruption of one of the tickets, that streak is due to be broken this year.

Here's the records for various offices in the elections since 1964:

• President, 5-3. (Bush Jr, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson; Bush Sr, Carter, Ford)

• Vice-president, 2-3. (Bush Sr, Nixon; Gore, Mondale, Humphrey)

• Governor, 4-1. (Bush Jr, Clinton, Reagan, Carter; Dukakis)

• Senator, 0-4. (Kerry, Dole, McGovern, Goldwater)

In the running-mate slot, where Senators have been chosen far more often (and governors far less), Senators a little better, but still not well:

• Vice-president, 5-2. (Cheney, Gore, Bush Sr, Agnew, Humphrey; Quayle, Mondale)

• Governor, 1-0. (Agnew)

• Senator, 3-5 (Gore, Quayle, Mondale; Edwards, Lieberman, Bentsen, Dole, Muskie)

• House, 0-2 (Ferraro, Miller)

• Cabinet/ambassador/other, 2-2 (Cheney, Bush Sr; Kemp, Shriver)

I'm counting candidates by their last major office, though that's not always precisely defined. That's why Cheney and Kemp both count as Cabinet, not House.

Gelmo, who is in the business of examining polling data, has (among other observations) questioned the significance of the approval ratings I tossed around in the last post. I plead guilty to lack of scientific rigor. I was just casually repeating numbers I had read in various stories. I did not check that they are accurate, and I don't even know what polls they come from. Given what I know about how such stories are written, it would not surprise me at all if the numbers are cherry-picked or misleading.

That said, although I did cite approval ratings in the course of making my argument, they aren't what inspired the argument. My real impression of Palin's "popularity" has to do with empirical observation that, among people who follow politics closely and/or work with the state government, a great many Democrats and others who have opposite views on partisan ideological issues nevertheless rave about Gov Palin.

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