The universe is relatively fool-proof

What a time to live in America, when through talent, intelligence and hard work, a descendant of slaves kidnapped from Africa and brought to these shores against their will can grow up to become — the president’s wife.
Before and after the November election, a lot of pundits waxed on about how Barack Obama’s candidacy and victory show that anybody can achieve anything in this country. That kind of talk brings two question to my mind.
First, what do I have to do to get people to call me a pundit? I’ve been a professional journalist and columnist for years, and now everybody I work with is younger than me. I’m just sayin’.
Second, didn’t George W. Bush already prove that anybody can be president? With his (sort of) election, we showed that you don’t need competence, general knowledge or respect for the Constitution to occupy the highest office in the land.
So what’s the big deal with Obama, a handsome, charismatic, brilliant legal scholar?
It’s like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, two of the best players in the country, breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. They still had to sleep in separate hotels and eat at separate diners, and their middle- and lower-tier colleagues were all white. The game wasn’t really integrated until you could be mediocre and black, and still get a job with the Yankees.
Same for the White House. I’ll get excited about race and gender equality when we elect an African-American woman as incompetent as Bush to lead us into our next unjustified war.
Baby steps, I guess.
I have a colleague who would like to see Sarah Palin become president. Her arguments mirror those of B.D. in recent Doonesbury comics, so I won’t go into detail here. Suffice to say, she doesn’t consider a passing grade in high school geography a sine qua non to direct United States foreign policy.
I’m not sure what people see in these candidates the Republicans like to throw up, but I guess that’s why Karl Rove gets the big bucks. They attract people like Abraham Lincoln, Earl Warren and Colin Powell, then run Bushes, Palins and, bless his heart, Don Young.
According to one theory, average voters want to see someone like themselves in leadership positions. I’m far from the only one asking why we would want somebody as dumb as the average voter in the hardest, most important job in the world.
As against that, I can hardly argue anyone has a big enough brain to get us through what’s coming. Sometimes a no-win scenario deserves the name, and even if everybody handling luggage for the airlines were as smart as me, your bags wouldn’t get to the right destination.
The smartest human of the twentieth century was a devout, peace-loving guy who wanted the best for everybody. His work led directly to the invention of weapons that can wipe us all out, possibly starting next week in South Asia.
And maybe not. As Palin would ask, what does Indiana have against Pakistan that’s worth a nukyular war?
Even if Obama is as smart as Einstein and leads with the wisdom of Solomon, he can only buy Western Civilization a few years, at most. The whole human setup has reached a point that was probably inevitable from the day Oolgfrap figured out how to make the hot orange stuff out of sticks and leaves.
Apparently, Naeser’s Law applies even to the Almighty, which leads me to two more questions.
Will God tell the governor of Alaska to accept the Fox network offer, and what will people do if they schedule “Sarah” opposite “Oprah”?