Elections have consequences, as they say, and Americans are reaping what they sowed back in November. Thank goodness we chose a smart, capable, charismatic leader in Barack Obama instead of John McCain and his dunce of a running mate — oh wait, maybe not.

Noemie Emery has a great piece in the DC Examiner today comparing the lipsticked-bulldog with the audacious one. Imagine if Sarah Palin where in office right now:

As president, she might have caused the stock market to plunge over 2,000 points in the six weeks after she assumed office, left important posts in the Treasury unfilled for two months, been described by insiders as ‘overwhelmed’ by the office, and then gone on to diss the British Prime Minister on his first state visit, giving him, as one head of state to another, a set of DVDs plucked from the aisles of Wal Mart, a tasteful gift, even if they can’t be played on a TV in Britain. (Note, the Prime Minister, who is losing his eyesight, may even be blind in one eye).

As vice president, she might have told Katie Couric that when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on TV to reassure a terrified nation. Or on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State, she might have, as the AP reported, “raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe…when she mispronounced her “EU counterparts names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s,” then gave the Russian minister a gag “reset” button, on which the word “reset” was translated incorrectly.

What a good thing that Palin, whom Christopher Buckley called “an embarrassment, and a dangerous one,” wasn’t in office to cause such debacles, and that we have Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton instead.

But hey, we get what we deserve. We elected a man with virtually no experience and with no legislative accomplishments to speak of. How could we expect anything else from The One?

And with all of the focus this week on the financial bailouts and the ensuing bonuses for the financiers that ran the institutions into the ground, we might note that banks in Alaska are doing just fine. Why? The bankers say it’s because they were “conservative” in their actions.

Emery concludes:

Obama may be there, but your 401k isn’t. Buckley and Brooks are now feeling queasy, while Noonan and friends are taking to Xanax. “The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread,” she reported last Friday. “People feel ‘unled, overwhelmed.”’

But at least, we now have sophisticates running the country, not a moose-hunting ditz from Alaska. God knows what might happen then.

There is a certain amount of satisfaction watching the pick of the intelligentsia fumbling around.

Check out the whole article here.