BEING PRESIDENT: IT'S LIKE GIVING SOMEONE A HUG, ONLY BIGGER

So I'm trying to make some sense of the Palin video below (a clip from her appearance on a Christian talk show in Canada); CNN reported on the interview, and the clip is being plugged by Palin's fan club and her employer, Fox News ("Should Palin Run in 2012? She Opens the Door..."). Palin does leave the 2012 door open -- but it's her declared motive for possibly deciding to run that I find amusing. Apparently it's so that she can comfort people. You didn't realize that that's the purpose of the presidency? Well, allow Palin to explain:



PALIN: ... What I find after this year and a half of, some would call it a tumultuous ride, others would call it -- I call it a very exciting and full ride that Todd and my family and I have really been on, I realize that everybody has challenges. Everybody has battles. Some are played out on the front page of the newspaper, perhaps -- some of our challenges have been. Other people maybe don't go through that, but they still have their challenges. And if I can help provide some encouragement, some inspiration, some hope for them to get through their battles and make good decisions and get through a challenge, because that's what we've been able to do, then I'm going to stay focused on that, and whether that's on a local level in my own little town of Wasilla, or --

CONNIE SMITH (interviewer): Or in the Oval Office.

PALIN -- or in the Oval Office, if it's right, then we will pursue that.

Wow.

So, what do we take away from this?

(1) That, according to Palin, there really isn't a difference between the problems of Joe and Jane Sixpack sitting around the kitchen table doing the family budget and the problems of a self-promoting multi-media multi-millionairess -- hey, we're all God's children; and

(2) bringing comfort -- to the Sixpacks, to fellow multi-media millionaire superstars, or whatever -- is something you can do just hanging around Wasilla ... or as president of the United States! They're basically alike! Not having a real job apart from high-level self-promotion, being the leader of the free world -- what's the difference, really?

I know it's silly to parse this word salad, but it does reinforce my sense that Palin's decision to run or not to run isn't going to be based on anything resembling logic, or at least not logic as you or I understand the term. It's not going to be based on any rational person's understanding of what the job of the presidency is and how interested Palin thinks she'd be in doing that job. It's going to based on a bizarre process of stringing together self-serving catchphrases, which, for Palin, is what substitutes for coherent thought.