i'd say that, first of all, sarah palin is running for president. and i think all this 'qualified' business has got to go: she's a natural-born american citizen (probably: where's the birth cert? on the other hand no other country in the history of the world could have produced her), at least 35 years old. not only that, but she is going to be a formidable candidate. she is such a perfect, an exquisite contrast to obama. they represent, as i even argued in a book, different entire theories of political representation: the representative as idealized picture of the people, the best of us, a kind of neo-platonic picture, vs. the imitation theory: she represents us because she's just like us. contrary to popular belief it is not perfectly obvious which is preferable, and both ideas (and both persons as avatars of these ideas) have many problems. i actually think that the representation relation on which so much modern democratic theory rests has fundamental unsolved conceptual problems: the idea is that, say, obama is a picture of us, a representation. trying to make out any of the terms - what is being represented, how, and by what - is going to embroil you in myriad difficulties or impossibilities or absurdities. 

at any rate, a debate between obama and palin could be an amazing matter meets anti-matter spectacle. it might seem obvious that obama could just wipe the floor with her, but i think not. however, let me say that i do not want to be governed by sarah palin, and the militarism and legislation of religious strictures would never let me vote for her. but if i think about it in terms of who i'd actually like to watch on television for four years, we'd have to make it sarah. i can't stay awake through a whole barack sentence anymore. but such a campaign would be archetypal or fundamental as well as fun.