# Sarah Palin's Intelligence Level **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 10, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667 "2010-04-10T20:41:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/21 "2010-04-11T03:16:25Z")
> [@Ace309](#): > > Is this true, or am I misunderstanding hyperbole? [Unfortunately, true](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/palin-claimed-dinosaurs-a_n_130012.html) (ok, to be fair, she didn’t literally say that humans _rode_ the Jesus horses, but she did say humans and dinosaurs coexisted). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/22 "2010-04-11T03:25:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Even if she were intelligent in some fashion (and for all I know, she may do the NY Times Saturday Edition crossword in under thirty minutes)… No, no, she does the crossword puzzle in _every_ newspaper. All of them. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/23 "2010-04-11T03:29:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > No, no, she does the crossword puzzle in _every_ newspaper. All of them. I bet she also does the puzzles on the back of the Pizza Hut placemat, too. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/24 "2010-04-11T03:30:05Z")
Of course, she doesn’t necessarily fill in the answers the way they want her to. ---
**Author:** ![kenmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@kenmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenmore)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/25 "2010-04-11T03:34:26Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Don’t confuse a lack of knowledge with a lack of intelligence. Sarah seems to have almost a natural gift for appealing to subliminal instincts in mob mentality. That gift is a kind of intelligence. It survives, even thrives, in ignorance. Look at the crowds cheering Palin-Bachman the last few days. (Speaking of Armageddon!) > > Now the question is how much of a mob will the conservative elements become over the next two and a half years? Will this insanity burn itself out? > > As for Sarah Palin’s actual I.Q., I would guess it to be average – probably about 8-10 points lower than George Bush’s real I.Q. score. That’s an educated guess from someone who took lots of graduate educational psychology courses, but is not an expert in the field. I assume you are talking about George W. Bush. Isn’t his IQ known to be something like 128? That’s not the score of a genius, but it’s well into the superior range, putting him in the top 3% or 4% of the population. In fact, an IQ of 128 is the norm for professionals with doctoral level educations (excluding graduates of very elite institutions, where the IQ norms are higher). George W.'s innate intelligence level is probably reasonably high. His real mental weakness is his life-long tendency toward intellectual apathy and sloth. Given his family background and privilege, George W. never needed to be intellectually astute to succeed. He learned this early in life. Thus, he was never motivated to refine himself mentally, or to grasp the essence of whatever his schoolmates and professional colleagues concerned themselves with. George W. just doesn’t care. I am certain that Sarah Palin is much, much less innately intelligent than George W. My guess is that Palin’s IQ level is probably something like 110, putting her at the top of the average category. Maybe Palin’s IQ is 115 at most, which would make her somewhat above average. These figures are upper estimates of Palin’s intellectual prowess. I’ll bet that Palin’s IQ might even be as low as 100. Based on how Palin sounds in interviews, I would say that she makes Dan Quayle look like Dwight D. Eisenhower by comparison. The GOP really has hit a new low with Palin. Someone on McCain’s staff really blew it. The GOP is too smart and cunning to put Palin in front for 2012. GOP election gurus will find some other use for her. She is not White House material and the GOP knows it. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/26 "2010-04-11T03:38:35Z")
Were there any other conservative female politicians who McCain could have picked to counter Hilary? I could understand Palin as a last resort pick I guess… ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/27 "2010-04-11T03:39:29Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Palin’s IQ is well below the average for elected politicians. > > The “57 states” thing is not a valid example of saying something stupid. It’s a slip of the tongue. Obama didn’t actually THINK there ere 57 states. Palin actually BELIEVED Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. She believes in the rapture, and thinks that Alaska will be a refuge for the “left behind” (not making that up, she actually said it). She’s afraid of witches. She thinks that people sued to ride around on dinosaurs. She’s a moron. The argument that most other Americans are morons too, while true, is not exactly a defense. Recently, thanks to another thread, I found that scientific pollsters at Stanford reported that even though the CRU email theft was used by deniers to claim that there was fraud made by the climate scientists, the impact among the people was minimal, scientists are still more trusted and only very few politicians were foolish enough to fall for the scam. Stupid politicians like Inhofe still fell for it and so it was Palin. > **[Part two: How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/climategate-bogus-sceptics-lies)** > > Fred Pearce: Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation > [@](#): > > The most quoted soundbite in the affair comes from an email from Prof Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, to Prof Mike Mann of the University of Virginia in 1999, in which he discussed using “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”. The phrase has been widely spun as an effort to prevent the truth getting out that global temperatures had stopped rising. > > The Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in the Washington Post on 9 December, attacked the emailers as a “highly politicised scientific circle” who “manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures”. She was joined by the Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma – who has for years used his chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee to campaign against climate scientists and to dismiss anthropogenic global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”. During the Copenhagen climate conference, which he attended on a Senate delegation, he referred to Jones’s “hide the decline” quote and said: “Of course, he means hide the decline in temperatures.” > > This is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot be anything of the sort. At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest on record. The full email from Jones says: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith [Briffa]'s, to hide the decline."The decline being referred to was an apparent decline in temperatures shown in analysis of tree rings, which have historically correlated well with changes in temperature. That relationship has broken down in the past half century. The reasons are still debated. > > The “trick” was a graphic device used by Mann in a 1998 paper in Nature to merge tree ring data from earlier times with thermometer data for recent decades. He explained it in the paper. Jones was repeating it in another paper. “This is a trick only in the sense of being a good way to deal with a vexing problem,” Mann told the Guardian. Clearly, this problem with modern tree data raises questions about older data – at least until the reason for the divergence is nailed down. But it is not clandestine data manipulation, or, as claimed by Palin and Inhofe, a trick to hide global cooling. That charge is a lie. > > While he was in Copenhagen, Inhofe made a link between the “trick” to “hide the decline” and the second most popular soundbite. He said that “of course [Jones] meant hide the decline in temperatures, which caused another scientist, Kevin Trenberth of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, to write: ‘The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.’” > > The link is bogus. The two emails were 10 years apart. Unlike Jones, Trenberth’s remark from October 2009 was indeed about the slackening of the warming trend that some like to interpret as cooling. That much is agreed. But Inhofe and other sceptics latched on to Trenberth’s “travesty” phrase as a revelation that scientists were trying to keep cooling secret because it undermined their arguments about global warming. > > Again this is demonstrably false. Nothing was hidden. For months, Trenberth had been discussing publicly his concerns about the inability of scientists to pin down the precise reason for the “absence of warming” since 1998. He had argued in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Stability in early 2009 that “it is not a sufficient explanation to say that a cool year [he had 2008 in mind] is due to natural variability (pdf)”. Such explanations “do not provide the physical mechanisms involved”. This was the “travesty” he was referring to in his email. He wanted scientists to do better.He said the best way to improve the explanation and make it more specific was to make better measurements of the planet’s energy budget. This would allow scientists to distinguish between any changes in the greenhouse effect, which would result in more or less heat overall in the atmosphere and oceans, and short-term natural cycles of variability, which merely redistribute heat. He was debating this with the former head of the Climatic Research Unit Tom Wigley, who took a different view. But their genuine scientific discussion has, since the publication of the emails online, been hijacked by ignorant or malicious invective. Fred Pierce from the Guardian does not mince words, Palin is a liar. However the other option still remains, I still think that she is really that dumb. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/28 "2010-04-11T04:13:41Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > Were there any other conservative female politicians who McCain could have picked to counter Hilary? I could understand Palin as a last resort pick I guess… They had to go that far down the ladder to find a Republican woman with any defensible credentials who was pro-life. All of the _qualified_ Republican women (Hutchenson, Snowe, Condi Rice, even Susan Molinari) are pro-choice. McCain’s peope wanted a woman to try to snap up embittered Hillary voters, but she also had to be a pro-life, religious conservative to appeal to the Republican base, which was likewarm on Maverick. They succeeded in satisfying the base, but utterly failed in appealing to Hillary voters (who were not stupid enough to vote for someone who was both the intellectual and ideological polar opposite of Hillary just because she was a woman). McCain himself wanted Lieberman, by the way, and still intended to pick him just days before the Republican convention before his handlers convinced him that the wingnuts would walk out of the convention. I think McCain’s choice of Palin (made with a cursory vetting on the internet and one casual meet and greet) had a degree of petulance to it. He was letting his handlers have their way, but wasn’t enthusiastic or aggressively involved in it. I think he and his people were caught completely by surprise at how inept and unqualified she really was, having assumed she would at least have the baseline level of knowledge and comprehension as the average state Governor. Once he was locked into the choice, though, he had to stay with her because he couldn’t admit he’d fucked up such an important choice (and he still can’t admit even though he refuses to say he would endorse her as a Presidential choice in 2012). ---
**Author:** ![Enuma\_Elish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5e9695/32.png) [@Enuma\_Elish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enuma_Elish)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/29 "2010-04-11T04:15:21Z")
I am a fiscal conservative. I used to be a social conservative. I have mostly voted Republican. (Although the arrival of the lying asshole neo-cons (insert bushdaddy and bushbaby here) have made me question the sincerity of everything republican. I believe the Republican Party has devolved to such an extent that it has allowed a classically rich bitch empty-headed daddy’s girl like Sarah Palin to rise through its ranks thus showing the moral and ethical emptiness of the current Republican party. The emptiness of current republicanism allowed a classic F.I.B. (Fucking Illinois Bastard) Socialist like President Obama to take power. Sigh ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/30 "2010-04-11T04:17:13Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > They had to go that far down the ladder to find a Republican woman with any defensible credentials who was pro-life. All of the _qualified_ Republican women (Hutchenson, Snowe, Condi Rice, even Susan Molinari) are pro-choice. McCain’s peope wanted a woman to try to snap up embittered Hilalry voters, but she also had to be a pro-life, religious conservative to appeal to the Republican base, which was likewarm on Maverick. They succeeded in satisfying the base, but utterly failed in appealing to Hillary voters (who were not stupid enough to vote for someone who was bothj the intellectual and ideological polar opposite of Hillary just because she was a woman). > > McCain himself wanted Lieberman, by the way, and still intended to pick him just days before the Republican convention before his handlers convinced him that the wingnuts would walk out of the convention. I think McCain’s choice of Palin (made with a cursory vetting on the internet and one casual meet and greet) had a degree of petulance to it. He was letting his handlers have their way, but wasn’t enthusiastic or aggressively involved in it. I think he and hios people were caught completely by surprise at how inept and unqualified she really was, having assumed she would at least have the baseline level of knowledge and comprehension as the average state Governor. Once he was locked into the choice, though, he had to stay with her because he couldn’t admit he’d fucked up such an important choice (and he still can’t admit even though he refuses to say he would endorse her as a Presidential choice in 2012). Does this mean that McCain expected Hillary to win out over Obama? I mean, otherwise he could have picked a black ma- OMG. He should have picked Condi. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/31 "2010-04-11T04:26:32Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > Does this mean that McCain expected Hillary to win out over Obama? I mean, otherwise he could have picked a black ma- OMG. > > He should have picked Condi. He didn’t make his pick until after Obama made his. The McCain campaign was actually pretty fearful that Obama would pick Hillary (and Obama seriously considered it, but was repeatedly talked out of it by his own people), and was relieved when he didn’t. They saw that as their chance to score women by picking a woman. He couldn’t pick Condi, though. She was pro-choice (not to mention gay, but that’s a whole other thing). She would have been a much more responsible choice, but the asking the Republican base to accept a gay, black, pro-choice woman on the ticket would have been kind of a tough sell. No one could have said she was stupid or unqualified, but intelligence and qualifications are not things the Republicvan base cares about. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/32 "2010-04-11T04:30:46Z")
Incidentally, you should check out a book called, [Game Change](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Change-Clintons-McCain-Lifetime/dp/0061733636%5B/url) for a really good journalistic account of what was going on in the inner circles of both the Obama and Mccain campaigns, as well as Hillary’s. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/33 "2010-04-11T04:38:36Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > He didn’t make his pick until after Obama made his. The McCain campaign was actually pretty fearful that Obama would pick Hillary (and Obama seriously considered it, but was repeatedly talked out of it by his own people), and was relieved when he didn’t. They saw that as their chance to score women by picking a woman. > > He couldn’t pick Condi, though. She was pro-choice (not to mention gay, but that’s a whole other thing). She would have been a much more responsible choice, but the asking the Republican base to accept a gay, black, pro-choice woman on the ticket would have been kind of a tough sell. No one could have said she was stupid or unqualified, but intelligence and qualifications are not things the Republicvan base cares about. Shucks. I don’t know why I like Rice. I mean, tbh I really don’t know anything about her political views. But whenever I see her on television I’m hypnotized by her cheeks and teeth. I remember my photography teacher in high school (the kind of guy who’d regularly tell us “Remember, there aren’t any atheists in foxholes.”) was really adamant that she’d make a great president. I thought that perhaps his view was typical of Republicans (and he was reeeeally Republican), but ah well. Edit: Just Wiki’d her and learned that she’s got lots of liberal bent to her, but is loyal to Republicans because they were the ones who let her father vote during the era of Jim Crow laws. Apparently she’s a talented dancer and pianist, too. Not to mention super smart. ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/34 "2010-04-11T04:41:14Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I think McCain’s choice of Palin (made with a cursory vetting on the internet and one casual meet and greet) had a degree of petulance to it. He was letting his handlers have their way, but wasn’t enthusiastic or aggressively involved in it. I think he and his people were caught completely by surprise at how inept and unqualified she really was, having assumed she would at least have the baseline level of knowledge and comprehension as the average state Governor. Once he was locked into the choice, though, he had to stay with her because he couldn’t admit he’d fucked up such an important choice… I agree with this, but I honestly believe that John McCain actually let Sarah Palin’s physical attractiveness play into his choice—I really think he was hoping/planning/wanting to actually seduce or at least fuck her, as he is a known serial-adulterer, and she fits the kind of women he is apparently drawn to.(which seems to be the MILF type, similar to the blonde lobbyist he was caught with) Seriously, John McCain (who certainly knew he was going to lose big) chose Sarah Palin for his VP nominee in no small part so he could see her pussy. Seriously ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/35 "2010-04-11T04:45:05Z")
Well, I hope he succeeded. It would really suck for him if he didn’t even get that much out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/36 "2010-04-11T04:48:48Z")
Palin is not stupid. Willfully ignorant, certainly, but don’t confuse the two. She has a certain innate Frank Luntz-esque ability to play to mobs, as **Zoe** notes, and that isn’t something you find in idiots. > [@Enuma\_Elish](#): > > I believe the Republican Party has devolved to such an extent that it has allowed a classically rich bitch empty-headed daddy’s girl like Sarah Palin to rise through its ranks thus showing the moral and ethical emptiness of the current Republican party. Sarah Palin is not “classically rich”. Her parents were a high school teacher and school administrator. Todd Palin was born to slightly better off parents, but still wasn’t rich by and stretch of the imagination. The current Palin wealth (such as it is) was built entirely off speaking and other fees she’s collected since being named McCain’s running mate. You can criticize Palin for all sorts of things, but growing up spoiled is not one of them. > [@](#): > > The emptiness of current republicanism allowed a classic F.I.B. (Fucking Illinois Bastard) Socialist like President Obama to take power Obama is not a Socialist, or even a socialist. ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/37 "2010-04-11T04:57:23Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Well, I hope he succeeded. It would really suck for him if he didn’t even get that much out of it. What kills me the most about the whole pathetic mess is that I actually had a lot of respect for John McCain at one point; the man was an American hero, and he let Washington turn him into a vile piece of shit, and is now someone who is as craven, foul and self-serving as any politician in recent memory… ---
**Author:** ![kenmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@kenmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenmore)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/38 "2010-04-11T05:02:00Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Palin is not stupid. Willfully ignorant, certainly, but don’t confuse the two. She has a certain innate Frank Luntz-esque ability to play to mobs, as **Zoe** notes, and that isn’t something you find in idiots. I disagree. Palin is both stupid (at least in comparison to her competitors) and willfully ignorant. If ever elected president, at cabinet meetings Palin would be more lost and out of touch than Reagan ever was (he couldn’t comprehend what was being discussed). As for “playing the mobs”, I wouldn’t compare Palin to Frank Luntz. No way. Palin is more like Oprah Winfrey at “mob playing”. In these cases the speaker and her audience identify with each other on the basis of mutual stupidity. ---
**Author:** ![kenmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@kenmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenmore)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/39 "2010-04-11T05:07:25Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > Were there any other conservative female politicians who McCain could have picked to counter Hilary? I could understand Palin as a last resort pick I guess… Maybe I’m missing something, but if McCain wanted a female, couldn’t he have picked Condoleeza Rice or Christine Todd Whitman? Palin is a caricature of a politician by contrast. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2010, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667/40 "2010-04-11T05:12:50Z")
> [@kenmore](#): > > Maybe I’m missing something, but if McCain wanted a female, couldn’t he have picked Condoleeza Rice or Christine Todd Whitman? Palin is a caricature of a politician by contrast. **Dio** already addressed this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sarah-palins-intelligence-level/535667.md?page=3)