Well golly gee. Conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, once a Sarah Palin enthusiast, turns on the Republican V.P. nominee today, saying she’s unqualified and in over her head.

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

I wonder if this idea will pick up some steam within GOP circles or the McCain campaign itself. The only thing that’s ridiculous about this is the suggestion that Joe Biden implying FDR was president during the stock market crash is equal to the level of ignorance of current events we’ve seen from Palin. This isn’t a tit-for-tat situation. Barack Obama made a quite fine choice of a running mate. John McCain did not.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.