Stephen Walt picks out an interesting excerpt from the NYT's review of Sarah Palin's book:

In Going Rogue Ms. Palin talks
perfunctorily about fiscal responsibility and a muscular foreign policy, and
more passionately about the importance of energy independence, but she is quite
up front about the fact that much of her appeal lies in her just-folks "hockey
mom" ordinariness. She pretends no particular familiarity with the Middle East,
the Iraq war or Islamic politics — "I knew the history of the conflict," she
writes, "to the extent that most Americans did." And she argues that "there's
no better training ground for politics than motherhood."

Yet Mr. McCain's astonishing decision to pick
someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of
Alaska, and before that, two terms as mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town with
fewer than 7,000 residents) as his running mate underscores just how alarmingly
expertise is discounted — or equated with elitism — in our increasingly
democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow
policy arguments and actual knowledge.

Walt agrees and adds, "Virtually
all of us
normally insist on genuine expertise when we hire anyone to do an
important job — whether it's carpentry or a cardiac bypass — yet millions
of people in
this country seem to think that the most momentous decisions about our
collective future can be entrusted to people who are sublimely
comfortable in their own
ignorance."

This isn't a post about Palin. This post is about the "increasingly democratized era." Have we gone too far? Is Palin being held to a higher standard than men? Anybody's sexism alarms going off?