The questions: Are expectations for Sarah Palin abnormally low, or impossibly high?

Does she only have to seem intelligent and competent to reverse her decline? Or does she blow it with the first “um,” a second use of the word “Gosh,” or a single pause that makes her look as though she is one of those moose she hunts?

This could be the Red/Blue divide. She doesn’t have to do spectacularly to rally the faithful; she has to do extremely well to win over the independents who were enthusiastic about her a month ago and began to wander away; and there is nothing short of her delivering an entire performance in rhyming iambic pentameter that will serve to impress the people who live in my neighborhood.