In its best attempt to display to its nation and a world long fed up with Bush's foreign (and now domestic) policy messes of the last eight years, the Republican Party nominated Sarah Palin as its vice-presidential candidate. The least this tells us is that the reckless idiocy of the last eight years goes beyond George Bush and his cronies and is endemic to the present make-up of the GOP.

But never let it be said that America is not still the land of the free and the home of the brave. Whether the free are those Wall Street junkies salivating at the thought of finding "rescue" to their multi-million dollar bubbles or those who allowed life to present them with its second-to-last worst option, poverty, homelessness - so-called bums living on park benches in Franklin Square in the heart of Washington, DC - America is still the choice of even those who love to hate it the most.

As the home of the brave, it has produced an intellectual giant in the form of Condoleezza Rice, an African American woman, even as it is attempting to bravely saddle the nation with Governor Sarah Palin, in my kindest assessment, an intellectual midget. Both extremes have somewhat recast the play being acted out onstage.

It is immediately not running true to script. Condoleezza Rice, a black woman, ought to have been the "type" to have barely made it out of high school in an un-pregnant state. Rice has never known what it is to play "hookey in the hood", graduated college at 19, and at 26 took a PhD in political science. She is "cultured", once studied ballet and plays the piano just short of concert level. She has logged close to a million miles in travelling to more than 70 countries as national security adviser and secretary of state.

Palin, as WASP-ish as it is possible, took five years and four colleges, including one that borders on "degree mill" to get a first degree in journalism. It was just the other day that she secured a passport. Palin is a pretender.

White America, not unlike Western Europe, is not replicating itself fast enough and hence, were it not for immigrants, many of whom are in the US illegally, a host of social services would only be available to Americans at uncomfortably high prices. Palin, however, cuts away from that mould, having five children with names like Trig, Willow and Track while a daughter, Bristol, in high school, is six months pregnant. Yes, something is out of whack with that script.

It speaks to the desperation of John McCain that he has chosen Palin, who comes across as an airline attendant demanding pilot space in the cockpit during a transnational flight. It could be said that both Rice and Palin have been subjected to political bosses who have increasingly looked inwards while the global village was shrinking. The difference is, as the work of Rice unfolds, it will be seen that she did the best within the narrow ambit of the political directions of Bush-ism. And of course, in addition to her four books, another one has to come in 2009.

One suspects that even now, Sarah Palin, with crayons in hand, is beginning her own epic.

Jamaica's leadership woes

As the world feels the pain of America's economic woes due to the transnational reach of Wall Street, we in Jamaica, already bludgeoned by huge increases in basic food items, oil and the rise in the prices of construction inputs, are set to face another round of a lowering in our standard of living.

Like the desperate political high-wire act being played out by the Republicans in the presidential race, at home we have been indulging too. In these troubling economic times, it is becoming clearer to some that what is seen as a global re-positioning of the "powers" and the "emerging economies" has more than the potential to bring about armed conflict between those slipping down the geopolitical scale and those echoing a hunger to rise to the top. New alliances are being sought while the old order is being tested like never before.

Someone like our finance minister, Audley Shaw, obviously well-versed and informed on the global economic woes, had a first duty to this nation, not just to placate the economic fears of Jamaicans, but to lay out in the plainest language how prepared the country was to cope with the shocks. But, to be fair to the minister, he is not a man who has that gift of "engagement" from the podium. Sure, he can be the best "warner man" politician in Opposition, but he was never quite cut out to lay it on full frontal while inspiring the strength in us to bear the worst. Mr Shaw is at his best when the herd is mooing the loudest.

So, in the absence of that (we understand the psychology), in one speech, he simply made the global economic crisis disappear from all the land between Negril and Morant Point. Mr Shaw, like too many in the government, has been moving in ever decreasing circles with only those who are willing to swallow bile and tell the JLP that all is fine politically, electorally. Mr Shaw is becoming a pretender.

With the exception of a few of the young Turks in the Cabinet and no more than one of those facing a political autumn, the JLP Cabinet is becoming a team of one - the prime minister. In this time of high food prices, where is the on-the-ground pragmatism from the agriculture minister, the team synergy from his advisers and the farming community?

New PNP must be stopped by JLP
It has become the catch-all argument that where a woman is placed for leadership or has actually attained it, where she is generally assessed to be among the dullest tools in the box, commentators have a duty to play down her limitations.

In the Democratic primaries in the US, Hillary Clinton bankrupted her campaign by trying to keep up with the still unknown qualities of the phenomenon known as Barack Obama. At one stage she cut against Obama, her colleague, spoke of McCain's experience and her own, and said Obama "had a speech he made in 2002". I saw her belittling of Obama as an attempt to play to the innate fears of white America, even as a paradigm shift in race relations (led by the young, the educated) was on in earnest.

But of course, she bawled "sexist", as the cry of the Portia Simpson Miller team has been from 2006 to now. I will reiterate my view that the leadership of Bruce Golding must stare beyond the immediate - guiding us over the hot coals of the present times. It must also re-order its priorities to coincide with keeping the Simpson Miller team out of office.
The best way to do this is for Golding to draw distance between himself and Jamaica's Sarah Palin moment.

Leadership in these times requires more than a need to hear the moo of the herd. These are tough times, Prime Minister, and if you are up to it, you will need the time. "Performance" with a full frontal on our immediate and long-term problems is the key word.

Mothers can't father

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'