very few politicians have original ideas, but Palin pretty clearly doesn't know WHY she believes what she does.
Which, I suspect, reflects her lack of philosophical insight.
The three greatest questions of intellectual life are
1. What is the truth?
2. How can one discern truth from attractive falsehood?
3. How can one express the difference?
The first two questions have their inchoate answers, if not their polished resolution, in philosophy. To be sure, some of the more refined answers involving the realities of material are to be known through chemistry, physics, and mathematics -- but those studies derive from philosophy and are themselves fertilized by philosophy. Think of Karl Popper establishing criteria for judging the likelihood of truth in statistics as scientists use them. Recall that a photo of Albert Einstein's desk at the time of his death was a large tome with the title
Philosophy. Such a study as psychology, a late offshoot of philosophy, is a muddle without philosophy. Sigmund Freud was as much a philosopher as a physician. Economics? That social science increasingly resembles so hard a science as chemistry if it is done right. Jurisprudence? Try doing that without a philosophical basis. A philosophy major is one of the best for preparation for law school.
The third is rhetoric -- something that one cannot do well if one does not understand the realities behind one's writing or speaking. Anyone can read a canned speech, and some people can do so very convincingly even without understanding what one says. Once must improvise, one is on one's own.
.....
One crude way of estimating intelligence in the absence of a less-crude IQ test (which can measure such other things as one's willingness to go through the intellectual hoops of such a test) is educational attainment. Someone slightly below average can complete any level of education through high school; someone average struggles to avoid failure in post-secondary education and usually fails at some point; only someone of above-average intelligence graduates from college, and someone of superior intellect has any chance to even enter graduate school. The typical high-school dropout has an IQ around 80, suggesting someone with the usual level of intelligence of someone 16 years old -- the average age of someone in the latter part of one's sophomore year or the early part of one's junior year in high school. People with IQs near 90 to about 100 (low average to average) are usually directed toward trade schools or vocational programs in community colleges.
Failure in college these days may relate more to finances or alcoholism than to grades (this isn't Germany) but someone who fails due to sub-par performance in school usually ends up in the sorts of careers that one associates with people with high-school diplomas and nothing else and end up with blue-collar, technician, clerical, service, or sales jobs and be content with them. Their IQs are usually around 110 -- high normal. People who barely graduate from college and can't get into a first-rate grad school -- probably about 120. That's about where I see Dubya -- or Sarah Palin. Such people might be OK for teaching elementary school, nursing short of the RN level, or the like -- but you don't want them practicing law or medicine, designing buildings, doing dentistry, leading anything larger than a platoon in combat, or working as CPAs.
Sarah Palin is a mediocrity, as is Dubya. Mediocrities in high office aren't their own people; they are easily led around by people with their own, often devious, agendas.
