Too bad Sarah Palin didn't have the mettle to fulfill her term as governor of Alaska. For all my doubts about her, I think she could have delivered an effective SotU response. Her folksy charm would have been a refreshing and reassuring counterpoint to Obama's frigid imperiousness.

Much to the distress of Kool-Aid drinkers, it would also put the two toe-to-toe for the first time, sharing a rhetoric stage in a possible prefiguring of 2012.