GEORGE WILL: Don’t hate Sarah Palin, but don’t let the fact that others hate her cause you to give her more credit than she’s earned. That seems about right. To me, people’s reactions to Palin — particularly the extreme hatred she’s inspired in the left — are more interesting than Palin herself. She may, someday, be ready to be President, but she isn’t now. Heck, she’s barely more ready than Barack Obama was when he was elected. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Brian Gates writes:

What could Palin do that she hasn’t already done to make herself qualified to be President, pull a sword out of a stone? I notice in the post before your Palin comment you linked to a report on a Romney speech – is he qualified to be President?

What about Joe Biden – if he were suspected of criminal activity, would he even be competent to stand trial? What are his qualifications to be next in line for the Presidency? Nobody ever seems to ask.

As to the idea that Palin was only a little more qualified than Obama – which of Obama’s mistakes do you think Palin would have made, and which things do you think he did correctly that she would have screwed up?

Okay, she’s a lot more qualified than Obama was. But that’s setting the bar way too low. In a natural career trajectory, she’d have been ready for the national stage in 2012 or, more likely, 2016. The McCain pick put her on too early. And while she’s surely a better and more experienced executive than Obama, she would, as President, face a much more hostile media environment and she’s still not up to handling that.

As for Biden . . . well, yeah. I assume Obama picked him as an insurance policy, the way Nixon picked Agnew. Of course, that didn’t work for Nixon, did it?