Lawrence Eagleburger on whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be President (via HuffPo):

“It is a very good question,” he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: “I’m being facetious here. Look, of course not.”

Eagleburger explained: “I don’t think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency. I can name for you any number of other vice presidents who were not particularly up to it either. So the question, I think, is can she learn and would she be tough enough under the circumstances if she were asked to become president, heaven forbid that that ever takes place?

“Give her some time in the office and I think the answer would be, she will be [pause] adequate. I can’t say that she would be a genius in the job. But I think she would be enough to get us through a four year… well I hope not… get us through whatever period of time was necessary. And I devoutly hope that it would never be tested.”

Adequate. Not a genius. Maybe, you know, better than…Joe the Plumber at the job.

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And an update. Secretary Eagleburger has utterly abased himself (do they have compromising pictures of the guy or something?!) in his turbo backpedal. I can’t find a proper transcript, but it was to the effect that he made a serious mistake, and wasn’t thinking when he said it, and was just plain stupid. He calls Obama a flim-flam artist <_< Personally I’d say the only purveyor of flim-flam is Bible Spice (thanks, Alec Baldwin).

“She didn’t know anything about foreign affairs, nor should she have,” Eagleburger says…well I’m no expert, but I know a couple of things about foreign affairs. I don’t know why politicians, even city or state-level pols, should be held to a lower standard than a generally well-informed citizen (and I’m on the low end of that arc, as well). There’s that New Republican Lowest Common Denominator thing again. The leader of the country should be as myopic and ignorant as the least-informed member of the party, cause they’ll be able to learn anything they need to know really quick! Makes about as much sense as “trickle-down economics.”