OK, it's only wishful thinking -- but there's something of a drumbeat building up on this one. Here's Kathleen Parker in the National Review -- the National Review! -- on the question, and Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek and the Washington Post.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Right after Palin was nominated, I called her grotesquely underqualified to be President, and I was right. She's not underqualified because she is inexperienced, she's underqualified because she is a knucklehead. Here's her exchange with Katie Couric on the bailout, surely one of the major, if not the major, domestic issue of our time:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

John McCain is going to be 72 years old -- and he has had two bouts of melanoma. We face a situation quite possibly as dire as the one we faced in 1932, and it is both terrifying and absurd to suggest putting Gov. Palin that close to the Oval Office. Here's how Zakaria put it:

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. The next administration is going to face a set of challenges unlike any in recent memory. There is an ongoing military operation in Iraq that still costs $10 billion a month, a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is not going well and is not easily fixed. Iran, Russia and Venezuela present tough strategic challenges.

Here's how I put it, the day after she was nominated:

Absolutely nothing suggests that Sarah Palin would be credible as President of the United States. I do NOT think this is just a matter of adding up the number of years spent doing this or doing that. Sarah Palin has been in public life, basically, for two years. to my knowledge, she has never articulated (because she was never called upon to articulate) any views whatsoever on:

military strategy in the Persian Gulf; the proper response to Iranian nuclear weapons; the Russian invasion of Georgia; the United Nations; US immigration policy; the Federal Reserve Bank; the effectiveness of international aid programs; Israeli-Palestinian relations; federal support for basic research; European Union integration; the US Constitution; the optimal means of protecting US borders from terrorists; Guantanamo, and the proper scope of interrogation techniques; Deficit financing; Keynesian economics; the Supreme Court.

Should I go on? I could, of course. But hopefully you get the idea. How anyone could say that knowing what they know now they'd be comfortable with her as President is entirely beyond me.

I know I promised, a while back, to desist from further comments on Gov. Palin because it was becoming a "distraction." But it's not a distraction anymore - the call for her to resign is part of the main event. In John McCain's first "presidential" act, he most emphatically did not put his country first, he put his flagging campaign first. He should correct that, now.