Once a reliable Democratic voting bloc, Catholics have emerged as a pivotal swing vote in recent presidential races. Evenly divided in a poll over the summer, Catholics make up about a quarter of the national electorate and about a third in the pivotal battleground states of Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Republican Vice Presidential candidate is gun-toting, God-fearing proof that we are at the mercy of morons. The comedy writer in me really, really hopes Palin gets in. Shooting, hunting, God-fearing, anti-abortion, book-banning, homophobic, white trash moron. The only problem with Sarah Palin is that she’s actually real.

A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan. For starters, the McCain plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.

Sarah Palin has many virtues. But the constructive act of governance is not one of them. Ms. Palin has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, John McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory”. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man.

As the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals. But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Women have voted in greater proportions than men for almost three decades. But the hard-fought candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket have put new cultural and ideological elements more fully into play.

Senator John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate and the resulting jolt of energy among Republican voters appear to have caught Senator Barack Obama and his advisers by surprise and added to concern that the Obama campaign was not pushing back hard enough against Republican attacks.

Democrats have warned that Ms. Palin, a first-term governor, is woefully inexperienced and is not qualified to serve a “heartbeat” away from the presidency. In her first interview for over two weeks, the 44-year-old mother of five struggled, when asked her views of the Bush doctrine, which states the United States will mount a preemptive strike against a looming threat if it deems itself at risk.

Peter Costello may well leave parliament soon and take a job outside politics. Alternatively, the addiction to politics that has driven him to the heights of federal politics, implementing policies as Treasurer for more than a decade and assailing his Labor opponents for 18 years may yet prevail. For so long as Costello remains on the backbench, it pays to heed history. And history records plenty of future leaders who prematurely write their political obituaries.