Sarah Palin has Tourette's!

I think people on the Left are more willing than are people on the Right to listen to and carefully evaluate the opinions of people with whom they generally disagree. Thus, I enjoying reading some conservative columnists, while most Republicans would not say a nice word to Bill Clinton if they were on fire and Bill was walking by with a bucket of cold water. Of course, like all generalizations, this one is false (warning: do not type that last sentence into your computer. If TV has taught us anything, it is that typing that phrase into a computer will cause it to repeatedly say "does not compute" and eventually explode).

All of which is a long way of getting around to saying that I enjoy reading George Will. He writes quite well, and while I disagree with much of what he writes, there is much to agree with. At least his arguments are well thought out and intelligent; he may not have voted for Hillary Clinton, but I doubt he would defend his position solely with the declaration that she is a "shrew," as some acquaintances of mine from the Right did recently. Perhaps it is because his intellectual honesty reminds me of an earlier era when the word "conservative" was used to describe people who avoided foreign entanglements and debt, while now it is used to describe people anxious for preemptive wars and who believe "deficits don't matter."

I came upon an article that Mr. Will wrote in 2004, describing a youngster with Tourette Syndrome. Like many of the columns he writes about individuals struggling with challenges - as we all do - it is very touching, thoughtful, and inspiring. But if you read his description of the symptoms of Tourette Syndrome, you realize that Sarah Palin surely suffers from this malady.

For example, he says the disease's symptoms "include involuntary muscle spasms" such as blinking. Anyone watching the VP debate last week had to be amazed at the constant eye twitch. Could anyone running for VP really be stupid enough to think that voters would vote for her because of her winking? Is "Joe Sixpack," as she describes him, really thinking "I lost my job, my mortgage is being foreclosed, and the government just spent $2,000 of my money to buy out Wall Street financiers, so I'm going to vote for that hot chick who was flirting with me over national TV!"

Mr. Will also says that in Tourette Syndrome, there are verbal symptoms: "the vocalizations are usually grunts, hisses, barks and other meaningless sounds." As Fareed Zakaria pointed out in a recent column, her response to one of Katie Courics questions was "nonsense—a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head." Her response to questions remind me of the Tin Man Scarecrow, stating the Pythagorean Theorem after getting his diploma from the Wizard of Oz; it sounds impressive, but is completely wrong.

Mr. Will points out that some, but not all, Tourette sufferers vocalize obscenities. Our nation is at war in two distant countries; our government has been starved of competence, leaving citizens alone to cope with natural disasters; financial institutions have been left unregulated to gamble with our money, only to blackmail us into socializing their loses with threats of even greater fiscal calamity. At this dangerous time in our country's history, is there anything more obscene than trying to win an election by accusing your opponent of being a terrorist?