In Praise of the Amateur?

Mark Steyn says his old friend and former boss Boris Johnson is a "total squish" on ideological matters (ie, he's a Tory) and adds this chummy postscript:

If Boris can be Mayor of London, Sarah Palin is certainly qualified to be President of the United States, if not Supreme Galactic Commander of the Cosmos.

There's something to this, though of course if Boris buggers up London then that's tough news for Londoners but not too much of a concern for the rest of the world. The Presidency of the United States is in a rather different category.

Comments

[ndm]

Given that Mad Mel had me banned from posting Boris-like comments on The Spectator I was pleased to read (without the reverence):

I revere Melanie Phillips, and I have carefully studied her blog entries about Obama and the vote-stealers, or Obama and his association with a quondam terrorist called Ayers.

In the end I gave up, goggle-eyed and exhausted, having trolled the wilds of the Neocon internet without finding anything remotely approaching a smoking gun.

Obama's terrorist chum is now a professor, and his last act of terrorism took place when the candidate was eight, and it is not really clear that he and Obama are chums at all.

The entire set of allegations seem to be an attempt to smear him by association, and are about as damaging as pointing out that some of Tony Blair's colleagues used to be Stalinists, or that Tory party conferences used to feature people who advocated the hanging of Nelson Mandela.

Andrew Sullivan was right to introduce the concept of sanity when he quoted Boris Johnson's thoughts on Mad Mel.

[ben]

On a related note, and to grant some clearly much-needed perspective, Mark Steyn is a twisted, psychotic creature of unbridled evil stupidity.

[marksany]

Crikey