An e-mail:

“I don’t think Palin was at her best…”
I quibble with this. Sure, we have seen her look better in much, much,
much easier circumstances.
But I really can not imagine any time, any place where one person has
been put under more pressure from a skilled and prepared interrogator
with tens of millions watching her every expression and intent on her
every word. And this a public test over a vast array of public
concerns, many of which she does not pretend and has no possibility of
being expert in.
This is like setting a high jumper’s bar five feet above the world
record and then noticing that this athlete does not look great facing
this impossible task. How much terror would you have seen in candidate
George Bush’s eyes facing this situation? How much would Obama
stammer? This is a test where a “c” would be a world-class mark.