Nonsense from her column on Gov. Palin today:

We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for the country?

And then there was this:

She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”

This might be what Dowd heard, but according to the independent Global Language Monitor, Palin was speaking at a 9.5 grade level compared to 7.8 for Joe Biden.

According to the GLM site, Ronald Reagan was at 9.8, JFK at 9.6, Bush 43 at 7.1, Bush 41 at 6.6. Barack Obama and John McCain are at 8.2 and 8.3 respectively.