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Frankly, the notion that the United States was founded to be run "by the people, for the people" is so impossibly wrong that I don't even know where to start. The barest examination of the Constitution and the people who made it should show without a shadow of a doubt that one of the things that the Founding Fathers feared MOST was that average people would be able to elect other average people. They were positively terrified of mob rule and catering to the masses. Every single person who signed the Constitution was an elitist, and probably a good third of them weren't too far off of being monarchists. The electoral college was created specifically and exclusively to prevent "average people" from voting an "average person" into the presidency. Granted, we've departed significantly from that starting position, but please don't try to play some game about the US being a pure democracy and being intended as a pure democracy, since neither of those are true.
I have NO idea why you don't want the best and brightest this country has running it. I have NO idea why the person who controls a weapon arsenal capable of reducing our planet to radioactive ash should be anything but the most grounded and intelligent person possible. The presidency is not an average job for an average person, nor is the vice presidency. These people are the diplomatic and military leaders of the (waning) most powerful country in the world.
If you want to have a cook out with Sarah Palin, be my guest. Please be her best friend. But look at her and what she's said, and imagine her talking to Putin. Imagine her negotiating over nuclear weapons with North Korea. Imagine her discussing Al Qaeda with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The very thought of that is enough to make me ill. It's not because she's a woman. It's not because she's from Alaska. It's because she has no idea what's going on in the world or how politics works. She is READING CARDS that other people put in front of her and told her to stick to so she didn't do what she did with Katie Couric. She makes Bush look like the platonic form of a competent politician.
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