As a foreigner to the US elections, I judged McCain to be a decent man handed the poison chalice of the Bush heritage and a financial meltdown.

However, his choice of running mate was a self-inflicted wound of monumental proportions. To choose a lady whose very life style demonstrates an ability to ignore the facts and substitute belief for analysis, who reads no newspapers, who believes that being a 'hockey mum' and a distant view of Russia compensates for a total lack of knowledge of how the US, let alone the world, works.

The thought of her understudying a man born in 1936 with his finger on the 'nucular' button and incapable of analysing the options, or even of putting her finger on the target in an atlas.

The God lot don't seem to learn. God stepped into Bush's life and saved him, but all that that achieved was that he was inflicted on the rest of us. Despite eight years with the best possible access to advice, he still doesn't recognise the man-made elements of global warming.

It is a pity that Ms Palin's unlikely to go back to running Alaska for better or for worse. It seems much more likely that she's acquired a taste for the national politics. Four years is a good long time to read a few newspaper and be exposed to thoughts not constrained by dogma so I hope, despite the evidence, that she can learn.