In a few days, the Great Unwashed over the other side of the Pond will go to the polls, at least those of them who think they should bother, to choose between McCain with Palin or Obama with … erm, I’ve no idea, and a look at the BBC’s election coverage front page doesn’t help.

The thing is, the Republicans have fielded this old bloke who gives the impression that he’s not exactly about to run a marathon without kicking the bucket, which means that as soon as McCain’s ticker stops doing what tickers are supposed to do, that Palin woman will become the most powerful person on earth, give or take.

This prospect has scared the stuffing out of very many people, including yours truly, even though I have absolutely no input to give that will make the slightest bit of difference. I don’t have a vote in the States – in fact, for all that I’m a citizen of the European Union, I still need a visa to get in there, which is mildly insulting, since we seem to welcome the Yanks over here with open arms (I know, this is scheduled to change) – and I doubt a single US voter will read this blog and change his or her mind.

Just in case someone is reading this who actually does have a vote in the US and is teetering between the McCain/Palin ticket and the Obama/Biden one (a quick Google of “Obama running mate” gave me the name) consider this.

The Vice-President of the United States is, generally speaking, a decorative rather than useful function. Imagine Prince Philip, pretty much, but not so totally irrelevant. In the first place, the Veep is an elected soul, who does represent the Presidency, so any utterance made reflects on the President. In the second place, if the President is incapacitated temporarily or permanently, the Vice takes over. Prince Philip, on the other hand, just becomes even more irrelevant if his missus isn’t Queen any longer, although his own public utterances have been the subject of some hilarity in the past.

So really, who a candidate for the most powerful office in the known universe has running with him shouldn’t really be all that important. It wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t for the fact that McCain – actuarially speaking – isn’t likely to go the length.

Which means that if his health gives out, Palin will become President.

This woman – more precisely, her handlers – thinks, for instance that posing for publicity pictures brandishing a rifle, equipped with scope-sight and looking mildly menacing, is the sort of image calculated to endear her to the voter. It probably is, given that this is a country where the right to bear arms is Constitutionally entrenched, and the notion that the right to buy an automatic weapon might be slightly restricted has the Secret Service all in a tizzy because it means that there’s a pretty good chance that one of those pre-bought weapons might be aimed at the President’s head.

But it’s illustrative of that woman’s frame of mind, for all that, and it’s not a pretty picture, for all that she looks like an adequately pleasant hockey-mom from Middle America.

It seems that she thinks that she has some sort of right to be a heart-beat (more accurately, the lack of a heart-beat) away from the Presidency because she’s “normal folks” and the world needs a dash of the wisdom of normal folks. Excuse me, I want someone excellent leading the world, not someone who apparently has the equivalent of a School Leaving Certificate in Home Economics and an A-Level in PE. We’ve had quite enough of thickos in the White House, after all, since the Democrats were inherently unable to field a candidate who could look more intelligent than the current incumbent, which is a pretty awesome feat when you think about it.

If you want any proof of Palin’s utter unsuitability to be so high up the tree, and by association McCain’s unsuitability to be the top-monkey, take into account the fact that she is a Creationist. According to Palin’s beliefs, the world was, actually, created by a bloke with a white beard sitting on a cloud playing a version of SimCity, arranging the continents and the oceans and populating them with animals for the convenience of Adam and Eve, from whose loins we all sprang.

Leaving aside the possibility that this is true, at least the fact that we’re all the result of inbreeding (how else can you explain that there are a substantial number of people who will vote for McCain/Palin?) do you really want someone whose world view is so simplistic to have even an outside chance (let alone a pretty real one) of having her finger on the trigger?

To make things worse, apparently she also believes that the Rapture is upon us, this phenomenon being what will happen when the End of the World is actually here, rather than being simply nigh. When the man in the beard calls time up, only the people who believe what Ms Palin believes will be allowed to take the lift up to Heaven, which is fine and dandy if you’re her and her co-believers but not such a great idea if you’re not.

Now, assuming that Palin has the same frame of mind as the rest of the world’s god-botherers, namely that her brand of religion, however daffy it is, is the only brand of religion that is worth saving, it’s not such a leap to think that if the unthinkable should happen and she is in a position to decide whether or not to blast the rest of us into oblivion, there’s a pretty good chance that, knowing that she will be borne into Heaven on the backs of the Angels, she’s not going to worry too much about pressing the button.

There’s plenty more which indicates that Palin is unfit to be elected to the office of dog-catcher, much less VP of the US of A. She thinks, for example, that she has a grasp of foreign affairs because the state of which she is currently Governor, Alaska, is close to Russia and they can actually see Russia if they squint hard enough. Need more be said?

So, the question stands: what were the grey eminences in the Republican Party thinking when they put this woman onto the ticket? Do they think that the American electorate is so totally stupid that it will fall for someone like this? Are they enmeshed in some Byzantine plot to ensure world domination, by putting a trigger-happy fundamentalist loon in line for the leadership (though that requires this pair actually being elected, which even to imagine takes quite some doing) Are they trying to lose the election, which seems to be a racing certainty, but if they are, why are they doing this?

But then, who said that certain political parties ever do things logically? You know what I mean, I’m sure.