I don't denigrate anyone. Since the election, Time Magazine did some polling. Only 40% of those polled thought that Sarah Palin was qualified to be VP. Other polls have indicated some further erosion of that number since the election. That's a huge problem.
Regardless of how popular she may be with the base, a 40% competency rating won't win many, if any, elections.
George W Bush is an example that works well here. One university poll found that 89% of American thought that they were smarter than W. 89% seems high, and i don't know how scientific it was. But, even Bush's most ardent supporters (of which I'm one) would stipulate that Bush has a perceptual problem with respect to intelligence.
In reality, probably less than 20% of the US population has an IQ higher than Bush's. But, people believe they're smarter because Bush is so painfully inarticulate. He knows plenty, and apparently in private even his critics say it shows. But in public, he's a mess. Communication skills, style and effectiveness matter more than anything in US politics. Once Bush was believed to be "stupid", he could never recover.
Bush ran, at governed almost as an anti-intellectual, and it killed him in the end. The country didn't want someone else who was perceived to be antagonistic of education, communication and intellectual endeavor. Palin has tremendous work to do to repair her image in the interim two years (it'll only be two years before the next campaign starts). If she can't come out much more polished, informed and with better command of the facts and issues, she cannot be elected. In fact, I doubt she'll be nominated.
And here's the really tough part. What many people here find so endearing about her, is what drives a great many more absolutely mad.
Typical MSM poll. They trash someone for weeks on end, then poll folks to find out what they think. Of course they're going to think Sarah isn't competent, because that's all they've heard for the previous 8 weeks.
The campaign, after she was announced, was a compressed, hectic timeframe. If she decides to run in the future, she'll have a much longer time to make her case to the American people, and she'll be a smarter politician because of the beating she took the last time. No, she wasn't prepared for the media onslaught, but she won't make that mistake again. I, unlike you, believe she's a smart woman, and will conduct herself accordingly, especially if she is running for the top spot on the ticket.
Folks seem to think that if McCain had only chosen one of the other guys, who were more well known to the base and the media, that he would have done better. I couldn't disagree more with that contention. The MSM would have done as large or larger hatchet job on one of those others, simply because they already had all the information they needed on them.