Nate Silver has a very good read on this one:

Palin is the most Bushlike of all the Republicans who have emerged as contenders for the national ticket: the smirkiness, the smugness, the regional accent (although Palin’s, I assume, is not feigned), the malapropisms, the contempt for media (both the people who cover it and their mediums), the express deference to religious faith, the occasionally undeniably likable moments of joviality and regular guy/gal-ness, the tendency toward self-dealing, the bulldog/barracuda mentality, the comfort in one’s own skin (Palin was crippled when she lost hers late in the campaign), the (apparent) preference for isolation in [Wasilla, Crawford], and last but not least, the no-holds-barred, no-apologies conservatism.

However, Nate missed perhaps one of the biggest similarities between the two: the lack of competence. When we first heard of Palin, the first reaction was, what are her qualifications? The answer turned out to be, almost none. That started the uneasiness–that a cancer-surviving septuagenarian candidate was choosing a running mate with little more than mayoral experience to be a heartbeat away from world leadership. And the more we saw of Palin, the more this initial impression was reinforced. She said she had good credentials in foreign policy because you can see a part of Russia from a part of Alaska? Because Putin flies over her state sometimes? She said that? It didn’t take long to realize that this person was not only unqualified for the presidency, she was dangerously unqualified. Silver’s likening Palin to Bush is most relevant in this regard; after eight years of a moron running the country, we recoiled at the thought of another moron taking his place. That she shared so many of the other qualities Bush had only cemented that feeling.

Silver’s analysis was sparked by a quote from Hot Air’s Allahpundit (the key sentence emphasized by Silver), who held that we despise her because of the

sheer contempt they have for her intellect. To the left, I think, she embodies a sort of comfort with ignorance that they think characterizes most/all conservatives. Why they’ve come to see her that way is complicated (part of it’s probably educational pedigree, part of it’s her affinity for rural pastimes like hunting, part of it’s the Katie Couric interview and the canned answers she gave at the debate with Biden), but I think it’s a mistake to assume that their antipathy is rooted in nothing but fear and defensiveness.

The part Silver highlighted is a good quote, to be sure, but it’s worth noting the reason Allahpundit ascribes to the liberal discomfort with her intellect. He seems to think we see her as ignorant because (a) she’s not a graduate of some elitist ivy-league university, (b) she’s from rural America, and (c) because she gave bad answers in an interview and at a debate.

The first idea, that her education was not good enough, is laughable. I don’t think that anyone paid much attention to that. Does anyone remember what school she went to? I don’t, and frankly I don’t care. I don’t recall anyone on the left criticizing her education, save for possible references to which major she had–but even that was rarely mentioned. The second idea, that we think she’s ignorant because she’s from the sticks, is a knee-jerk conservative response: those elitist coastal liberals hate the “real” America. All one has to do is remember Bill Clinton to realize that this is patently false. And the third idea is flawed only because it is far too limited in scope. Sure, canned answers were not a good thing–they revealed that she could not answer substantive questions on her own–but to say that liberals got the idea that she’s ignorant just from that is like saying that the entirety of conservatives’ dislike for Obama stems from the flag lapel-pin issue.

Allahpundit seems to actually believe that Palin is not ignorant, which we can ascribe to bias; but what is more interesting is the blindness as to why liberals see Palin as ignorant. Either he is not aware of the real reason, or he is uncomfortable mentioning it–perhaps because the reason is so salient. We see Palin as ignorant because she has amply demonstrated that she is. She is clearly an intellectual lightweight–not because she’s a woman, not because she’s from a rural area, but because she has demonstrated it, again and again.

The “I can see Alaska from my house” issue is emblematic: here is a person who seems to actually believe she has strong foreign policy credentials because the farthest reaches of the state she comes from is in viewing distance from the outermost reaches of another country which is controlled from a city 3,700 miles from that border. And she wasn’t joking. She repeated it. She genuinely seemed to believe it.

Did this not worry anyone on the right? Did they not see the problem with someone who could look you square in the eye and make this claim? There are only two possibilities with a statement like that: either she is an unbelievable moron, or she thinks that you are.

Next to her lack of intelligence, the next greatest concern liberals have with Palin–also similar to Bush–is her mendacity. The fact that she could lie–not only lie, but lie so constantly, and lie so transparently–was immensely troubling. The reason so many liberals liked McCain back in 2000 was that we felt he was being truthful. His policies were out of whack with ours, but at least we felt that he was giving us a straight deal, that he respected us and was willing to put it all down on the table and be straight. McCain eventually reversed himself and became a politician’s politician, but even then he tried to capitalize on this image with his whole “straight talk” campaign.

Palin epitomized the antithesis to that image. It seemed that every other word out of her mouth was not only a lie, but a really bad lie. As I mentioned above, it smacked of smug contempt: “I think that you’re so stupid that you’ll believe this incredibly idiotic line I’m feeding you.” And that’s the generous reading–the not-so-generous reading was that she wasn’t lying, but actually believed the lies she was telling.

So yes, we think Palin is ignorant, or worse. And yes, we are uncomfortable because she reminds us in many ways of Bush. But Nate Silver doesn’t reach far back enough in his comparisons. For as much as Palin resembles Bush, Palin and Bush resemble Reagan. And that gets to a more root cause of our discomfort with all of them: smug, amiable dunces who take the rugged-outdoorsmen pose, claim piety, lie indiscriminately, and are unapologetically hard-line right-wingers who allow extremist neocons to run the show behind the scenes. It’s as if the right-wing has found its perfect genotype, and keeps pushing it into leadership roles. And that’s what scares the crap out of us liberals–because we can see all too clearly the incredible damage such people have done to our country.