It’s hard to express as often as I would like the absolute horror we barely dodged last November. While tea-baggers and assorted wingnuts rant and rage and rend their hair over imagined, hare-brained delusions about Obama, the fact is, he’s been one of the most respectable figures in the Oval Office for quite some time. Before he came to office, the wingnuts created out of whole cloth a host of racist names and stereotypes for relatives populating his family; none were true.

Bush 43… well, he was Bush. Himself a former substance abuser, the family has lots of bad apples and skeletons, and way too much drama, between his wayward twin daughters and the brother involved in banking scandals, something which plagued the elder Bush 41 as well. Clinton had his affairs and other assorted scandals. Reagan had a dysfunctional family, and Carter had brother Billy. Ford’s wife had substance abuse. Vice presidents have added their own woes, though usually they are less colorful than the primary, they can be a distraction when something does turn up.

Compared to most recent presidents, Obama easily sails above the rest and wins hands-down as the most respectable in his personal life.

However, had we elected McCain… or, more to the point, in a few years, if somehow Palin were to be elected… Holy crap. I blogged on this before, the white-trash soap opera that is life in the Palin compound, and it just gets more and more lurid.

What’s new in the week’s episode? Well, Levi says that he has the goods on Sarah, stuff that would destroy her… while he signs on to pose Full Monty in Playgirl magazine. As you recall from previous episodes, Levi was the father of Bristol’s illegitimate baby, born out of wedlock after mommy raised Bristol on abstinence-only principles. Propped up to be Bristol’s husband for show on the campaign trail, that quickly fell apart and since then the Palins and Johnstons have been feudin’ something’ fierce. Yes, Palin would bring back real American family values to the White House! After those sluts Sasha and Malia have befouled the First Family’s abode, think how refreshing it’d be to have the nice Palins in residence.

I know, I know–melodrama is aside from the important issues. The reason I bring this up, however, is the same reason people make hay of the adulterous and other sexual dalliances among right-wingers: not because the acts themselves are really anything worth paying attention to, but because they highlight the rather stark hypocrisy inherent in right-wing culture.

In this case, it’s that the right wing constantly makes crap up about Obama in order to look down on him, while they adore someone like Palin, whose personal-life antics are extraordinarily scandalous.

Imagine if Obama’s daughter were 17 and became pregnant with some high-school jock after Obama went lecturing everyone about not having sex before marriage, and that after trying to effect a shotgun wedding, that fell apart and the boy starts spewing dirt and a whole-out family feud erupts. The right wing would experience a year-long orgasm of strutting the Superior Dance, while endlessly going on about how Obama is disgracing the White House and should resign.

But they can’t wait to elect someone whose family scandals are exactly that and far, far more.

Imagine that Michelle had belonged to a political party that promoted secession. Imagine that her brother were arrested on felony charges, or the boy who knocked up their daughter posed nude while his mother got arrested on drug charges.

Seriously, IOKIYAR.