The science fiction novel The Coming by Joe Haldeman was first published in the year 2000. The story plays in the near future, around 2050. “The Cube” is their version of our TV. Read on page 59:

Deedee nodded wearily. Carrie LaSalle, president of the United States, made Governor Tierney look like an intellectual. A completely artificial product of her party’s analysts and social engineers, she gave the people exactly what they wanted: a cube [TV] personality who was nice to the core, a gift for reading lines and a suitably inoffensive personal history. She was an anti-intellectual populist who had presided over four years of stagnation in the arts and sciences, and had just been reelected.

If Palin were indeed elected president, she would clearly be a product of her party’s analysts and social engineers, she would give her people what they wanted (a moose-hunting hockey mom that goes to church, you betcha), She would preside as an anti-intellectual populist (heaven forbid, we can’t be studying fruit flies) and she would certainly cause stagnation in the arts and sciences a la George Bush.

Maybe we need a constitutional amendment to require a minimum IQ of 132 to become president?