Let me finish tonight with what Sarah Palin started tonight.She's started laying the groundwork for a presidential run. She's started the countdown. She'll talk to her family and decide whether any candidate running can match her "common sense, conservative, pro-Constitution passion."So that's what this is about - not her qualifications to be chief executive of the United States, not her readiness to play the premier post in world leadership, to grapple with global economics and strategic policy, but her degree of "common sense, conservative, pro-Constitution passion."I wonder if the great majority of the American people view the country's top office this way, as a ramrod of rightist ideology? I wonder if we don't take a wider view of it, that it's the president's job to look out for the country's best interests.I'm not sure where the phrase "common sense" fits in here, though I do see its appeal. It would be nice to think the average Joe or Jane could solve the problem of illegal immigration, energy, not to mention the challenge of a global economy that puts American workers increasingly in the same hiring hall as those in the most desperate places on the planet, to fix the conflict in the Middle East, to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous states like Iran.What are the "common sense" solutions to all that?Do we put someone in the White House who "doesn't" listen to the experts, who relies on his or her "common sense" to get us out of such messes?By early next year, when people like Governor Palin make their decision to run or not, there's an excellent chance the unemployment rate will be higher, the anger over the economy greater, the fear of a long-term downturn spiking far higher than it is even today.And what will Sarah Palin offer as the solution then? Tax cuts? Budget cuts? Does anyone seriously believe that we can create a modern, 21st Century American economy by going back to the economic thinking of the early 1930s?