One of the articles in my 1982 book, the New Right Papers was “Lid on a Boiling Pot.” The title says it all. It discussed the inability of a system based on liberals and respectable conservatives to deal with any BASIC problems.

Even those who were around in 1982 feel that the 1980s represented a time of relative cooperation between the “two sides” they have so comfortably established.

So every now and then a Barry Goldwater or a George Wallace, or a Ross Perot or a Newt Gingrich or a Sara Palin is allowed to take positions respectable conservatives find uncomfortable. So far this has worked.

A system as powerful and as successful as that in the United States has periodic outbreaks. But the yokels always take each outbreak seriously, “Now the Revolution has come!”

Only here will you see these outbreaks put together. Only here will you see them discussed as outbreaks.

So when someone asks me about Sara Palin, I am frankly too old and tired to explain the history they know very well to them.

I was with Wallace, but I knew very well that, wish as I might, he was simply a step in the movement to a conservative coalition. I was also responsible for saving the space telescope at a crucial moment because I saw that the Soviets were a paper tiger economically and their Empire would be trumped, as we finally did with SDI.

But there was not a single yokel who knew his economics, his Soviet economics, his political figures, and his science as well as I did. No one was with me in two of those fights, much less all three. No one understood the connection.

So when I look at Sara Palin, I am looking at the context we all lived through, but anyone who wants to be a professional commentator doesn’t talk about anything but the current sensation.

There is snow on the ground in South Carolina today. This is unusual, but if anybody acted like it was the first time there has ever been snow on the ground here, he would need treatment.

But the system pays people for that kind of insanity.