It isn't fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she's taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her.

Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides peace and prosperity for eight blessed years - and even a third term for his feckless vice president George H.W. Bush.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.