She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

Both McCain and Obama have shown themselves to be engaged in national issues. Although Obama has only been in the US Senate since 2005, he clearly showed an interest in national issues long before then, publicly opposing the Iraq War from the very beginning, whereas Sarah Palin apparently wasn’t even clear on the rationale used to justify the Iraq War as of last week.
Obama is also anything but brash or excessively decisive. I think that if there is an unspoken item here on whether Barack Obama is qualified enough to be president, there is also an unspoken item here on whether John McCain is qualified enough to be president. Is John McCain a model of prudence? There’s definitely a narrative out there that suggests otherwise – that he is compulsive and temper-prone. If Biden provides the heft of an experienced advisor to a man who is already thought of as deliberative and fair-minded, Palin piles weakness upon weakness. That’s what I would read between Brooks’ lines.