Maybe Jimmy Fallon really does want to follow Jay Leno’s tradition of full-political-spectrum comedy. Earlier this week, Fallon ripped Barack Obama for his victory lap on ObamaCare, and last night he invited Sarah Palin to join him in this four-minute mockfest of Obama’s foreign-policy acumen. Palin is a good sport here, joking about the unusual names of her children at one point, but the subtext throughout this is that Palin was smart enough to see through Vladimir Putin — and Obama wasn’t. Watch for a cameo from “Obama” near the end (via Katie Pavlich):

Of course, as with all things Palin, her Tonight Show appearance sparked passion on line … especially from her detractors. Twitchy cataloged some of the worst of the social-media remarks, where full-political-spectrum comedy gets less than full-spectrum appreciation. Here are a couple of the cleaner comments:

http://twitter.com/#!/JillKuraitis/status/451583807280263170

http://twitter.com/#!/MeowSays1/status/451569781523480578

And so on. The most interesting aspect of this for me is what it promises from Fallon and the new Tonight Show perspective. Even if the segment sags a bit in the middle, committing a whole segment to having Palin make fun of Obama is remarkable … especially for NBC.