And look at Sarah Palin. Everybody thought that she was a desperately uninformed goofball whom the Republican Party might, nevertheless, someday nominate for president in an effort to cement its reputation as worst major American political organization since the Know-Nothings. Then this week she went off to Hong Kong and gave an 80-minute, closed-door speech to financial fund managers, for which she was paid an undisclosed but indisputably vast sum of money. The early reviews from people exiting the ballroom ranged from “well prepared” to “boring.”

Given that she started the day as a celebrity whose deepest recorded thought was how only dead fish go with the flow, this was quite a triumph. If Palin can arrange to make all her future speeches in Asia, with no reporters present and tons of money falling out of the ceiling at every stop, I think she has a real shot at rehabilitation.