Akin to Stupidity

The Todd Akin flap will become a national outrage. His quotes will echo through the national campaign as often as "You didn't build that" and somehow this idiot will become emblematic of a huge, bewildered group of the voting public.

But the Todd Akin flap is interesting for what it will not become.

What it will not become is a stimulus for debate over the qualifications and limits of the people who volunteer to lead us. Why would a political science graduate have an opinion on the human reproductive system? Or solar power engineering? Or global warming statistics? And what kind of person is so arrogant as to force his ill-informed opinions on an innocent public?

Anyone in a democracy can grow up to be president --and often does. It is the expansiveness of his reach and the limits of his grasp that are the problems.