Politics 2012: The Americans Are Coming! The Americans Are Coming!

Image via WikipediaWhether they run for the White House or not, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann have great futures as authors of alternative historical fiction.

That's the genre of literature in which a major historical event is turned into speculative fiction on what might have happened if things didn't turn out the way they did.  Such as:

• What if the Confederate Army had won the Civil War?
• What if Japan and/or Germany won World War II?
• What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had devolved into nuclear war?
• What if John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had lived?
• What if they gave a war and nobody came?

Palin and Bachmann recently added to this illustrious canon with their statements regarding the American Revolution.  Palin said that Paul Revere had warned the British that the Redcoats were coming.  Bachmann said the first shots of the war were fired in Concord, New Hampshire.

Right town, wrong state, Congresswoman.  It was Concord, Massachusetts.  And even though Revere actually warned the American colonists on his midnight ride, Palin could technically be right because the colonists were British subjects at that point.

Not surprisingly, neither of these women are history buffs.  Palin went to four different colleges before getting her degree in communications (with an emphasis on journalism) from the University of Idaho.  Bachmann earned a Bachelor of Arts from Winona State in Minnesota, followed by law degrees from Oral Roberts University and William & Mary Law School.

Neither Palin nor Bachmann have officially announced their candidacy for the Republican nomination, but it doesn't matter.  Whatever they do and wherever they go, the two women provide entertainment for the "lamestream" media and the blogosphere no other GOP candidate can match.

But what does it say about our educational system when two high-profile female politicians, in the words of Sam Cooke, "don't know much about history"?  Women now make up a greater percentage of college graduates, but Palin and Bachmann are not the best examples.

Maybe someday, someone will write a novel speculating on what would have happened if either Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann were elected President of the United States.  Or maybe it will become a reality.  Truth is stranger than fiction, you know.