Since when did elite become a four letter word?

Not to borrow a note from Sam Harris' page, but I'm beginning to have serious doubts about the simple reasoning capabilities of the average American. Perennially, I fail to see why we would want to elect someone otherwise unqualified for the job based upon the fact that I think I could sit down and have a beer with him or her. In the case of the president, this is the person who holds the launch codes for the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet and I want to be able to have a beer with him? No. I want the leader of the largest super power in the world to be educated, at least as much as me, experienced and worldly. After all, nationalism is not the only issue that a president deals with on a daily basis. I also want a president who can think on his or her feet - who doesn't need a cue card to remember relevant facts and situations. And, I also don't want a president or vice-president who believes that this is the "end of days" and that she's fighting the fight of the "last generation". Perhaps that's too inferential, but having attended Assembly of God services three times in Alaska (once in Wasilla), I can tell you for certain, these people aren't operating on the same level as you and I. Foregoing the evolution debate (she's a strict creationist which makes me shudder, can you not reason with these people?!), the parishioners of the Assembly of God churches believe in a micromanaging God. A god that tells them what to eat, when to sleep and ultimately how to deal with every minutia and issue in their lives. The Pope may be leader of a country and also have the ear of God, but while I respect her right to exercise whatever religion she would like, we're fighting a war on fundamentalism and I don't think we should fight it with more fundamentalism. Much like her leader, Palin cannot tell you the ideological differences between Suni and Shiite Muslims, nor how mainstream Islam is different from radical Islamists in their interpretation. Her small-town leadership has not prepared her for a whole-world paradigm and I'm simply not comfortable giving her the spare key to the whitehouse, even if she isn't an "educated white male" or "east-coast liberal".