Unpublished Letter to the Editor by Fern Traeger:

To the Editor:
Re: “Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain” (Sunday Opinion, October 5th)

Bravo to Frank Rich who has so articulately identified one of the most disturbing aspects of Sarah Palin’s rhetoric: “A consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition.” Rich goes on to describe Charlie Gibson’s interview with Palin during which he asks her about her readiness to join McCain’s ticket, and her response that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink.”

In my professional sphere, this inflated sense of one’s abilities, inconsistent with reality, is known as mania. It is characterized by grandiosity that, in the extreme, might result in an individual jumping off a building believing he is Superman, or another bankrupting himself spending all his savings on luxuries, or someone who, as Rich points out, thinks she can be President because she wants to be President.

In the first two examples, the individual’s recklessness primarily hurts himself; the consequences of the third will be disastrous for all Americans, and will reverberate throughout the world.

Ferne Traeger
New York, October 6th, 2008