Late Night 2, G.O.P.: 0

Back when she was an untested, first-term governor from a far-flung state, Sarah Palin was not on anyone’s shortlist to be John McCain’s Vice Presidential candidate. After all, the McCain campaign’s most potent argument against Barack Obama was that the junior senator from Illinois didn’t have the experience to do the job. Yet there was one man who saw in Palin the sort of dynamic, base-exciting personality that would—to use the nauseating media parlance of the time—be a “game-changer” that could turn the election around. That man: Weekly Standard founder, editor, and columnist Bill Kristol, who personally feted Palin and predicted that she would get the nod. (This is also notable in that it’s the only time Kristol has ever been right about anything in his life.)

So it was somehow apropos that two brilliant segments on late night television last night would reunite these self-parodic bedfellows. Both clips have been making the viral video rounds this morning, but now we’re put them together in one place. The first segment finds William Shatner on The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien, turning the tortured prose in Palin’s resignation speech into beat poetry; the second is an extended interview with Kristol on The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart gets him to admit that “first-class” government health care is possible. Enjoy…