The only thing Sarah Palin proved with her speech Wednesday night was that she could do long derision. She was hopelessly short on ideas to improve people’s everyday lives.

There is something disquieting when a speaker who almost nobody knows launches into one ad hominem attack after another.

But Palin piled on, as though that were necessary after Rudy Giuliani’s speech, and all the other cheap shooters.

She was in no position to throw stones, since her qualifications are so paltry, but that didn’t stop her.

She started the brush-back pitches with one under Michelle Obama’s chin. Palin said that small town people are “always proud of America”—a clear reference to Michelle’s claim that she was finally proud to be an American after her husband’s success on the campaign trail.

Palin made fun of the fact that Obama was a community organizer, a snide line that won’t resonate with anyone who has ever done grassroots work.

She couldn’t resist tagging Obama again with his unfortunate San Francisco remark about working class people who “cling to their religion and guns,” though he had that coming.

She also lampooned the “Styrofoam Greek columns” in Denver and the “self-designed Presidential seals,” and I suppose he left himself open to that one, too.

Like Hillary Clinton, Palin sneered at his “high-flown speechmaking,” asking, “What does he actually seek to accomplish after he’s done turning back the waters?”

This was an echo of Clinton’s line during the primaries, mocking Obama by claiming that his supporters believe “the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing” if he wins.

Sticking with the Obama-is-grandiose theme, Palin said he has “authored two memoirs, but not a single law, or even a reform.” Unfortunately, the speechwriter seems to have forgotten about his ethics reform work in Congress, and his work with Richard Lugar on reducing the threat from conventional weapons, as well as WMDs, and his work in the Illinois legislature on the death penalty.

And this line of attack raises the obvious question: What have you done, governor, that qualifies you to be vice president or president?

And what would you do to help people out?

On this last one, she offered nothing but the old Republican nostrums of shrinking government and lowering taxes.

Bereft of new ideas, Palin had little option but to take the low road.

The only high note she hit was promising to be a “friend and advocate” to “families with children with special needs.”

The lowest note came when she tried to lampoon Obama’s concern for civil liberties, saying that when Al Qaeda terrorists are plotting to inflict catastrophic harm on us, “he’s worried that some won’t read them their rights.”

After Bush and Cheney have trampled all over our Bill of Rights, this indifference on Palin’s part was nothing short of chilling.