OK, I gotta say it: Palin did a good enough job just now for me to feel she’s a real enough politician to be called by her surname.

I was more impressed by her acceptance speech than I thought I would be — not by her message, because there wasn’t any, but by her poise and ability to deliver a funny line without stepping on it. She was much better, for example, than Mitt Romney, who would have got the hook on an old Vaudeville stage and who would never have been heard from again (banned from the platform for having chosen such an absurdly ill-fitting role to play).

Yep, whoever wrote Palin’s script gets full marks, but — to be fair — her timing, too, was excellent. An 8.7, I’d say (points off for snarling and grimacing at key moments and for the pit-bull hockey-mom analogy).

She did forfeit a few points with me when she dragged the kids out, one by one, after saying IN BIG LETTERS we should leave them alone. Hmmm. You see, touting the accomplishments of her eldest boy does sort of leave them ALL open to the possibility that somebody sneaky and cynical might mention the “accomplishments” of her daughter Bristol as a way to balance the family act. Actually, I am grateful because now I don’t feel guilty saying anything about them at all. The Palins come wholesale, as a package deal, shrinkwrapped, so that to buy one is to get, oh, 117 free? Fine.

Just don’t tell me they’re off-limits. Not when they line up like the Von Trapp Family Singers. (With Bristol singing “I am 16 going on 17” while holding a .22.) Not when you shave the erstwhile adorable boyfriend and make him look like any other fat-faced smug mouth-breathing kid who nobody told not to stare at himself in the camera like he was an extra at a Girls Gone Wild videotaping. He sort of looked like “Sawyer” from Lost in his hockey pics and now he looks far less cute than the First Grandude. Drag.

So, fine, she’s real enough to take seriously, and so let the games begin.

Just keep her away from libraries, the Supreme Court, women’s reproductive rights, health care, education, foreign-policy decisions (she only got her first passport last year?) and gun control, as well as her younger daughters (they seem lovely and there’s no need for them to get pregnant and drop out of high school, is there?) and — as the old song goes — THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!

(The little voice that keeps reminding us that it is also destiny? More about that later …)