“Oh, yeah, it’s so obvious I’m a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate.”

That was Sarah Palin on Thursday night explainin’ why she was gonna give Americans some of that straight talk they’re cravin’.

She’s being far too humble about her political skills. Take her excuse for not cooperating with the Troopergate investigation. Initially, she said she couldn’t wait to tell her side of the story, but that darn investigation started getting all partisan, so she and her husband have been forced to clam up.

That’s how they do it in Washington, D.C.

Then there’s the attempt to slip the bonds of her statements on global warming.

“I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made,” she told the conservative Web site Newsmax in late August.

Her new position is that it doesn’t matter. We just gotta fix it. Yep, don’t matter why the car broke down. We just gotta get ’er fixed.

As governor she sued that tree-hugging Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne for listing polar bears as an endangered species. She said her state’s scientists concluded that the bears would adapt just fine to melting sea ice. When a university professor tried to get the e-mails of those scientists, he was told it would cost $468,784 to process the request. Eventually, he shook the information free and discovered that the scientists said global warming is a threat.

Just like Washington? You betcha!

Take the POW quiz. Look, it had to be hell for John McCain to be a prisoner of war. I admire the courage. I honor the sacrifice. But, come on. The constant references to that are bordering on the absurd. Don’t believe me? Then try to guess which of the following examples is not true:

A. Don’t know how to use e-mail? It’s hard to type when you’ve suffered permanent injuries at the hands of torturers.

B. Ever been on a private health care plan? There was a time in his life when the health care was not so good.

C. Will his hot temper hurt his ability to deal with crises? He kept his cool while suffering unimaginable torture.

D. Can he relate to the kitchen-table discussions of struggling families? In that tiny cell, he didn’t have a kitchen table.

E. Does he really list two ABBA songs among his favorites? Well, he confesses to ignorance about pop music because he was confined for so long.

F. Does he really have eight houses? For five and a half years, he had a one-room house.

G. Does his extramarital affair say something about his character? His character was forged in ways few of us can fathom.

Am I the only one who thinks this strategy devalues his service? By the way, the answer is C.