Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wowed folks down at Fort Hood this month, but her fans did less talking about her bestselling book, Going Rogue, than her political prospects, including how she’d just make a terrific president.

The idea stuns some of us. Aside from her time as a small-town mayor, Palin didn’t even complete her one term as governor. And her few interviews, while showing her far more confident than in her notorious Katie Couric interview in 2008, have yet to reveal any depth or insight.

Most political observers don’t give her the same chances they gave Barack Obama after his eloquent speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. She’s simply had too many gaffes in too short a time — and, frankly, if questions like “What do you read?” are going to stump you, are you prepared to negotiate the difficulties of the White House, Congress and the world?

This isn’t Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey or Karl Rove we’re talking about. All three are also polarizing forces in the conservative movement but they offer novel ideas and interesting suggestions in public policy. Most of Palin’s political views come from bumper stickers and campaign slogans.

Yet she continues to fascinate. She’s obviously attractive, offers a folksy charisma and speaks passionately and with wit when she’s on stage and has a teleprompter around. Yeah, kind of like the president.

However, she may be even more like Jesse Ventura, alias “The Body” during his wrestling and acting career. He surprised everyone in 1998 and won election as governor of Minnesota, running as a wildly unorthodox independent. He completed his term as governor, though some people wished he, too, had resigned mid-term.

For a time, some people talked about his running for president, too, though to his credit he didn’t play games for long about the idea. He dismissed the notion, which only made me respect him more.

“I mean, if you’d asked me three years ago if people of America would be touting me for president of the United States, I would’ve said you were crazy,” he told me in 2000. “But you really have to want that job. I would never want to put my family through a national campaign. It would be brutal.”

I really liked Ventura when I interviewed him during his 2000 book tour, though even I realized this hulking, bluntly candid personality should never be president. One of the most interesting political conversations in my many years as a journalist came when Ventura and I debated his idea of halving statehouses nationwide rather than keeping the bicameral legislative systems we now have.

Heck, most folks I know don’t even know what “bicameral” means. I’m not sure I did till I met Jesse Ventura.

Unlike Palin, he still enjoyed mixing it up with reporters, and he didn’t always try to allege he was the victim of some vast left-wing conspiracy if he said something stupid during an interview.

He, too, was viewed with great promise. His first book, I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed, was a New York Times best-seller, and he obviously had the smarts plus a rough-and-tumble charisma stemming from his days as a big-time wrestler and a Navy SEAL.

MSNBC gave him a political talk show a few years ago but somehow forgot to promote the thing, and it died a quick death.

This month, Ventura popped up on a TV series, “Conspiracy Theory,” where he and his team of young investigators — most appearing to be barely out of puberty — seek to reveal the real truth about cover-ups and super-secret military operations.

The first show took the former governor to Alaska to investigate an Air Force installation supposedly beaming millions of watts into the sky to manipulate weather, confound aircraft and control brainwaves.

At one point, the wrestler is shown at the military installation front gate, getting no satisfaction from guards. He growls: “When I get denied something . . . I get angry.”

Yes, it’s possible Sarah Palin might follow Obama’s path of charm, luck and inexperience and wind up in the White House. The chance is greater she’ll wind up just another fascinating political footnote, bound for TV, giddily hosting guests as Gov. Mike Huckabee does now or battling mind-controlling death rays with Jesse back in Alaska.