Right Ascension - Sarah Palin's teenage daughter is WHAT?

Right Ascension

9/2/2008 - Sarah Palin's teenage daughter is WHAT?

TThe first day of the Republican convention offers much in the way of fodder for political bloggers. It also offers much for the tabloids, too. Here goes:ere goes.

Dorothy Parker once wrote that a lot of plays on Broadway in 1918 closed down.   They offered as an excuse the influenza pandemic: said the producers the theaters should not open and spread the germs.   Actually, she said, the plays were bad and the pandemic was just a good excuse to get them out of town under the patriotic banner of public health restrictions.

In much the same way, the Republican Convention got to avoid showcasing the highly unpopular President Bush and Vice President Cheney by excusing them to oversee federal rescue efforts in areas affected by Hurricane Gustav.   The president gets to look proactive and presidential; the vice president gets to look proactive and presidential.   The Republican convention gets to avoid dealing with either one of them.    The last president who did not attend his party's convention was Lyndon Johnson in 1968.   The last president before that was the ailing Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 who used the excuse that overseeing a war was too pressing to take time out for partisan frivolity.    Bush should take a lesson from both of them.

Experience seems to be important at the Convention --

for lesser offices.

Note this bit culled from the official Convention news room on the web.

Convention Veteran Tapped to Lead Official Proceedings

For Immediate Release
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Kahler's 'veteran leadership' will be asset, says convention CEO

SAINT PAUL, Minn., May 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Adding 20 years of experience to a key position, 2008 Republican National Convention President and CEO Maria Cino today announced the appointment of Rachel Card Kahler as the Director of Official Proceedings.

This is Kahler's fifth GOP convention, having served in various operations roles in the Houston (1992), San Diego (1996), and Philadelphia (2000) conventions; and as Deputy Director of Operations at the New York convention in 2004.

We should rest assured that the Director of Official Proceedings has about 18 years more experience than the vice president candidate.   Well, 12 if you count her years governing that village out of Northern Exposure.

Sarah Palin shocked the convention when she released a statement announcing that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant.   Unmarried daughter.

This is the careful wording of the official announcement

From John McCain's campaign headquarters in a Washington suburb comes this today:

    ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, Sarah and Todd Palin issued the following statement regarding today's Reuters story:

    "We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.

    "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates."

The Reuters story to which the statement refers tackled head-on the speculation that swirled over weekend on some blogs about whether Sarah Palin was, in fact, the mother of a child born earlier this year or whether Bristol, 17, was the mother. According to the Reuters story, news of Bristol's current pregnancy "was being released to rebut what one aide called "mud-slinging and lies" circulating on liberal blog sites."

The story continues:

    According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin's child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.

We can rest assured in the knowledge that the tabloids, especially the British ones, will leave the young couple alone.

Stop me if you have heard Bristol's story before. When parents announce “unconditional love and support” of their child, you know it is a code phrase meaning the child is the family’s big pain.   It is also a signal for the parents to get out the checkbook and prepare for misery a-coming.

How old is this boyfriend anyway? Why don't they release the age of the boyfriend?

Maybe I do not get out of the house enough, and that is certainly possible, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of young teenage couples I know who “had” the get married with a full oven who then went on and made a long term successful marriage of the situation.

The flags are up. It is a situation that has “baby candidate for adoption” written all over it.    It is a situation that has "candidate for military school" written all over the father.

I repeat – How old is the boyfriend?

Reaction from religious conservatives was sympathetic

-- though it is hardly the sort of praise anyone wants heaped on them, let alone a Republican conservative standard bearer.    A few quotes I found in the news:

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson issued a statement commending the Palins "for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances." He added: "Being a Christian does not mean you're perfect. Nor does it mean your children are perfect. But it does mean there is forgiveness and restoration when we confess our imperfections to the Lord."

Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America called the pregnancy private. "It's a matter that should stay in the family and they have to work through it together. My prayers go out to them."

Added Combs: "We're excited about the governor and think she's going to do well."

Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law, said: "We're all sinners."

We applaud Combs' broadmindedness, though I wonder if this happened to Obama or Biden's family if she would have been so tolerant.   As to Staver's comment, an endorsement of that sort should look good on a red white and blue bumper sticker with an elephant symbol on it.

MEANWHILE IN MICHIGAN, BARACK OBAMA ANNOUNCED HE IS OFFENDED – OFFENDED! – THAT SOME ACCUSE HIS SIDE OF DIGGING UP SCANDAL ON THE SCANDAL PLAGUED CHILD OF THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.

And here is the quote, accompanied to gales of laughter.

At a press availability Monday in Monroe, Mich., Obama strongly distanced himself from personal attacks on Palin.

“I have said before, and I will repeat again: People's families are off-limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know, my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."

Obama also firmly insisted that his campaign was not responsible for the proliferation of rumors about Palin’s family in the liberal blogosphere:

"I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us," he said. "Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired."

I suppose he is right, except —

I can think of examples – and my readers can all think of examples – of people with whom they worked whose parenting styles and parenting record did somehow become relevant to their job performances.   We like to believe that our private lives and our public performances happen independent of each other, neatly sealed from each other in vacuum packs of professionalism. In the real world, the private life and the public performance always affect each other.

LIFE IS GLORIOUSLY UNPREDICTABLE

First, the Republican social conservatives get the honor of sustaining a vice president candidate who they did not know on a percent of 1 to 7. Dan Quayle at least had service in the House, service in the Senate, and money.

With all the Republican governors available who were not Arnold Schwarzenegger, McCain picked a governor from a state on the edge of the known universe with a population less than that of Salt Lake County. Just how does Governor Jon Huntsman or Governor Butch Otter have less political experience to offer than does Palin?

Next, the Republican social conservatives get the honor of sustaining a vice president candidate with an unmarried pregnant teenage daughter.   There is a certain poetic justice to this: this is the sort of situation they accuse eastern liberal parents of fostering . They also get a poster child, literally, of one reason why abortion on demand as birth control was invented.