Right Ascension - Arizona's favorite son; Alaska's favorite daughter -- and her Mother

Right Ascension

9/3/2008 - Arizona's favorite son; Alaska's favorite daughter -- and her Mother

Culled today from the headlines to start today’s Right Ascension editorial

Bristol Palin's pregnancy was an open secret back home

Preserved from Yahoo News
New York Daily News
electronic scrapbook entry for Tuesday, September 2nd 2008, 10:40 PM
BY NANCY DILLON, VERONIKA BELENKAYA and TINA MOORE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Levi Johnston is a varsity hockey player at Wasilla High School.

He's a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she's a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.

The all-American teen twosome will make GOP vice presidential pick and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin a grandma at age 44 - just in time for Christmas.

Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described "f---in' redneck," have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.

And the pregnancy? An open secret in the close-knit town of 9,780.

RIGHT ASCENSION QUESTION

I do wonder where the parents were, in Wasilla or in Juneau, when the Palin’s oldest children were left to their own devices.

RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

Levi and Bristol got dragged to the Republican convention like two teenagers whose parents insist that they have to come to stake conference. There they are – looking like poster children for why we invented military schools and abortion on demand for birth control.

Rightascension prediction:

The odds of the Bristol-Levi marriage not happening is higher than the odds of the Bristol-Levi marriage happening.   Even an 18 year old hockey dude from the Alaska wilderness can see what’s coming.

I feel sorry for Levi.   It is one thing to get a girl pregnant; it is quite another league of trouble to get a governor’s daughter in trouble; it’s trouble of an even higher variety to get a vice presidential candidates daughter in trouble to make trouble for the candidates.     Levi is responsible for all this consternation and all the chattering from the chattering political classes. He is the boy, after all.

Typically in these forced teenage marriages, one alpha set of parents take control.   Come next year, Levi and Bristol could very well find themselves in Washington where Vice President Palin can keep a close eye on them. Imagine Levi or Bristol attending Georgetown or George Washington or any of the other universities of Virginia or Maryland, and getting a good look at what kinds of boys and girls they could have.

THE CONSERVATIVES GRASPING AT PALIN

It is a fascinating commentary on just how demoralized the Republican conservative felt in the past year, that they have embraced Sarah Palin with such enthusiastic enthusiasm as their great hope.   How many conservatives, let alone conservative activists, knew of her and her record a mere two weeks ago?   Some knew of her as a name on a list of governors.

Here’s a classic comment from an article in Wednesday’s Salt Lake Tribune

    That's the message from Utahns, who are unfazed and even energized by the prospect of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin bringing her family and all its challenges to the White House.

    "It makes her more of a real person because she doesn't have a picture-perfect family," said Lori Fowlke, a Republican legislator from Orem, attorney and mother of six grown children. "The people I talk to are shrugging their shoulders and saying, 'She really is like all the rest of us.' "

Greatness, like virtue, depends on the definition.

This sort of recommendation and logic becomes amusing when we consider how many of us and the rest of our friends, neighbors, and relatives really should be vice president.

Wednesday night’s convention rhetoric became funny when Palin got ringing endorsements from the likes of former governors Huckabee and Romney and former mayor Guiliani. Praising her as if she is the best thing in politics since Soft Money, they all discounted Obama’s inexperience, and touted her experience. These men all have about three times more executive experience than does Palin.   Guiliani’s family is three times more dysfunctional and thus three times more entertaining.

PROPHECY ON THE BONES

Patrick Buchanan writes the most crystal clear of the modern political columns. Here is a piece of his observations about the Palin selection:

In choosing Palin, McCain may also have changed the course of history as much as {Dwight D. Eisenhower} did with his choice of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with his choice of George H.W. Bush. For should this ticket win, Palin will eclipse every other Republican as heir apparent to the presidency and will have her own power base among Lifers, Evangelicals, gun folks and conservatives — wholly independent of President McCain.

A traditional conservative on social issues, Palin has become, overnight, the most priceless political asset the movement has. Look for the neocons to move with all deliberate speed to take her into their camp by pressing upon her advisers and staff, and steering her into the AEI-Weekly Standard-War Party orbit.

Indeed, if McCain defeats Barack, 2012 could see women on both national tickets, and given McCain's age and the possibility he intends to serve a single term, women at the top of both — Sarah vs. Hillary.

Buchanan could have noted that Nixon had a chance to change the course of history by choosing a virtually unknown one term governor of Maryland Spiro Agnew as his running mate.   That did not quite work out, thanks to Agnew’s taste for bribes.

IN CHARMING COMPANY

Politicians, right and left, will discount the inexperience of Obama and Palin, but the fact remains:   they stand in good company in the history of American presidents and presidential candidates.   Americans have always had a weakness for bright charming newcomers with little if any experience.   It is the American way.

Grant and Eisenhower had no political experience at all. They had some experience in commanding, and in the case of Grant, bad commanding. Grant literally made the War Between the States longer. Eisenhower did win the Great War of Europe, but his was a closely run thing for a war.

Zachary Taylor. Horace Greeley. Samuel Tilden. Chester Arthur. Grover Cleveland. William Jennings Bryan and all of his running mates. Theodore Roosevelt.   Alton Parker.   Woodrow Wilson. Charles Evan Hughes. Warren G. Harding. Calvin Coolidge.   Franklin Roosevelt.   Alf Landon. Wendell Wilkie. Thomas Dewey.   Adlai Stevenson. Jimmy Carter.

In 1960, Kennedy and Nixon both seemed rather young, but they actually had more government experience than did Harry Truman in 1944.

All of these pretty faces typically did more damage to American history than good, but that readers is another editorial.   Here we are again, voters.    This is the best America can do in candidates.

RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION

Do not confuse what you really need with what you think you with what the candidates tell you you need.