I’ve been away all weekend, and the stuff that has come out about Palin is almost too much for me to keep track of. (We had plenty already.) Let’s review in nice, condensed, bulleted-list format:
- Her 17-year old, unmarried daughter is pregnant and has dropped out of high school, but will be marrying the father and keeping the baby.
- She is being investigated in “troopergate,” where she is accused of trying to get the state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with her sister fired. She is alleged to have fired the state police chief when he refused to fire the brother-in-law. The report on this comes out a couple days before the election.
- She supported a group pushing to have Alaska secede from the United States (though there’s some confusion about how much).
- Despite bragging about turning down federal funding for the bridge to nowhere in her first speech as the VP nominee, she turns out to have supported it at first. She didn’t refuse the federal money, but just allowed it to be diverted to other pork projects and eventually killed the bridge proposal when there was no money left for it anyway.
- Her husband was arrested for a DUI in 1986.
- As mayor she talked to the town librarian about banning books she found objectionable.
- She doesn’t believe global warming is man-made.
- In her first election, she took a traditionally nice, friendly small-town mayoral race and injected a lot of divisive social issues.
- She only met McCain in person once, months ago, and he had one brief phone-call with her about the vice presidency.
Now, these issues vary massively in importance. The one that’s getting all the coverage, her daughter’s pregnancy, is the one I’m most conflicted about. There is a slight bit of relevance to governance in that it maybe says something about her opposition to comprehensive sex education, but that’s only a minor relationship. It really is irrelevant. I am inclined to totally ignore it and criticize everyone who writes stories about it, etc. What’s holding me back is the parallel hypothetical. Say a liberal Democrat had a pregnant teenage daughter. Would James Dobson be saying encouraging, supportive things about how much love was being shown the daughter? It would obviously be used as an attack and a rallying point for those who believe liberals have no family values. (It probably wouldn’t be used directly by a Republican opponent, but it wouldn’t need to be.) Imagine if it was Obama, with all the racial stereotypes that come with it. It would be a massive story and horribly damaging. This of course is part of a larger, broader question. Which is worse, to play dirty or to play clean and let those who play dirty win? I’m not ok with either, and that’s why I’m still so conflicted on this one.
What worries me more is that the sexy but obviously unfair story is overwhelming the more mundane but in reality more worrying stories. The first public statement she made included large, highlighted claims that were outright lies. Supporting Alaskan independence?! That’s nutso kook territory. McCain didn’t meet with her in person somewhere in between her becoming a candidate for the vice presidency and him choosing her?! She has a history of doing whatever it takes to win an election and then making even the most uncontroversial job into a political appointment. These things are seriously worrying. They fundamentally undermine her reputation as the honest reformer. These things should be getting real coverage. They’re much more important than the pregnant daughter story, but they can’t break through. (Even the pregnant daughter story had some trouble, being purposely released at the moment that Gustav made landfall.) I can only hope that, as the tabloid story passes, some real time is spent on the actual worrying issues.
I’ve also got to say, while on the subject, that the efforts to show that she is qualified to be president are now getting somewhat ridiculous. We’ve gotten things to the effect of “Alaska is physically proximate to Russia, so she has foreign policy experience.” There was the wonderful interview on CNN where Tucker Bounds couldn’t name a single decision that Palin had made as commander of the state national guard, despite bringing that up as important experience for her. The winner, though, has got to be the person I just heard talking about how she had once “helped to run a family-owned fishing business.” I’m all for that, but by the time you are in the presidential line of succession, things like that should be pushed to not-worth-mentioning status by other things on your resume.
Tags: politics, sarah palin, vice president