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The Big Distraction
By Hastings Wyman
Southern Political Report
September 3, 2008 —
There are two things about the revelation that Sarah Palin’s unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant that everyone agrees on. First, it is not relevant to Gov. Palin’s qualifications to be vice-president. And second, it needs to be talked about over and over again. Like the John Edwards scandal of a few weeks ago, this involves sex, and although the lessons -- moral and political -- are of an entirely different nature, it guarantees a media orgy, if you will, of wallowing in as much information as we can find to pass on to a public more than happy to gloat over the details The New York Post, for example, has published the “My Space” profanity-filled profile of Bristol Palin’s alleged “Baby Daddy.” Even the talking heads on Fox News, which is about as pro-Republican as you can get, were denouncing any and all critics of Palin, but when Greta Van Susteren was interviewing Laura Bush and Cindy McCain, at the point when the First Lady was talking about children in the White House, the network inserted a photograph of Bristol Palin holding her younger brother. The problem, at least for the GOP, is not that the “scandal,” if it is that, is likely to turn off many voters. It’s that because it is getting talked to death on television and throughout the media (including this column), it is crowding out the many positive things about Palin’s candidacy that were beginning to give the McCain-Palin ticket a significant boost, in the polls and in the money chase. Thus, just at the time when Gov. Palin was beginning to seem like a quirky-but-brilliant choice by McCain, she can’t get her story out. It’s all about her daughter’s behavior, Gov. Palin’s belief in “abstinence only” sex education, whether John McCain sufficiently vetted his dark-horse running mate before he chose her, etc., etc. Whether Sarah Palin, in her speech tonight and in her first news conferences, can silence such negative chatter -- including the reports about trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired -- remains to be seen. If she knocks it out of the ball park, she may yet be a plus for the ticket, lack of experience aside. Some other observations: At the heart of the matter, that a 17-year old unmarried high school student is pregnant may not be such a big deal. Times have changed, and no matter how much cluck-clucking that would have gone on in my teenage days (late 1950s), today many people take such occurrences in stride. My guess is that older voters will think it more significant, but not be too judgmental. There is also among us oldsters much unsympathetic hooting about the irony of it all. Younger voters, for better or for worse, want to know what the fuss is all about. Barack Obama’s reaction showed that he’s a gentleman. Not only did he say it was a private matter, but he added that his own mother was 18 -- only a year older than Bristol Palin -- when he was born. And he promised to fire any member of his campaign staff involved in exploiting the matter. There is, however, a significant racial angle to the story. Eugene Robinson, an African-American columnist for the Washington Post, noted in one television appearance that when he recently wrote about the problem of teen mothers, his email in response treated the phenomenon as essentially a black problem, and was judgmental to boot. Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot. It is doubtful this will increase African-American support for Obama, which is already sky-high. However, it is likely to make black Americans feel a little less out of the mainstream. Sarah Palin is spirited, articulate and seemingly not afraid to take on the tough challenges. She will need all those skills in the next few days.
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