At the time, Palin didn't know that she would be taken as the threat that she became.
At the time, she didn't know that enemies were lining up to file complaint after complain after complaint against her. She thought she would show her willingness to work within the system with the trooper scandal, and she saw how the Democrats in Alaska perverted the process against her.
At the time, she brought her family to the convention, including Johnston. Johnston was being called Bristol's "fiance." Why wouldn't she bring her daughter's fiance to the convention to show family unity?
At the time, Obama was showcasing his two daughters, too. Remember when he had his youngest daughter on a stage talking to Obama via large-screen remote TV? Remember how Obama had his children at his convention? Why should Palin have behaved differently, even though her daughter had a child out of wedlock? Don't you recall how she was critized for using her own infant Trig as a "prop?" Do you remember the video of her daughter Piper spit-shining Trig's hair, and how that resonated with people? Are you suggesting that Palin should have told the media to keep away from her family at the most critical time that all the other politicians were showcasing theirs?
At the time, Palin had not had the debate with Biden, or the interviews with Gibson and Couric.
After the election, I can agree with you. Is it only the distance of time that is giving you the clarity to say what Palin should have done before the long knives came out against her during the campaign?
-PJ
Nothing wrong with showcasing family in the normal course of events. Piper spit-shining Trig’s hair was adorable. But while WE know a lot more about Levi now than we did back in the fall of 2008, Sarah couldn’t plausibly have not had a fairly clear idea of what this kid was about. He’s from the same small town where her family was living and where she’d been mayor. The boy’s mother was well known to locals as a drug dealer. And if she was paying any attention to what her kids were doing, she’d have had a pretty clear idea what sort of partying Bristol and her friends were up to, and thus a pretty clear idea that Levi didn’t have the faintest interest in getting married and being a father. Again, this is a small town. This isn’t Manhattan or LA.
Nobody forced her to call him Bristol’s “fiance”. All she needed to say was “This is a private family matter.” There was no need to even have his name ever emerge from her mouth. And Bristol was still a minor and wasn’t in a position to be giving independent interviews to the media without her parents’ consent. Now I obviously don’t know for certain what was going on behind the scenes in the family. But an objective, educated guess — the same degree of speculation that’s routinely accepted on FR when unpopular leftist politicians are being discussed — is that Bristol wasn’t interested in marrying this creep either, and that she was heavily pressured by her mother to pretend otherwise. I was saying during the campaign that there was no way in he11 this wedding was ever going to happen, but there seemed to be a lot of FReepers who were buying the whole storyline: “lovely young couple, very much in love, just made a little mistake and got pregnant before the wedding they were planning anyway”. The objective view was that the engagement story was just political spin, invented to try to support Palin’s positioning herself as a champion of traditional, evangelical Christian “family values”.
What really bugs me about the whole Palin-worship phenomenon is:
1) The flagrant double-standards being displayed. Things FR posters would crucify a left-wing candidate for, are explained away as somehow being unimportant or even positive when the subject is Sarah Palin. Any criticism of her is met with howls of how it’s all being orchestrated by the evil left-wing haters, in a tone alarmingly reminiscent of leftists howling whenever unflattering facts about Obama were brought to light.
2) President Obama is self-destructing before our eyes. The magnitude of this political gift to friends of the Constitution is awesome and unexpected, and we should be taking advantage of it by carefully positioning ourselves to vote him out of office in 2012 by a margin that will not leave an opening for remotely rational people to howl that the election was “stolen” (nasty riots could easily result from a tight margin, and do profound damage to the nation). But instead, a large percentage of FReepers are insisting on promoting the patently insane idea of Sarah Palin as a Presidential candidate in 2012. This is simply laughable when viewed objectively from a vantage point in the real world (and is not a notion that any power broker in the Republican party will touch with a 1000 foot pole). So instead of taking advantage of Obama’s implosion, the bulk of FR posters are heading down a route that makes it very likely he’ll be re-elected, because they’re not turning their attention to serious candidates who could actually win the White House in 2012. Obama’s poltiical strategists are no doubt thrilled to see this. I’m not.
It’s doubtful McCain could have won with or without Palin, but putting her on the ticket was the nail in the coffin. Not a single voter who was considering voting for Obama switched over to McCain after that choice, and hordes of middle of the roaders who were leaning towards McCain because they were concerned about Obama’s lack of experience and fiscal leftism threw up their hands in despair, and either voted for Obama or didn’t bother going the polls at all. It’s painful watching so many FReepers putting so much energy into pushing the critical political center into the arms of Obama for yet another term.