Of course, it’s easier in hindsight, but once Palin was a serious contender, and knowing that the daughter’s pregnancy would be obvious before the election, it would have made sense for Palin, as governor, to announce the engagement of her daughter and the pending child a few weeks ago.
The media would have mostly ignored it since normally they do understand the concept of privacy (I do mean that, although it sounds funny). Then when she was picked, the media could hardly go back and re-open it as an issue, and nobody (especially the hyper-conservatives here at FR) could claim they were trying to “hide” it.
Here’s a funny thing. The DailyKos people lied and said the daughter looked pregnant when she wasn’t. But now we find out the daughter IS 5-months pregnant, and she didn’t look it.
As to the rest, she could do NOTHING about the false stories about her child, and the DUI and other things weren’t a problem.
The biggest negative I see has been the radio story. I can listen and understand why she acted as she did, but that’s an “OPINION”, and others draw other opinions from listening.
It may have been helpful to more publicly smooth over the relationship with the other woman, or at least make a public apology that was publicly accepted, BEFORE this announcement.
That way, when the argument was made that Palin was wrong, they would have a public response that Palin apologized and the person accepted the apology.
Or, they could show that they had tried to patch things up. The fact that the other woman refused would then reinforce the opinion that the problem really WAS the other woman.
Of course, this is all hindsight.
But this feels eirily like the first days after George Allen said “macaca”, when we republicans were all talking about how stupid the whole thing was and laughing at the democrats, only in the end it turned out to be the end.