Sarah Palin is a gold-plated opportunity for liberals to show off their ability to be hypocritical. And Sarah Palin is a gold-plated opportunity for conservatives to show off their ability to be hypocritical. Liberals should let the right figure this one out for themselves. We should just step back and watch.
What are family values? From the perspective of evangelicals, as far as I can tell, family values include both having babies no matter what the circumstances, and raising those babies with a stay-at-home mom if at all possible. So Sarah Palin gets one point for having her baby even knowing that the baby would be developmentally delayed, but loses one point for going back to work when the baby was 3 days old and then accepting an offer to run for vice president of the United States when her baby is less than five months old.
Family values might also include having a strong enough relationship with your teenage daughter that she would choose pre-marital abstinence. So Palin gets one point for raising a daughter who chooses to give birth to a baby when the daughter is only seventeen years old, but loses a point for failing to instill the value of abstinence in her teenage daughter.
So, according to my understanding, if the evangelicals choose to score this properly, Sarah Palin scores zero.
How can the left score this in terms of liberal values? Many liberals would suggest that family should come before career, but would also acknowledge that this is a personal choice. Sarah Palin’s choice to give birth to a child with downs syndrome while simultaneously running the state of Alaska was hers to make. Her daughter’s choice to give birth at age 17 was hers alone to make. Sarah Palin’s choice to put her political career over the needs of her family may (or may not) be regrettable, but it is her choice to make and none of this should enter into the campaign. After all, there are laws against asking about family responsibilities in job interviews. Why should this be any different?
Real liberals will not be voting for the McCain/Palin ticket anyway. We should stick to our own values and stay out of this one. Let conservatives sort through their own values. Liberals can only hinder their process of soul searching—we can’t possibly help it by snatching the meat from this gold-plated opportunity to be hypocritical.