Based on ad hoc street interviews broadcast by local television stations in Phoenix, Arizona yesterday, it would seem that Sarah Palin's unwed, underage, 5 month pregnant daughter is not a factor related to Mrs. Palin's fitness to serve as vice president of the United States-- or in any way a reflection on the judgment of the career politician who chose her to do so-- John McCain.
I strongly disagree with that position, and fortunately I found someone-- a conservative!-- to help me explain why. From David Brooks at the New York Times:
"My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy."
Though just a passing phrase in Brooks op-ed that goes to an entirely different argument, he unwittingly establishes why Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is a matter for public discussion, so let me run it down...
Among the well-documented "values voter" demographic, faith is not separate from politics-- church dogma is not separated from 'state' policy-- and everybody knows it.
Values voters believe legislating select behaviors (such as opposite gender marriage) on the basis of religious morals, or that they otherwise identify as religion-enhancing (support for traditionally defined families) are legitimate government activities. Therefore, the choices Palin makes as a moralist, ESPECIALLY those that affect her family sphere, are interpreted by values voters as evidence of a specific political standard they believe she will execute, otherwise John McCain would not have selected Sarah Palin as his VP!
At the least, were Palin to step in as president for McCain, moral standards she could insist infuse policy decisions from Supreme Court appointments to environmental policy, come from her religious attachment to a charismatic Christian culture NOT widely practiced or understood in America today. If in the microcosm of her own family, those moral standards are failing (and teen pregnancy is understood to be a parental failure of responsibility in most homes) don't Americans, who could find beliefs that are Palin's personal prerogative one day, and then the defining aspect of laws binding their families the next (think sex education banned from public schools), have a legitimate interest in examining the effects of Palin's moral politics on her own family BEFORE ANY AMERICAN --regardless of party-- be subjected to those effects?
I say, that regardless of Obama's stance on the traditional division between family and campaigns, in Sarah Palin's case --where she has chosen to break the division of church and state to serve her brand of moral politics, she forfeits the shield of privacy from those who would be affected by her politics-- to do so.