New Palin details may help, not hurt

RightinNYC · 09-02-08, 12:16 AM

Hatuey/1069/disneydude/PeteEU: "OMG SHE IS TEH DEVIL KILL HER"

Sarah Palin: "Sry h8ers"

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Fishing permit violations. A blue-collar husband who racked up a DUI citation as a 22-year-old. An unmarried teenage daughter who is pregnant and a nasty child custody battle involving a family member.

All of this, to one degree or another, has surfaced in recent days as a result of efforts to discredit or undermine Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. But these revelations may have the opposite effect: In one sense, they could reinforce how remarkably unremarkable she is.

So far — and it is hard to tell what the future may hold for Palin’s unexpected national candidacy — the travails of the Palin family probably seem awfully familiar to many average Americans. It is this averageness that makes her such a politically promising running mate for John McCain — and such a dangerous opponent for Democrats. Many voters will find it easy to identify with her family’s struggles — a significant advantage in an election where the voting calculus is so unusually and intensely personal.

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Even the governor’s own Trooper-gate scandal, in which Palin is alleged to have exerted undue pressure to fire a state trooper, is suffused with an element that many families can identify with: one sister stepping in on behalf of another in an acrimonious dispute with a brother-in-law.

Powerful media organizations are beginning to pour resources into this story, so much more damaging twists and turns may await. But assuming the accusations don’t grow more serious, it is of a considerably different nature as an abuse of power than the last Trooper-gate scandal to rock the political world — the one in which Bill Clinton was alleged to use his state troopers in Arkansas to procure women as sex partners. That wouldn’t excuse Palin’s actions, of course, but it would frame them in such a way that could limit the political damage.

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Biden has his own compelling narrative; he commuted back to Wilmington, Del., daily for years to be with his young sons after his wife and infant daughter died in an automobile accident. But it is revealing that the first round of tough stories after his nomination explored conflicts of interest between Biden family members and one of the nation’s biggest asbestos litigation law firms. That’s a long way from fishing license violations.

If Palin can withstand more media vetting — a big if — and if she can avoid being framed as a nutty, gun-toting, Bible-thumper — another big if — it will suddenly become clear that there is no playbook for how to contend with a national politician who hasn’t been in the public arena long enough to accumulate the kind of personal and ethical baggage that almost invariably accompanies the ascent to power.

The recently dialed-down Democratic response to Palin’s nomination is an indicator that the Obama campaign is beginning to understand what it’s up against.

At a press availability Monday in Monroe, Mich., Obama strongly distanced himself from personal attacks on Palin.

“I have said before, and I will repeat again: People's families are off-limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know, my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."

Obama also firmly insisted that his campaign was not responsible for the proliferation of rumors about Palin’s family in the liberal blogosphere:

"I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us," he said. "Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired."

Looks like some folks here are gonna get fired from those paid-blogger positions.

DeeJayH · 09-02-08, 01:39 AM

I think you are going to have to give them a few more days for the bloodlust to subside