Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Election Hokey Pokey

I'm still leaving myself a little bit of wiggle room when it comes to the choice of Governor Palin.

I'm holding out a little bit of hope that HuffingtonPost (and Cody) are wrong...that the pick was not one of an imbecile or a completely patronizing pol.

And, while I realize that my little corner of the internets does not even register as being important, I've tried to hold to my personal editorial decision not to go into the family issues that have come to light on the GOP side, but rules are made to be broken.

Part of the justification for the Governor's being on the ticket is her personal story, including the family she's raised. While I find it appalling that the family situation made it into the press, and, from the bottom of my heart, feel that this is none of my damned business, it's hard for me to take seriously the "leave family out of it!" retort we're hearing from Camp McCain now.

If you are ready to trot out your family as one of the big virtues you bring to the campaign then, unfortunately, you've made them eligible for at least some degree of scrutiny. I don't in any way justify or apologize for the story coming out, but the Palin folks have shown a great degree of comfortableness with using their children as props in the last few days.

Again, I go back to the Clintons and the admirable way they kept Chelsea out of his presidential activities.

Selah.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Very interesting points you make Dan.

I have already spent all my cynical money, so....

I will just have to state that she is doing some good things for the GOP. For one, she has completely knocked Obama off the front page. Which is quite a feat with the strong speech and generally good convention. Second, he personal story has completely diverted the conversation away from the GOPs record to a conversation about her. A brilliant strategy considering the abysmal record the GOP has to defend post 1995.

Dan said...

Good little walk-thru of Palin's political career in the Times this morning if you're interested.

They largely avoid some of the window-dressing criticisms we've been hearing lately...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/politics/03wasilla.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin