September 4, 2008
Although I’m on no one’s short list for vice president, Supreme Court justice, Cabinet secretary, or baby-sitter, I still play the “Vetting Game.” It goes like this: Whenever I hear about a highly public job hunt — for an ambassadorship, say, or a new pope — I ask myself, if a team of vetters were to show up at my office door, what is the one thing I am most worried they would find out about me? Conversely, what is the one thing I would be sure to tell them lest they somehow fail to find it out on their own?
In a virtuous mood, I congratulate myself that I have very little to regret in a Page Six, Drudge Report sort of way. My only brush with the law was a citation for playing Frisbee in a public park after dusk. I have never invested in anything more complicated than mutual funds, and even those are “socially responsible” — so responsible, in fact, that I have never been sullied or tempted by anything so crass as a “profit.” I have on occasion dropped an f-bomb on my kids, but I have been told by certain experts that this is perfectly acceptable — in moderation. These experts are also known as “parents.”
In less generous moods, I complain that I have very little to regret in a Page Six, Drudge Report kind of way. Virtue is its own reward, but it’s also a little embarrassing.
Not as embarrassing, of course, as the little imbroglio Sarah Palin finds herself in this week. When reports came out that the 17-year-old, unwed daughter of John McCain’s vice presidential pick was pregnant, I tried to imagine the conversation she had had with his vetters. “Is there anything else you would like to tell us, Gov. Palin? Something that if it were to come out would — oh, let’s say — knock news of the Republican convention and a major hurricane off page one and ignite a national debate about our candidate’s judgment?”
Palin can plead family privacy, I suppose, and in an ideal world she’d be justified. Normal families have normal family problems, and a teen’s unwanted pregnancy is sometimes one of these. I sympathize with politicians who ask that the media lay off their children — or at least I do to the degree that the politicians withhold from treating their own kids as political props.
And for the vast majority of politicians, I’m guessing the media uphold their end of this bargain. But there are certain cases in which the story is bigger than a gentleperson’s agreement. The first is if the politician happens to be in the running for the first or second most important job in the country, perhaps the world. The second is if the politician’s private life seems to contrast unflatteringly with his or her public convictions.
In Palin’s case, it was both. By accepting the nod as a vice-presidential candidate, she invited the kind of public scrutiny that would make even Paris Hilton feel violated.
And Palin was introduced as a darling of religious conservatives, who thrust teen sex into the center of our national politics decades ahead of the Palin revelations.
That isn’t to say that Palin is a hypocrite or “got what she deserved” — parents do their best to share their values with their children, and children make mistakes. Or rebel. But unless she thought the media might overlook her daughter’s pregnancy, or wildly underestimated the brouhaha its revelation would arouse, Palin’s real transgression is the ferocious scrutiny she brought on her child. Last month Bristol Palin was an Alaska teenager with a big challenge. This month, she is a media talking point, a political football, and a national symbol of our yawning social and political divide over sex.
Can a McCain-Palin ticket last until November? Fair or not, the pressures on Palin, her family, and the Republican ticket are enormous. Her statement of withdrawal almost writes itself, whether she decides to take the high road — “I regrettably underestimated the time and attention I must devote to my family in this difficult time” — or the low road: “I can no longer subject my family to the viciousness of the partisan media.”
In the meantime, conservatives and liberals will flog their talking points. Conservatives will suggest that Bristol Palin and the child’s father are walking rebukes of Roe v. Wade and are models for other young couples who find themselves in their situation. Liberals will suggest, despite knowing nothing about Bristol Palin and the choices she made, that she is a symbol of the failings of the kind of abstinence-only sex education her mother supports.
John McCain and his vetters will learn their own lessons.
And beyond politics? The lesson to be taken from this is personal and familial. We need to say to our kids, “When it comes to intercourse, wait — if not for marriage then for when you are fully ready to deal with the consequences. And when you decide you are ready — and let’s remember that’s probably later than you think — use contraceptives. And if the unintended still happens, we promise to support you as you weigh the fullest range of options.”
Oh, and one more promise: “We’ll respect your privacy in this matter, even if it means putting our own ambitions on hold.”
