Weighing in regardless

~There has probably been too much said about all this already, including bloggers who've spoken eloquently about it, but this whole Sarah Palin thing keeps niggling at me. I will admit to having something of a knee jerk reaction to her political leanings: anti-choice, NRA member, advocate of teaching creationism, advocate of drilling in ANWAR, and so forth. I doubt that we could be more different in our political leanings.

~That said, there is more to my discomfort at her nomination than that. As much as I don't want to judge her on criteria that most likely wouldn't be applied to a male candidate (like what kind of parent she is), I can't help but wonder about her priorities. Much has been made of her decision not to terminate her pregnancy when she learned that her youngest child would be born with Trisomy 21--she's been called "heroic", a label I (and others) find inappropriate--but what about her decision to leave that child to return to work when he was just 3 days old? And what about her decision to undertake a national campaign when that child is only four months old? As I watch my daughter with her 5-month-old, I'm reminded how challenging it is to parent an infant, how much time and energy it takes. Of course that doesn't mean that a mother shouldn't pursue her career. But how does one juggle caring for not just an infant but a special needs infant while jetting about the country promoting one's campaign?

~Add to that her willingness to thrust her pregnant 17-year-old into the national spotlight. Being 17 and pregnant must be hard enough no matter how much support your family gives you without being held up to public scrutiny. Palin knew her daughter was pregnant long before McCain approached her about the vice presidency. Surely she must've considered the impact that this would have on her daughter and on the father of her baby. You'd might think that a parent would want to protect them from that kind of pressure.

~So I question Palin's judgment, her decision making, as well as her political positions. And I question John McCain's judgment and decision making skills as well. Apparently his VP pick was make on the fly, without much vetting of Palin. As I noted last week, his choice to me smacks of opportunism, of wanting to grab the spotlight away from Obama and the democrats in the most dramatic way possible. To me it feels almost like a cyncial choice. Knowing that he can't really compete with the magnetism of Obama's campaign, he makes an attempt to woo disgruntled Hillary supporters with a flashy VP choice. But in doing so he manages not only pick an outrageously unqualified candidate, but also to insult the intelligence of women by assuming that female voters would choose gender over substance. Some might, I guess, but most are smarter than that.

~Then there was that thankfully short-lived notion that perhaps McCain and Palin should give their acceptanc speech from the gulf coast. Huh? Let's just suppose for a minute that Gustav had devastated New Orleans like Katrina did. Is it really helpful to have presidential candidates lurking in the area with their entourage of security, staff and press? Bad enough that GWB thinks it's being "presidential" to hang out nearby (in a weak attempt to compensate for his abysmal failure to help after Katrina). Luckily for everyone, Gustav was not the "mother of all storms" it had the potential to be, but the idea that one might use such a storm for political gain in the guise of being concerned is reprehensible to me.

~And the worst part of all? McCain and Palin might actually get elected. I'd like to think that the electorate would be better than that, but after all Bush and Cheney were elected twice. I don't want to think about what this country would be like after four (or eight--shudder) years under a McCain/Palin administration.