The Straightaway

The Palin media circus continues – word has broken out that Sarah Palin’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol Palin, is pregnant. If John McCain wanted to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama with his VP pick, well, he sure is getting his wish.

Obama has already made it clear that family is off-limits in this campaign, especially Bristol and her baby. Luckily, his campaign won’t have to make it an issue – the media and everyday people are already all over it.

Really, this situation is an interesting case of broad platform policy affecting the lives of the candidates themselves. Sarah Palin, a staunch pro-life supporter, has done well to raise her daughter with her values – Bristol is keeping the baby, and will marry the father of the baby. Many socially-conservative evangelicals have been impressed by this inspiring stand of beliefs, poised to join the McCain ranks as they had declined to before.

However, this situation might very well show the failure of one of Palin’s policy stances: abstinence-only sex education. Many might take this situation to point out that if Palin’s own daughter couldn’t avoid this unplanned pregnancy and subsequent shotgun marriage, then who’s to say that the abstinence-only education works at all.

Normally, family news such as this should be kept out of politics. However, given that it so directly affects a key policy issue in this campaign, it might be alright for the media to keep dissecting this issue (as long as it is in a tasteful, constructive manner. Obviously, any personal attacks based on this would be unfair.) The fact that the story involves a key figure in the election is just an unfortunate coincidence.

The old, tired cliche says that there is no such thing as bad publicity. All this might not be bad publicity,  but it might certainly be overexposure. Remember when people were polled as saying they were tired of hearing about Obama? Well, there must be more than a few people who tired of hearing about Sarah Palin right now.