Osler's Razor

Don't forget that Palin is a staunch supporter of abstinence only sex education...
 

I assume you also think that the fact that Joe Biden ran for the senate after his wife died and he had two young sons at home to raise by himself reflects poorly on him.

And that John Edwards decision to run for President even though he had a wife struggling with cancer and young children at home reflects poorly on him.

And I assume you think that Bill Clinton should've resigned when it became clear that he had cheated on his wife while he was President and his marriage was in trouble and he should've been focusing on saving his marriage and his personal life.

Or when John Adams son died while he was in office due to a number of problems, including alcoholism, Adams should've resigned to care to his family in a time of crisis.

Presidents Jefferson, Pierce, Lincoln, and Coolidge all had children die while they served as well. I guess they all should've resigned to focus on their families and to ensure that their jobs didn't distract them.

Bottom line, families have problems (though I'm not sure I would call a new baby a problem). Her daughter made a mistake and I'm sure they will deal with it as a family. But, I think if one of the standards for running for President or VP is that your family situation is perfect and there is no risk of there being any family problems that could distract you or that need your attention then we better start electing only single people with no children, no siblings, and deceased parents/grandparents/etc. to ensure they're completely insulated from any potential family crisis.
 

WOW. Now I had not heard this!

Hmm . . . yes, it looks like the McCain campaign has a BIG problem on its hands, and the Democrats are going to have a field day with this one.

As to whether Palin should stay home or be on the campaign trail with a 17-year-old pregnant daughter at home . . . I don't know. If she's already pregnant, it's kinda too late, I'd say.

And one of Palin's children has Down's syndrome. Is that even more of a reason to stay home? I mean, she's obviously already decided to work, if she's serving as governor. It seems like that decision has already been made.

Yes, I agree it's true that serving all the way across the country in Washington is light years more serious than staying at home in Alaska, where she can see her kids every day.

The woman in me, part of that woman, is amazed that she would want to be so far away. On the other hand, only she knows her own family situation. And would any of us berate a male candidate for working--for serving in national office-- when he has 5 kids at home, even a family with a pregnant 17-year-old daughter and a child with Down's syndrome?

Maybe we should, but we don't.
 

WOW. Now I had not heard this!

Hmm . . . yes, it looks like the McCain campaign has a BIG problem on its hands, and the Democrats are going to have a field day with this one.

As to whether Palin should stay home or be on the campaign trail with a 17-year-old pregnant daughter at home . . . I don't know. If she's already pregnant, it's kinda too late, I'd say.

And one of Palin's children has Down's syndrome. Is that even more of a reason to stay home? I mean, she's obviously already decided to work, if she's serving as governor. It seems like that decision has already been made.

Yes, I agree it's true that serving all the way across the country in Washington is light years more serious than staying at home in Alaska, where she can see her kids every day.

The woman in me, part of that woman, is amazed that she would want to be so far away. On the other hand, only she knows her own family situation. And would any of us berate a male candidate for working--for serving in national office-- when he has 5 kids at home, even a family with a pregnant 17-year-old daughter and a child with Down's syndrome?

Maybe we should, but we don't.
 

RRL, biden was ALREADY elected when the accident occurred. AND, he was about to resign when they told him he had to continue. You know where he took his oath of office? At their bedside. He took a train for an hour and a half every day, each way, so he could care for them.

But Edwards is sleeze. :)
 

This just makes me more proud to be a republican, and I'm not being facetious in the least. "Oops" pregnancies happen to the best of us, even when the mother stays home and bakes cookies every day. It doesn't mean there's a crisis in the home - it means there are humans in the home.

The hard part, though, is sticking to your professed beliefs when they're actually tested. Palin is 100% pro-life, in all situations, and she's proven that by unashamedly taking this all in stride instead of taking the easy way out and trying to hush it up. I'll admit that this is an unfortunate way for her to prove her staunchness... but it's proven.
 

Interesting that it 's the Republicans (Palin and you guys, RRL and ALV) who are now so magnanimous about unplanned pregnancies . . . I hope such generosity carries through when it comes time to fund programs for the single mothers who are expected to have the baby from an unplanned pregnancy no matter what . . . not every pregnant girl has a home and two loving parents, like Palin's daughter does, even if Palin isn't always there.
 

If it was a male democrat who held himself out politically as a devout Christian, yeah, you guys would all be attacking him.

Palin has a ton of problems, and it is typical of McCain to act impulsively in making important decisions.

All those years of harping on "family values" will come home to roost when the family is a mess. And I think that a family basically abandoned by the mom to campaign, with a working dad, and a pregnant teenager, is going to be pretty damn messy.
 

If that constitutes a crisis in a home, then, well, we've got a lot of crises around the country.
 

RRL-- I stand by my statement. You are comparing her decision to run for office, an incredibly intense undertaking that will constantly keep her on the move and away from home, with people who were in office (except Edwards, and you are probably right about him). What is significant here is that in the span of six months she (1) has a kid with Down's Syndrome, (2) finds out her minor child is pregnant, and (3) decides to seek a job that will cause her to spend the next two months away from home and virtually inaccessible. She is clearly putting her political ambitions before her family in an especially acute way. I disagree with that decision, and I would if she was a man, too.

And, seriously, are Republicans now saying that teen pregnancy is no big deal? That families don't need to treat that as a crisis? Wow, you really have lost your moral compass, then.

The response I'm seeing here makes Republicans seem so much more concerned with power than families, and that confirms something I have long suspected-- that the "family values" talk was just a way to attack homosexuals as a political tool.
 

I don't understand why having "family values" (by the way, I've never been big on the social conservative movement, don't really care about gay marriage, abortion, etc.) is inherently contradictory with saying that life doesn't end when something happens in your family. Yes, teen pregnancy is a problem. Yes, we should do thinks to curtail teenage girls getting pregnant to the extent we can. Yes, your daughter getting pregnant is a "big deal." But caring about your family, taking care of your family, caring for your daughter, maintaining a sense of morality...none of that means that you have to quit your job and stay at home 24 hours a day.

In fact, I think that conservatives are about personal responsibility. This young lady has to take responsibility for her actions (she appears to be doing so) and her family will have to help her (all indications are that they're doing so). And her family ought to take responsibility for not doing more to prevent her from making that mistake. But those are personal issues. How does that effect her ability to run for VP or to govern?

Anon 3:55 - and then he ran again. And again. All while his two children were growing up without their mother. If the theory is that campaigning is so trying on the family then it would seem to apply every time you run.

Oh, and I don't have any problem with Biden running for Senate. I just wish he wouldn't have won so much :)

Osler - "an incredibly intense undertaking that will constantly keep her on the move and away from home, with people who were in office." So, running for VP is more "intense" than being president? When Lincoln was administrating during the civil war it was less "intense" than running for VP? When Clinton was sending troops to Bosnia and bombing Iraq it was less intense an undertaking than running for VP? And sitting President's aren't busy and don't travel a lot? I don't know, but that seems a bit disingenuous.

What response should Republicans have? What would be appropriate? Should they kick her out of the party? Should they turn the clock back 50 years and tell her that when her family is in crisis she has an obligation, as a mother, to stay at home and take care of her children full time?

And, I've never attacked homosexuals as a political tool once in my life. I don't support the Gay Marriage Ban constitutional amendment. I frankly don't care who marries who. And I know a lot of conservatives like me.

Swissgirl - "Interesting that it 's the Republicans (Palin and you guys, RRL and ALV) who are now so magnanimous about unplanned pregnancies"

Look, I'm not saying I think that we should all look at the girl and say, "hey no big deal. Good for you." As I said in my first post, she made a mistake. But it was her mistake. And her and her family should deal with it. You're right, she is lucky she has that support system, and that will make her life a little easier. However, that doesn't mean that every teenager that makes a bad decision should become a ward of the state and that we should assume responsibility for the poor decisions of others who might not have that support system.

Here is my question. When did the Democratic party become the party that felt that a teenage pregnancy in the family was such a black mark on the family that the mother of that child should just give up? When did Democrats start erecting glass ceilings instead of breaking them down?

I guess hypocrisy isn't the sole province of the Republican party....
 

Sorry for the long post.....

I get excited sometimes.....

To sum it up, for those less inclined to read 35,000 words on the subject.....

Yay Palin!!!!!!
 

Yay, way to have a pregnant teen kid?
Way to be the (controversial) mayor of a small town?
Way to be governor for 18 months?
Way to be female?

I don't get it. Seriously, I'm willing to be fair about the election, and I genuinely like McCain both as a man and as a candidate, but I do not like this choice for VP.


Again (for the 3d time), I am distinguishing between running for office and holding it. Running for VP is different than being the VP. The former takes up almost all of a person's time as they are sent from state to state giving speeches, but not the latter (VP can be a pretty unexciting job). She is choosing career over family at the worst possible time. It is wrong for a parent to do that, man or woman. I am not insisting on 24-hours-at-home; rather, I am recognizing that she will have almost NO time at home.

To me, that matters. Especially given that, honestly, part of her political appeal is that she is the mother of five, as we have heard many times over the last few days from the McCain campaign and its supporters.
 

No, RRL, hypocrisy isn't the sole province of the Republican party. But I still feel that your hypocrisies are bigger than ours.

RRL, I am making absolutely NO judgments on girls, or women, who get pregnant by accident. None whatsoever, of Palin or of her daughter or of anybody.

I think what Osler's saying, and what matters to me as well, is that people should own up to their responsibilities, and prioritize them. Not so different from what you're saying. Palin should own up to the fact that she's got a daughter at home who's going through a pregnancy for the first time and needs a woman around, that she has a Down's syndrome child who probably needs a lot of attention; all of us (myself included) who wouldn't criticize a man for leaving his family behind when he takes a time -consuming job should re-orient ourselves; and our political parties who preach one thing and then say it's okay when the thing they preach against happens to them should realize their inconsistency. responsiblity.

My frustration with Republicans in all this is that they've preached no sex before marriage, abstinence education, having the baby and not an abortion no matter what the circumstances, but so often the policies they enact don't recognize that this is all a continuum. If there were more effective and realistic sex-education, perhaps teen pregnancies would drop. Is it really a great idea for a teenage girl to get pregnant before she finishes high school? Most parents would not want that for their daughters or their sons.

And also along that continuum is the fact that not all pregnancies occur in situations where an easy support network is there. What's your alternative, RRL, if a girl has no one to turn to? If the "state" is not going to help her, should she just be on the street?

That's my real frustration: maybe it's not exactly the Republicanism you believe in, RRL, but the party that I see enacting policy would have the girl (a) get educated in school that abstinence is the only way, and not get correct information about birth control or use of condoms to prevent AIDS; (b) get pregnant; (c) be forced to have the baby; and (d) have the baby, no matter what, and figure out for herself how to take care of that baby even if she's fourteen and lives in poverty.

You want all these things as if people are perfect, and the conditions they all live in are ideal, and they aren't. And the policies don't fit together. The fourteen-year-old is supposed to have the baby that happened because she didn't get educated about birth control because the religious right doesn't think you should talk about birth control in schools . . . . and because you think we should all be able to support ourselves no matter what, we don't get enough funding for day care or ESL classes or special education . . .

The reason that this issue upsets me is that I am so tired of being made to feel by Republicans (okay, not by you, but by the party as a whole, at election time) that as a Democrat my values are inferior to yours and that I can't possibly have the kind of families that y'all have. Or that my friends who are two gay guys or two lesbians can't possibly be great parents. Or that I am somehow lesser because these people are my friends.

So if you and other Republicans like you really aren't bothered about the social-conservative issues, why do you tolerate people in your party who are? And why do you let them make something like gay marriage such a huge issue when it isn't, and get in the way of things that matter more?
 

First, I was kind of kidding with the "yay Palin" comment. It was meant as a little levity as much as anything. You know, I get accused of being nothing but a Republican cheerleader around here a lot, so I was kind of poking fun at myself. But, as most of my jokes do, it failed.....

No, not yay for having a pregnant teen kid. Though, I don't think that is the end of the world either, or is evidence that she is a bad mother/political candidate.

I don't know how good of a mayor she was because I'm not from Wasilla, Alaska. But, my guess is that its local politics and when you say she was "controversial" it doesn't take more that one nutjob constantly writing articles to the local newspaper to make you controversial. We live in Waco, we know this to be true.

I guess yes to way to be governor for 18 months. Good for her. However, if your sarcasm is meant to indicate that she is inexperienced (which she is) then those in glass houses (those voting for a 1st term senator not to be VP but to be the main guy) shouldn't throw stones.

I don't personally care that she is a woman. However, I do think it is fascinating how much the mainstream media was falling all over themselves to congratulate the Democrats for having a black man and a woman as the two main candidates for the nomination, yet as soon as the Republicans pick a woman it is seen as a political calculation and there seems to be much less fawning.

Oh, and I will be fair too. I'm not a real McCain fan. Not fiscally conservative enough for me. And I hate campaign finance reform. And he kind of just generally creeps me out. And I thought the Biden VP pick was well done by Obama. I just think that the particular issue you've chosen to criticize Palin for is not the right one. I don't think she is immune from criticism, it just seems to me that Obamacons are in a rush to find anything wrong with this woman, and having a family that isn't perfect just doesn't seem like a winner to me.

And for the third time, I understand you are drawing a difference between running for office and being in office. And my point is that it seems to me that if you would need to stop campaigning and stay at home to take care of your family instead of just campaigning then when you are actually the President, when you actually have the 24 hour job, when you're the most powerful person on earth, that you would be much more distracted from family crisis than you would when you are running for something. I understand that if she were already VP she would mostly be hanging out watching CNN all day, and therefore the campaign is the most strenuous part of THAT job. However, I don't see the how you can argue that campaigning would take up most of a person's time, therefore making them incapable of dealing with a family crisis; yet, being president wouldn't. I don't get that.

And, mostly, I find it all hilarious, because the stuff I'm reading on lefty blogs (not here, and this isn't about you Osler, so please don't take offense because I'm not talking about your argument which I think comes from an honest and reasonable place) just smells of desperation because the bounce from the convention wasn't as big as they hoped and they don't like the fact that they don't control the identity politics in this election anymore.

I love random political chaos Mondays too......

And I love this blog specifically because there are actual cogent arguments (not by everyone, but by most) to respond to. A credit to the kind of people that follow you Osler.
 

My question is this: with Palin out campaigning for VP, and Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell campaigning for the U.S. House, who the heck is running the executive branch of Alaska?

Also, I think this type of incident puts a serious dent in the abstinence-only argument, namely that abstinence, while of course being the most logical and responsible choice, is not always the choice of teenagers, who are not generally known for being logical or responsible. Sure, it's a great ideal, but it's not a failproof system, and teaching safer sex practices at least informs them of what to do if they, like so many of them do, choose not to follow an abstinence-only path.
 

I am 100% in Osler's court on this one. As a 46 yr old woman; the one thing I can assure you of is ~ you can't have your cake and eat it to. I have friends who wanted to have it all. And it doesn't work that way. I have been in the work place long enough to see the ramifications of such decisions. There are admittedly ocassions when it works out but it is not without a lot of pain and suffering along the way.

In addition Gov. Palin is now a parent with a son heading into the military, a pregnant daughter and a 5 month old down syndrome child. No idea about the the age or state of the other two children. I think my plate would be awfully full dealing with all of this and being Governor.

Something has to give! When you have teenagers at home you have to stick your nose in their business all the time. This from my friends with teenage kids. They hate it, but will respect you for it later.

I can only imagine being 16(again) and my parents having another child and the expectations that are suddenly placed before me - with my mother working. REBELLION

I can assure you Palin's appeal as a mother, yada, yada, ya doesn't appeal to my 'responsible' aging republican parents or my republican brother. They already think McCain is too old. We finally share something in common to discuss when I visit them later this week.
 

Swissgirl:

How do you quantify hypocrisy? How do we judge whose are bigger? I think the better answer is that we are all hypocrites on some level, and hypocrisy seems to be the weakest argument against a position or action someone has taken. If you don't like the position or action then call them out on that level. Saying their a hypocrite is basically saying that "I have no problem with the conduct, but I want to say something about them anyways because I don't like them."

And I'm not being inconsistent. I thought the people who said Edwards should be at home with his wife because she was suffering from cancer and not campaigning were wrong, and I said so at the time. I think that life isn't perfect, and if you constantly wait for the perfect time, the perfect situation, to do something like run for Prez or VP then you will be waiting for a long time. As in forever.

If this was a Democrat, and Republicans were making these exact same charges, then I would get to hear Racheal Maddow on MSNBC saying, "I think it is insulting and sexist that the Republican party thinks women should stay at home and are incapable of handling a career in politics and their families. They wouldn't say that about a man. This is just one more example of the backwards cavemen like way of thinking that exists on the far-right. This is the party of Jim Crow, and apparently they haven't come very far." However, I won't hear her say that now.

I wonder why that is.....
 

RRL ~
there maybe hope for you yet!
 

Well, RRL, I think choosing a political party is in many ways choosing the hypocrisies you can live with and the ones you can't. That's all I meant by my comment.

You called me a hypocrite first, by the way!

And you ducked my last question.
 

Ummm, actually you were the first one to throw around the hypocrisy charge Swissgirl. If fact, in your second comment on the subject you specifically mentioned me as a member of a group of people that has suddently changed his tune on teen pregnancies (though to the best of my knowledge we never previously discussed the issue). No big deal, I've been called worse.

And I think choosing a party, or an ideology is about siding with who you think is right, or at least the most right, about the things you care about. Hypocrisy be damned.

And conservatives (in the movement sense) align with christian Republicans because they agree about the outcome but for different reasons. For conservatives it is about federalism and states right, while for christians its a moral issue, but the outcome is the same. We are the big tent party!!!
 

As a way for silencing the snowball's chance rumor that her youngest child was actually her daughter's, I have to hand it to Palin, this sewed that one up nicely.

Then again, I've sort of been baffled by this choice from the start. As a way of attempting to lure disaffected Hillary supporters away, it's insulting. As a way of placating religious conservatives, it's backfiring, for the reasons listed here: no "family values" voter is going to support someone taking a leave of absence from her family for a hard campaign, especially with young children and grandkids on the way. It may be a double standard, but it's there, and I'm inclined to say that in this case the double standard is exactly what anti-feminists like Palin deserve.

And as a way of luring in Joe Sixpacks who want someone anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage (in a strong way) on the Republican ticket, you've also just put a female on the ticket with very little experience, two of the biggest criticisms launched at the Democratic frontrunners by said Joe Sixpacks.

I can't understand the motivations behind this choice; it reeks of amateurism from the Republican political machine, and if it's one thing I've come to expect from the Republicans, it is a high degree of sophisticated political maneuvering.

Oh well.
 

Swissgirl hits the nail on the head:

"I hope such generosity carries through when it comes time to fund programs for the single mothers"

As for me, I must say that I feel the same way about Palin as I did about Edwards and pretty much every other politican that has troubles at home: the decisions that a family makes about which challenges to take on and what opportunities (particularly once in a life-time ones) to seize, are up to that family alone, and are nobody's business.

Working moms are no strangers to trade-offs, paternalistic judgement and guilt, therefore if Gov. Palin thinks she can handle the additional stress of the nomination, then she will.
 

Tom DeLay sighting! (Hosting a big party for contributors!)
Hot tub Tom is back.
RRL will be so proud ...
 

Hey Osler I thought I had put a comment in showing how inconsistent your position was- it was something about how Obama will be neglecting his young daughters in their formative years when he becomes President, there may not be problems now but whos to say we wont have some teen pregnancy in the Obama house in a few years when he runs for re-election. Did I get censored?
 

Can we talk about something that's a real problem here, please? What was Gov. Palin smoking when she NAMED these kids??

Track, Brisol, Willow, Piper, & Trig??

I think this demonstrates seriously questionable decision-making and leadership skills.