{"id":12940,"date":"2008-09-04T08:48:04","date_gmt":"2008-09-04T15:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/09\/04\/using-the-kids-in-politics.html"},"modified":"2008-09-04T08:48:04","modified_gmt":"2008-09-04T15:48:04","slug":"using_the_kids_in_politic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/04\/using_the_kids_in_politic.html","title":{"rendered":"Using the kids in politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les<\/a> points to this article by Ted Anthony: GOP contradicts self on Palin family<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

For two days, the chorus from Republicans on TV news and in the halls of the convention has been resounding: Back off and let the Palin family be. “That’s out of bounds,” said Minnesota’s Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty. “There’s no need to be intrusive and pry into that.”<\/p>\n

Yet Wednesday found the following scenes unfolding:<\/p>\n

– Sarah Palin<\/span>‘s pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old daughter and probable future son-in-law stood in a nationally televised, politically packaged airport receiving line to meet and greet the Republican candidate for president.<\/p>\n

– The extremely cute and bubbly Piper Palin, 7, made her debut on her mother’s behalf, appearing in a video on John McCain’s daughter’s blog. “Vote for my mommy and John McCain<\/span>,” she said, giggling as Meghan McCain<\/span> grinned.<\/p>\n

– Bristol Palin and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Levi Johnston, sat and held hands as they watched the Alaska governor deliver an acceptance speech that, in its opening minutes, focused heavily on her family and children. Later, the family \u2014 including Johnston \u2014 ascended the stage, basked in an extended ovation and waved.<\/p>\n

Huh? The Republican message<\/span> about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone \u2014 so we can use them as we see fit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s a certain measure of this that’s inevitable, even fitting. I mean, it’s not a mystery that Palin (or any other politician) has a family. They can’t be shuffled off to a deep, dark bunker somewhere to visit their Uncle Cheney whilst the election is proceeding. Certainly there’s some appeal to having them show up there on stage at the convention, etc.<\/p>\n

But the more you involve them in your campaign, and the more you tout your relationship with them and your parental role as a strength you bring to the ticket, the more fair game that relationship and parenting becomes. If you’re going to talk about (in the Palin case) how cool it is that you’re a rabidly protective “hockey mom,” and drag around your daughter and her boyfriend with you to packaged, televised events, then the whole “respect our privacy” hands-off-the-kids thing stops being quite as defensible, let alone actually being able to question how good your parenting skills are or how effective your “no sex ed! abstinence only!” mantra has been.<\/p>\n

Put in cruder terms, when you use people as human shields, you take a good chunk of responsibility when they become part of the collateral damage.<\/p>\n

Again, this is not just a Palin thing. As has been noted, Obama’s kids have shown up more than once, and there’s the whole “Joe Biden rode the train home every night so he could be with his sons” tidbit that we’ve heard more than once. <\/p>\n

But for some reason, the Palin thing grates more, perhaps because of the timing of the whole pregnancy thing, or the fact that she’s running in a big part based on her “executive experience” as a hockey mom.<\/p>\n

McCain, too, hasn’t been consistent in this. On the one hand, in that recent Time <\/em>interview<\/a> when he was asked about how he felt about his sons being in the military, he stated flatly, “We don’t discuss our sons.” But evidently other McCain supporters can, since there was Fred Thompson the other night going on at length about the McCain sons serving in the military, to the rapturous applause of the RNC audience.<\/p>\n

That’s fine. But the more it’s all talked about as a positive, the more it becomes fair game for criticism or examination. For example, based on the Biden anecdote, it would be legitimate for someone to talk with the Biden boys about how much quality time that actually represented (“Yeah, he came home every night, but stayed locked in his office until 11 p.m.”). Similarly, while tracking down and interviewing Palin’s youngest kids would be inappropriate, it is legitimate, to my mind, to follow up on questions of how involved Palin’s been with her family, given some of the things that have happened there — including Bristol’s pregnancy. (Not that a teen pregnancy is automatically, let alone fully, the fault of a parent, but it does speak to some degree about their relationship.)<\/p>\n

You simply can’t have it both ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Les points to this article by Ted Anthony: GOP contradicts self on Palin family  For two days, the chorus from Republicans on TV news and in the halls of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54,12,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008","category-fourth-estate","category-parenting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":39492,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/01\/who-is-the-leader-of-the-republican-party.html","url_meta":{"origin":12940,"position":0},"title":"Who is the leader of the Republican Party?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 1-Nov-13 12:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"My immediate reaction to Cruz in the role\u00a0was \"Good Lord.\"But then I looked at the article, and that headline is just plain wrong. A small (and narrow) plurality of Republicans consider Ted Cruz as the GOP leader.'Twenty-one percent chose Cruz, 17 percent chose New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51734,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/14\/what-the-gop-needs-for-2016.html","url_meta":{"origin":12940,"position":1},"title":"What the GOP Needs for 2016","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 14-Jul-15 4:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, it's satire (the Borowitz Report). But, like all good satire, disturbingly close to the truth. 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Putting Words in Palin's Mouth -...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12956,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/01\/potpourri_de_la_palin.html","url_meta":{"origin":12940,"position":3},"title":"Potpourri de la Palin","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 1-Sep-08 1:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"In some ways, the Palin selection has probably generated more criticisms of McCain from the Left (at least) than any of his other choices would have. 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