(World News Trust) -- The Look-Before-You-Leap presidential campaign is at it again: “Do as I
say, not as I do.” It amuses and confuses me as I watch the Republican
Party writhe and wriggle around in the mud. It’s not so much the Gulf
Coast hurricane wreckage in which they’re mired, but in the dialogue
(and probably their own wobbly and now-questionable convictions) that
they’re trying to manipulate about Sarah Palin, their ”gently-vetted”
VP nominee.
Um… WAS she vetted, at all, before her name was plucked from obscurity?
Should the GOP have figured up advance evacuation plans for this
swirling storm on their radar screens? They had disaster mechanisms in
place for Hurricane Gustav, this time. What about for Hurricane Sarah?
A political party with such a powerful weathervane for conservative
self-righteousness didn’t see and failed to predict the gale-force
winds that now seem to be blowing around Palin. The family-values
darling brings quite a storm front with her -- including a teenage
daughter unmarried and five months pregnant. With her emergence onto
the headlines a mere few days ago, she’s already got at least one
*-gate” -- the abuse-of-power scandal called “Trooper-gate,” and who
knows what else, dogging her heels.
And that’s just it. Who knows what else? What other baggage is this
lady carrying? Did John McCain know? Did his staff do any kind of
serious background check before catapulting her into the public eye, or
did they stop merely when the ideology checked out? If he knew, was he
hoping to keep it a secret? After all, a really good way to distract
prying eyes from noticing a swollen young belly is to have that belly
overshadowed by a four-month-old baby being carried in front of it,
laid out on a very widespread receiving blanket. If McCain knew in
advance, how long did he seriously believe it would be before the news
leaked out? What does that say about his competence to make solid
judgment calls if he didn’t know, or about the purity of his intentions
if he did know? Did he really put country first and his own campaign or
political ambitions second or was he just trying to pull a fast one?
Or was he simply in too big a hurry to rain on Barack Obama’s parade the day after the DNC convention to care about making a
critical executive decision in haste or shameless expedience?
Barack Obama was swift to step in and declare that private matters
within a family are off-limits, but there’s a larger issue here. First
of all, no one is twisting Sarah Palin’s arm and forcing her to join
the Republican ticket against her will. She has stepped into this one
voluntarily. And when you willingly stick your neck out like this,
you’re truly playing with the biggest of the big boys -- and big girls.
You become public property, especially if you presume to want to govern
the public, accept a paycheck from the public, and set and pursue
policies that will impact the public in matters that affect their own
private lives. It goes with the territory whether you like it or not.
The public owns you. ALL the public -- supporters and opponents alike.
Chelsea Clinton became public domain when she was a teenager living
with her parents in the White House. Her mom and dad asked the media to
respect her privacy, even while very public personae from Rush Limbaugh
to some guy named McCain defied that request, making it their business
to honk and cat call and make mean-spirited jokes about her looks.
Nobody in the Republican Party got too upset about that. But at the
same time, Bill and Hillary Clinton weren’t preaching from every
rooftop about what is moral and what isn’t, or sanctimoniously setting
themselves on public pedestals of parental perfection. The GOP, by
contrast, has been doing nothing but that, first with
McCain-the-Untouchable-POW, and now with Palin, Ms. Supermom-America
2008.
But this is NOT off-limits. We, the public, have every right to discuss
this and other scandals that may come up, in full, in the sunlight and
open air, and dig up the facts on our own if the mainstream media
won’t. As George W. Bush once said, “it’s your money.” Damn right. It
IS our money Sarah Palin will be playing with, and our money that will
fund her Vice Presidential salary, health benefits, residence, staff,
travel, security, and other perks, if she and McCain win the election.
It’s our money about which she would be advising McCain, lobbying for
the way it’s spent and redistributed. If the McCain/Palin ticket
triumphs in November, they both become our employees, and as bosses, we
have every right and indeed a responsibility not to stay in the dark
while they take our money and act in our name. Who they are, how they
live, what they claim to be, with what and whom they surround
themselves, and how that bears upon their leadership potential is absolutely our business. ALL of it. If the GOP wins,
McCain/Palin would become our faces to the rest of the world. With all
these questionable issues on their record, we’re already talking
two-faced.
It is well worth discussing what kind of hypocrisy we’re being asked to
tolerate or ignore -- from a self-proclaimed pro-life hardliner who
pushes abstinence-only education. Character counts, especially for
members of the party that makes everything a character issue. The way
Palin runs her personal life is therefore relevant when her own teenage
daughter (who by Alaskan state law is deemed of age and therefore a
legally-defined big girl) becomes the poster child of the failure of
Mom’s preferred educational emphasis. At 17, Bristol Palin has already
reached the age of consent in Alaska, and will soon marry her baby’s
father, we’re told. Her age makes her a legally-defined big girl, too.
It is reasonable to question what kind of role model Palin really is,
and what social dictates she’d try to impose as Vice President with
this background of hers in mind, particularly since she’s made morality
part of her campaign profile. How can she claim to be a leader on family values when her own family looks like it’s angling to star in the next chaotic MTV reality show?
It’s also completely fair game to question how well she’d be able to
manage duties the size and scope of the Vice President of the United
States, much less the rigors of a campaign for same. Even more
critical, she would be a single 72-year-old heartbeat away from the
presidency -- which makes it even more relevant. These are extraordinary
stakes. With that large, complicated, and demanding a family including
the littlest one with special needs who’ll be pulling at her attention
around the clock, could Sarah Palin truly be ready for that proverbial
3 a.m. phone call? I’d suspect she’d probably be up already, but with an
entirely different agenda on her mind at that hour. That’s multitasking
on a whole different level. I had to downshift considerably in my own
life after a few years of working motherhood, and I only have two kids.
Besides, I wasn’t aspiring toward the second most powerful job in the
world.
Like it or not, women are fully invested in the game now, downsides
included. All those years fighting for equal treatment mean you don’t
demand special handling or the waiving of rules. For the kind of job
she wants, Palin and her advisors should be ready and willing to face
ANY questioning that comes. Palin is the second female VP hopeful in
our history, in the same year when we came thisclose to having the
first female candidate for president. Rightly or wrongly, women are
still stereotypically viewed as wearing many hats. If you’re married
and have a large family with whom you pride yourself as being hands-on,
as Palin is, that’s part of you and part of the package you bring with
you into the public arena. And it’s part of what the public has a
right to vet closely. If it starts to get a little hot, you still face
up to it like a grown-up -- of either gender -- and accept
responsibility without excuses or whining that something might be off limits because you’re beyond being questioned. If something’s
uncomfortable, you bite your lip and just cope with it like a
professional.
As a citizen, voter, and taxpayer, I have a right to make sure my
interests have my vice president’s full attention at all times. I’ve
heard the complaints that it’s sexist to factor Palin’s family into her
ambitions. That you wouldn’t hold a man’s feet to the fire in the same
way. That it’s none of our business. And that we wouldn’t be asking
some male in her position the same questions and prying into his
personal life. Oh, certainly not. Just ask Bill Clinton about having
his privacy probed. He was operating on the public’s time, and dime, so
it was fair game. And if it was fair game for him, the same applies to
Palin and McCain as they aspire to that level of public office. Repeat
-- PUBLIC office. Nothing private about it, at least not anymore. And
you can thank the GOP and its attack-dog affiliates for that particular
game-changer. They’ve spent a few decades by now sharpening their
discourse in favor of their entitlement to intrude into our private lives. Since when should theirs remain private?
The Republicans have reworked their entire convention around Hurricane
Gustav. Perhaps they should have attended to a little more emergency
preparedness for Hurricane Sarah before they took off into the clouds
at full throttle. Too bad nobody cared to spend much time studying the
weather forecast beforehand.
***
Mary Lyon
is a veteran broadcaster and five-time Golden Mike Award winner, who
has anchored, reported, and written for the Associated Press Radio
Network, NBC Radio "The Source," and many Los Angeles-area stations
including KRTH-FM/AM, KLOS-FM, KFWB-AM, and KTLA-TV, and occasional
media analyst for ABC Radio News. She began her career as a liberal
activist with the Student Coalition for Humphrey/Muskie in 1968, and
helped spearhead a regional campaign, The Power 18," to win the right
to vote for 18-year-olds. She remains an advocate for liberal causes,
responsibility and accountability in media, environmental education and
support of the arts for children, and green living. In addition to
World News Trust, Mary writes for Huffington Post, OpEdNews, Democrats.us, WeDemocrats.org's "We! The People" webzine. Mary is also a parenting
expert, having written and llustrated the book "The Frazzled Working
Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood.