Kerry Howley

The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn has a truly fascinating post on Sarah Palin:

And now we learn the 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. She and the father of the child plan to marry. This may be a hard one for the Republican conservative family-values crowd to swallow. Of course, this can happen in any family. But it must certainly raise the question among the evangelical base about whether Sarah Palin has been enough of a hands-on mother.

Note that it doesn’t raise any questions for Sally Quinn. Sally Quinn would never dream of calling a working woman a bad mother. It’s just that, you know, this kind of thing raises questions for other people who are not Sally Quinn.

McCain claims he knew about the pregnancy, and was not at all concerned. Why not? Not only do we have a woman with five children, including an infant with special needs, but a woman whose 17-year-old child will need her even more in the coming months. Not to mention the grandchild. This would inevitably be an enormous distraction for a new vice president (or president) in a time of global turmoil. Not only in terms of her job, but from a media standpoint as well…

How dare Sarah Palin abandon five children and a fetus! Except that one of those “children” is 19, and another is starting a family of her own, which leaves Palin with two healthy school-age kids and one special needs child. Has anyone noticed that Barack Obama has two young daughters? How can he be a father and a public official at the same time? If Michelle gets pregnant again the campaign is doomed.

I don’t blame Palin for accepting the position. How could she or anyone turn down such an opportunity?

The argument here is as follows: Mommies have no business running for vice president, but nor can we blame them for running, because they are incapable of saying no. Quinn isn’t even willing to grant Palin enough agency to hold her morally accountable for whatever imaginary crimes she may have committed.

Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job? She is the mother of five children, one of them a four-month-old with Down Syndrome. Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make?

So Sarah Palin cannot commit to this notoriously vacuous position because women are beholden to their children, just as Kennedy was obviously in the pocket of the papacy. This will be a big problem when a jihadist threatens to annihilate the entire United States unless he is sated with the blood of the Vice President’s progeny. Then we’ll see where her loyalties lie.