11:28 am
McCain-Palin: A Growing Scandal and a Little Boy
Brought to you by the letter M, as in maverick. . .
In an unguarded moment last night, McCain Report blogger Michael Goldfarb replied to my question of whether there’s any truth to the rumor that Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome child is actually her daughter’s with the following less-than-confidence-inspiring comment: “Well, I don’t…think so.” He added that the whole thing, like Hurricane Gustav, will have played out, one way or another, within the next 24 hours.
That wasn’t enough for the pretty pro-McCain crowd he was talking to, and when one interlocutor (not me) accused McCain of not having properly vetted his nominee, Goldfarb dropped the M bomb. “He’s a maverick,” he said. “That’s the way mavericks do things!”
. . .instead of, for once, the letter P, as in POW.
When it comes to all things Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign has concluded that the best defense is “John McCain is a Maverick” rather than “John McCain once suffered horribly for his country and therefore you can’t question his motives on anything.”
But in this case, neither of those excuses is going to hold water.
I’ve been following the question of the maternity of Palin’s youngest child, and find the response by both sides largely unseemly. The McCain campaign appears to be in full-scale denial mode. They need to find out the truth, and do it before Wednesday night. Because if this story blows after Palin is formally nominated, then we’re talking about the Republican version of McGovern-Eagleton ‘72: a candidate fails to vet a veep prospect properly, making a last-second decision rather than thinking through the consequences.
If Palin covered up her daughter’s pregnancy by claiming it as her own, part of me is sympathetic and part of me is outraged. Clearly it raises serious questions about her character, but it also reflects a mother trying to do right by her child — and potentially her grandchild. That said, I find it mind-blowing that, if true, she thought this would not have come out.
But the glee with which the progosphere has leaped on this story is also pretty distressing. Folks aren’t merely reporting it, they’re celebrating it. And they’re calling it “babygate.” That’s not just inappropriate, it’s downright tasteless. In addition, it could provoke a profound backlash against the left in general and the Obama campaign in particular.
And somewhere in the middle of all this is a little boy with Down syndrome.