Republi-Karma Redux

The McCain campaign just can’t get a break.

The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate was an inspired choice, to be sure. The announcement coming so soon after the Investiture at Invesco also showed that the McCainiacs don’t lack for a sense of timing; it may have served to blunt the effects of any post-convention bounce.

However, in the current political climate, the familial baggage attached to Palin has only magnified the target on her back, however unjustified the attacks are.

Personally, I would venture that the fact that she has been so successful while dealing with such family difficulty should resonate with most Americans, who may actually be more likely to have familial difficulties unlike hers without the personal success she has experienced. For some reason, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

As if the announcement of Bristol Palin’s travails weren’t enough to disrupt what might have been inspired timing, Hurricane Gustav made landfall to remind everyone of this administration’s biggest failure and the actual turning point in its political fortune.

Additionally, the Pentagon has—quietly—traded “Global War on Terror” for “Long War Against Violent Extremist Movements.” In other words, somebody finally dispensed with “Mission Accomplished” as a battle plan and consequently pulled the rug out from under this administration’s raison d’etre. Even such a conservative eminence grise as Rich Lowry now characterizes this administration as having “w[on] a disputed election and botch[ed] a foreign occupation” (in yesterday’s New York Post).

Ironically, the conservatives had been complaining all along that American military successes were never reported; now even they can’t stand the good tidings. An anonymous operative on the Republican convention floor was reported as having said the best thing about the convention was that it would be over soon. Conservatives can only wish the same could be true about a policy nightmare largely of their own making.

On a tangential note, I wrote in these pages (“Prime Time Prognosis: Fertile”, July 21) that maybe a new, more effective model of related social services would result from a seeming spate of very public pop-culture pregnancies.

Irrespective of the political fallout resulting from Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, this may finally be where that tipping point occurs, because it shows that it can happen in an otherwise upstanding, stable, even religious family.

Someone must be paying attention.