Palin had trouble controlling her daughter because of her preoccupation with her political career

Late last night I posted the National Enquirer’s preview of its story on Sarah Palin’s unsuccessful attempt to get Bristol and Levi to marry prior to the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy, and I discussed the meaning of it. Today a reader kindly sent me a copy of the full story which he had scanned from the print version of the Enquirer.

Entitled “Sarah Palin’s Dark Secrets,” it deals with three “scandals,” two of which are touched on only cursorily and about which I have nothing to say. I am only interested in the Bristol matter.

The full account does not change anything in the earlier posted preview or in the conclusions I drew from it. However, there are further details about Palin’s relationship with her daughter that lend support to what I and Laura W. have been saying all week about how Palin’s political career may have negatively affected her role as a mother.

Let’s start at the beginning.

According to the Enquirer, Palin went public about the pregnancy when she learned that “the media knew about it and the news was about to break.” Since the Enquirer is the sole source of the story, we can assume that by “media” the Enquirer means itself, and that that Palins knew—from the fact that people who knew about Bristol’s pregnancy had been talking to the Enquirer—that the story was about to break.

In the previous post, I discussed in detail Sarah Palin’s unsuccessful efforts to get Bristol and Levi married before the announcement of the pregnancy. The full story has more on that:

An insider close to the baby’s father says Palin went as far as starting to make arrangements for a small wedding for the teens in Palmer, Alaska….

Palin’s plan, according to the source, was to have the wedding take place a few days after the Republican National Convention concluded—and then announce that Bristol was pregnant. “But Bristol refused to go along with the lies,” added the source, and the mother and daughter had a nasty fight over the plot to keep the pregnancy secret, according to the source.

On first thought, I don’t see how it’s necessarily dishonest for Palin to want to get Levi and Bristol married before announcing that Bristol was pregnant. To resolve a scandalous situation to the extent possible prior to admitting it does not seem dishonorable.

However, the situation becomes more problematic in the light of the following:

Sarah has had a stormy relationship with Bristol, said the family source.

“Sarah had a hard time controlling her, ” said the source. “She is so busy with her political career that it seems she often doesn’t have time for Bristol.

“While Todd is often around the house, there are issues their teenage daughter doesn’t want to share with her father.”

And this is the very heart of the issue that’s been tearing up the country, isn’t it? As Laura W. succinctly put it at VFR earlier this week, “For the record, supervised teenagers rarely become pregnant.” See Laura’s powerful explanation of that remark in the entry, “Why teen pregnancy, even when followed by marriage, is a tragedy; and why parents are responsible.”

From the above, we may fairly infer something which will seem self-evident but which needs to be spelled out explicitly: it wasn’t just Bristol whom Palin was attempting to protect by concealing the news of the pregnancy until it could be announced in a way that would be less embarrassing and damaging. It was herself she was attempting to protect, because she saw herself as responsible, or at least knew that others would reasonably see her as responsible, for her 17 year old daughter’s getting pregnant out of wedlock. Therefore she needed to prevent the information about the pregnancy from coming out prior to the Republican convention.

Her plan failed, but it didn’t matter, because, as it turned out, for most Republicans in the McCainized Republican party (though they would fiercely deny it), the right of a woman to pursue a career is a higher good than the proper raising of children and the protection of the family.

Terry Morris writes:

That is exactly right! It’s also a higher good—the right of a woman to pursue a career—than to be a loving and devoted wife to her husband … though most McCainized Republicans would fiercly deny that they’re saying that. Sarah and Todd’s apparently perfect marriage notwithstanding.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 05, 2008 09:13 PM | Send