Knocked up

Well, as everyone reading this post is no doubt aware, Bristol Palin is pregnant. There's (extremely) thinly veiled schadenfreude on the Left, along with a healthy dose of the kind of "politics of personal destruction" they bemoaned during the Clinton years. On the Right it seems that Bristol's "little mistake" has somehow given her mother a bizarre kind of street cred with Conservatives. "They're a normal family!" "This happens all the time in America!" and "She really is one of us!" are the kind of statements I'm hearing. Color me unconvinced.

(Not that I doubt Sarah Palin's everyman credentials, mind you. I just don't think that such credentials are all that important. Yes, I realize that since Andrew Jackson brought his Tennessee entourage with him to his inauguration 180 years ago that candidates for the presidency have at least had to try to pass themselves off as common folk. I don't care. It's great if a candidate is in touch with the hoi polloi, but if not that's okay. I'll take an Alexander Hamilton or Gouverner Morris any day if he'll commit to tearing down the sprawling, bloated monument to serfdom that is the modern welfare state -- farm subsidies, corporate welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and TANF, among other unnecessary programs. But I digress.)

I was ambivalent about Palin before the whole Bristol business surfaced. I'm more so now. "But there's this thing called 'grace'," my gracious wife keeps reminding me. And I agree. As Christians we are obligated to help Bristol Palin and her family with our prayers and (if logistically possible) our actions. We need to allow her to put her sin behind her and not hold it against her. That's what we have to do for the daughter. For the mom, though? How does this reflect well on her in any way? She was a busy woman, we know that. She had a state to run. If she didn't keep track of exactly what her daughter was doing. well, there's only so much she can do. And yet, this is bad. At the very least it has to raise questions about some of her priorities.

There's another side to this coin, of course. The witness of scripture tells us that the best leaders are not always the best parents. This is one of the subplots of First and Second Samuel, for instance. Eli and Samuel were great judges. They led Israel well and were beloved by the people for their efforts. As fathers, though, they were clearly sub par. Eli's sons used their power to steal from the tabernacle treasury and to force women to sleep with them. Their sins cost Eli and his family their roles as leaders of Israel. The incompetence and greed of Samuel's sons prompted Israel to ask for a king so there would be some professional leadership at the top. And what about David, the greatest king of Israel? Terrible. His eldest son, Amnon, raped his half-sister, Tamar. His third son, Absalom, later murdered Amnon in cold blood for raping his sister. When David eventually pardoned Absalom for his fratricide, Absalom thanked him by fomenting rebellion and declaring himself king. Bad. Now look at Saul, a C-/D+ king. Good father. His children are honorable (although his daughter Michal's overbearing sense of propriety eventually makes her frigid) and bring him no shame. His heir, Jonathan, shows remarkable grace and humility by befriending David -- the man he knows will take his rightful place as king.

So not being able to keep your house in order isn't necessarily evidence of poor leadership abilities. It's generally not a promising sign, though, nor is it cause to celebrate as a sign of a prospective leader's everyman street cred. To the extent that Conservatives are doing this, their response is every bit as disappointing and inappropriate as the Left's hypocritical lurid demonizing tactics.