Bristol Palin baby revelation: gross misjudgment or a sick and twisted con?

Really, you have to wonder.

It goes without saying that the gang of Rove spawn running McCain's campaign are smart: evil and smart, like a mullet - good at a party, good for a campaign.  Now, there are only a couple of ways to handle an inconvenient truth like an unwed teenage mother of your Vice Presidential candidate -  a candidate who happens to be, among others, a high priestess of sorts for the abstinence, no-contraception crowd.  Kind of awkward, to say the least.

Assuming John McCain is telling the truth, and after all, he's an honorable man, that Sarah Palin told him about the pregnancy and he approved of her candicacy anyway, the McCain camp would have very quickly run through the options.

First, they could have held the daughter's pregnancy as a closely guarded secret.  Yeah, get real.  With the information already available about the birth of baby Trig to a mother who never looked pregnant, who made a remarkable 12 hour trip to deliver in a particular small clinic, at the same time her daughter was sequested for months on end,  the McCain boys all knew that "the baby thing" would be a secret for, oh, about three days.  Takes the internet community about three days to wade through the garbage and find the gold.  So, they knew it wasn't going to be a secret for long.

Second, the McCain folks could have simply told the story, called it a private family matter, and moved on.  The MSM may have had the balls to ask the obvious policy questions that come to mind, but the daughter could have receded into the background and disappeared.  Clean, but likely trouble for McCain, and no campaign advantage.

The trick - and here's the evil genius part that someone is gloating about in a hotel bar as we speak - was to withhold the real information about Bristol's pregancy, and offer enough information to feed questions about Sarah's pregnancy,  for long enough to give the internet wolves a chance to rip into the story offered as a diversion.  (I believe there is a saying:  "raw meat in the foyer, look for the trap door." ) After a few days, just long enough for the lives and reputations of everyone involved to be completey ravaged by a few million bloggers, rumor mongers, conspiracy freaks, prying old ladies - in other words, the internet community -  they announce the real news . . . . .  .and the poor, innocent, ravaged mother and daughter are canonized, their feet and lives washed with scented oils, their stories as those of all saints off limits from "the media's" rude gaze.

Millions of ordinary folks are now outraged by how poor Bristol was used, and by that evil media, and gosh, isn't she a fine and courageous girl after all and, gosh, now that I think about it, so is her mom, and, gosh, so is John McCain for giving us the chance to share in her life and sainthood..  And any questions about the denying birth control to teenages and having them rely on abstinance - oh, how rude, how rude even to explore the issue. 

It may have been a complete misjudgement by John McCain and his handlers, but from out here in the west, it looks a whole lot like a slick trick, a sweet con worked to perfection.  It relied on one simple, ironclad truth that McCain and his gang know by heart:  everything about a political candidate will become known, and very soon.  Whether we have got to the bottom if this twisted tale is anyone's guess, but the first trick has certainly gone to Moriarty.

 Oh, and Bristol Palin is innocent, and she was used, but it wasn't by those who had suspicions, asked questions, looked for answers.  She was used by her mother and John McCain, as a pawn in a game in which her feelings, her privacy, and her life were sacrificed for a poltical play.  Sarah Palin could have walked away from this and saved her daughter, but in her life, it appears ambition trumps love.  And John McCain could have handled this with honesty and sensitivity, but in his life, calculation will always trump compassion.

So there you have it:  honest misjudgment, or a sick and twisted con? You decide.  But we can all hope that Bristol Palin somehow is allowed peace and quiet, that the McCain campaign stops flogging her for votes and allows her to be what she is: a child who will become a mother, and who needs all of the love and compassion she can find in the mean and heartless political world, where John McCain will not hesitate to use her while she has value,  and discard her when she has none.