Sarah Palin: A Christian Woman Questions a Christian Woman

I’m conflicted. One part of me says, “Sarah Palin’s personal life doesn’t matter. At all.”

Yet, another part of me says, “but one of the best ways to judge a person is how they interact with their family, so it does matter.”

And then a third part of me says, “Still, all that matters as for whether or not a person should be hired for a particular job is whether or not they can function in that position.”

And then the mom part in me says, “But, seriously — What the @*^%?!”

So, the pragmatist in me researched Palin’s political career. And that was when things got interesting. Palin has only been in politics for a fragment of her life. With just a minor in college in Political Science, she paints herself for the media as a simple, home-town girl who fell into politics more or less in ‘a vacuum. ‘ She felt that things in her small town needed to change, so she ran for mayor. Her re-election to mayor there was contested by the previous mayor, but her election to Governor of Alaska wasn’t so heatedly contended. She’s attractive, well spoken, and she thinks fast on her feet.

But she’s a politician. There was all that campaiging and 398 million dollars of tax payers money spent on a bridge that was never completed. On one hand she rabidly attacks governmental corruption, but on the other hand she was sued for personally motivated
firings, a suit that was settled not with a decision of, “Not guilty,” but of “Within her rights.”

So, she was “within her rights” to fire people, even if that was motivated by personal and political interest,and not for the good of the people. She’s also currently under investigation for corruption.Though she vows to work against it, she courts Ted Stevens, (currently under indictment) for his sponsorship,and doesn’t denounce him when the other shoe drops. In fact, she talks out of both sides of her mouth on the issue of Ted Stevens, denouncing his corruption, and the same time lending her personal support and expressing her gratitude for his kindness to her.

When she first became governor, she moved heaven and earth to cancel the destruction of a the government-sponsored dairy farm because of jobs it would cost her state. Yet, later in her term, twhen it became clear that her promised spending cuts might not be doable, she then put that same farm up for auction, but then axed that when the auction failed to provide sufficient revenue.

This incident alone shows her dangerous lack of experience. I’m imagining the amount of manpower and time and money wasted in just that one particular instance, where she naively made promises it should have been clear she couldn’t keep. Being the Vice President isn’t a learn-as-you-go escapade. I’m imagining all of the wasted energy that could go into her Vice-Presidency as she postures and then fails, time and time again.

It’s not that I don’t think a woman can do the job- this woman is just not the right one. How can anyone who got her first passport after
she was forty, feel competent and ready to reside over foreign policies?

And I haven’t even started talking about her woeful lack of legislative experience. The Vice President is also the President of the Senate. She will be expected to read and comprehend legal briefings, she will have to hold in her head the minutae of the law. Yes, being governor of Alaska has certainly familiarized her with the broad strokes, and I’m sure she’s very familiar with board meetings, not to mention that she was a member of the PTA, so she’s probably presided over town hall style debates.

But this isn’t the school board we’re talking about, it’s a country. A super-power, in fact.

One could argue, and the Republicans have, that lack of experience also works against Obama. But, Obama has been in the Senate as well as the State Senate. He has had enough time on the national field to be able to pick a cabinet and cadre of advisors whom he can trust to not let him fail on a massive scale. Palin is a relative unknown, clearly grappling with a great deal of personal pride and ego. She has no experience on a national scale, and while McCain will be able to help assign her advisors to guide her through the transition, not only will she have basic legislative work to familiarize herself with, but she will be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. McCain is no spring chicken, I hate to say, and has had his share of health problems. While I don’t wish him dead, certainly, I also don’t know that something tragic won’t happen.

Is Palin really the person we want to have second in line?

Now, onto the more personal matters: Do I care that her seventeen year old daughter is pregnant and marrying the father? On a political level, no. Why would that matter? Yet, here is where, as a mother, I say- “What the frak, Sarah?”

1. While seven months pregnant with her son, Palin flew out to speak at a conference. Pregnant women are not allowed to fly in their third trimester, due to risk of ruptured membranes and premature labor. And she had prematurely ruptured membranes and went into labor. But, rather than going to a hospital immediately, she finished up her duties at the conference and then flew back home. Anyone who has had a child can tell you that after your membranes rupture, your doctor will give you twelve hours—tops—to have that baby. The amount of fluid in your uterus will have to be regularly checked, as well as the baby needing to be monitored for stress. One should be in a hospital, not on an airplane. Sarah Palin showed a reckless disregard for the safety of her unborn son. Badly done.

2. Her seventeen year old daughter is purportedly five months pregnant. Which wouldn’t matter to me at all, except that I had my daughter at twenty one. And that was hard enough. Even with a lot of family around, even with my mother in the delivery room, even with a relatively easy recovery… I cannot imagine having a child at seventeen. I cannot imagine having a child at seventeen while trying to adjust to the pressures of marriage. I cannot imagine doing all of this while your mother is out of state being sworn into office. I CANNOT IMAGINE A MOTHER NOT BEING THERE FOR HER DAUGHTER.

3. There’s also the fact that Palin is quoted as having said that even if her daughter were brutally raped, she’d still want her daughter to have the child. At the time, her daughter was fourteen. And Palin is an avid supporter of abstinence only sex education, which baffles me. I won’t say “perhaps had her daughter been more educated she wouldn’t be pregnant now”, because I’ve no right to make that judgment, but I WILL say that Palin’s choice to run for VP while knowing about her daughter’s is pregnancy, and that it would inevitably make news and inevitably call her morals and the value of said morals into judgment, shows a callous disregard for her daughter and those morals. There’s such a thing as the spirit of the morals and the letter. If I really, truly cared about abstinence only sex-education, if I really, truly believed it to be the best moral choice, and I had a seventeen-year-old, pregnant daughter waiting for me backstage, I just wouldn’t accept the nomination. Because if my ideals are to hold any water, they have to be more valuable to me than my career.

I just can’t wrap my mind around it. And as much as I wish I could say my pragmatic reasons for disliking Sarah Palin outweigh my WTF?! about her family life, I have to admit that it’s eighty percent WTF?! and only twenty percent, “she’s just not ready.”

And all the parts of me woman, U.S. citizen, mother and Christian, ask this question:

What really matters to Sarah Palin?