By Daniel Bergamasco

Translated By Caroline Martinez

9/2/2008


Brazil - Folha - Original Article (Portuguese)

Chosen as the vice presidential candidate on republican John McCain’s ticket very much for her conservative credentials, Sarah Palin revealed yesterday that one of her daughters, Briston, 17, is pregnant. This raises questions about how the electorate that she wants to attract, especially the Christian right, will react to the news.

Will they criticize the Palin family for permitting pre-marital sex, contrary to what President George W. Bush and a good part of the party preaches? Or will they praise her for going forward with an unplanned pregnancy and announcing that the teenager will get married?

In the hallways of the Xcel Energy Center, where the Republican Convention is being held, the loyal party delegates defend the latter view. “Sarah is very conservative and showed once again that she is a strong woman, with values that do not allow for the cowardice of abortion and who encouraged her daughter to get married. What the girl did was a mistake, but the mother’s role is to provide support,” Barbara Thorburn, from Texas, said to Folha.

Analysts considered, meanwhile, that negative repercussions would reach far from the base engaged in McCain’s candidacy, especially from the more conservative people, who already have reservations because of the candidate’s liberal rhetoric on some subjects.

The choice of Palin was already being questioned by those who considered her too young (44 years old) and inexperienced (she was the mayor of a small town in Alaska for six years and has been the governor of the state for one and a half), weakening McCain’s criticism that rival Barack Obama is not ready to govern.

In addition, Palin’s academic credentials—she studied at the low-prestige University of Idaho—also cast doubt on her ability to conquer the independent female electorate, discontent with the defeat of Senator Hillary Clinton (regarded as experienced and prepared) in the democratic primaries.

There is still the possibility that the vice presidential candidate will look incoherent in her speeches. In 2006, she wrote on a questionnaire from the conservative group Eagle Forum that she was against sex education in schools, favoring abstinence-only education. “Explicit sex programs will not have my support,” she said on that occasion, according to CNN.

Glass Ceiling

The revelation of her daughter’s pregnancy was not the only news about McCain’s vice president, which, say analysts, could raise questions from the electorate about what could happen during the campaign.

Yesterday it was discovered that Palin hired a lawyer to defend her in a lawsuit by a state trooper who claims he lost his job for refusing to fire a subordinate who was married to her sister. It was also revealed that Palin’s husband, Todd, was arrested for drunk driving 24 years ago.

McCain’s campaign avoided bringing more attention to the subject. “Things happen in life,” said the candidate. According to his advisers, he already knew about the pregnancy upon choosing his vice president, and the decision to divulge the information was an attempt to contain rumors on the blogosphere that the governor’s five month old baby was Bristol’s.

When Palin’s family came to the stage during her announcement as the vice presidential candidate on Friday, Bristol carried her little brother in her arms, covering up her belly. With respect to the baby’s father, the party says only that he is a “young man” named Levi.

Obama declared that he would fire anyone in his campaign who tried to make political use of the pregnancy. “This is not relevant to Palin’s performance as governor or eventual vice-president,” he said, remembering that his mother had him at the age of 18.