McCain Finds the Right Wingman
And she's a woman.
by Stephen F. Hayes
09/15/2008, Volume 014, Issue 01
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Minneapolis
Last Tuesday, as the hordes of media that had begun to dissect every moment of her political career and personal life were distracted by speeches from Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman in nearby St. Paul, Sarah Palin sat quietly with her family for an hourlong dinner in the Skywater restaurant of the Minneapolis Hilton. It was a rare respite from the intense scrutiny she was subjected to over the first week of her new life in the national spotlight.
Over the previous several days she had been portrayed as a naïf, a rube, and a bad mother. Journalists had peppered the McCain campaign with legitimate questions about her experience and her record as governor. But these same news organizations--including some of the world's most prestigious--devoted much of their time to exploring irrelevant aspects of her personal and family life.
One television network showed a family picture of the Palins with the belly of Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol spotlighted. Another showed several high school pictures of Bristol Palin's boyfriend, Levi. In the fourth paragraph of a front-page New York Times story we learned that Palin's husband, Todd, had been arrested on DUI charges in 1986. A writer for the Atlantic Monthly hyped an unfounded Desperate Housewives-type rumor that Palin's last child, Trig, was actually her daughter's. A major U.S. newspaper demanded the McCain campaign share medical records relating to Palin's amniotic fluid.
There were erroneous reports that Palin had supported Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign (she supported Steve Forbes), that she had been a
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