Let’s get one thing straight: Bristol Palin should not, under any circumstances, become the direct subject of media scrutiny.  It’s none of our business who the child of her father is or what he’s doing, the details of her pregnancy, or anything about her save that she’s the pregnant daughter of a rabid pro-life/fundamentalist “family values” politician seeking the office of Vice President.

Will she have the media spotlight shined on her?  Yes, likely she will.  But let’s not forget one fact:  From the very beginning it has been the McCain campaign that pushed the story of “Sarah Palin: Brave Mother of A Disabled Child“.  Not bloggers, not the media, the McCain Campaign.

From the very start of this process, Sarah Palin’s motherhood and her children, especially the most recent baby in the Palin family, Trig, were put out there by the McCain campaign as reasons to vote for her. Her pro-life record, which centers as it must on her admirable decision to bring up a disabled child, was made the focus of the campaign - not by the press but by the McCain peeps. They put a baby out there, making Palin’s private life a subject bound to be covered by the media. Did they know what they were doing?

The human costs of all this must be pinned to the people responsible. Not the press, who are just doing their job. But the McCain campaign whose cynical attempt to appeal both to women and the pro-life world led them to pick and present Palin in this private context.

You don’t get to make a politician’s family life the key aspect of their nomination while simultaneously declaring it off-limits to inquiry and questioning.  It just doesn’t work like that.  Given the fact that Gov. Palin line-item vetoed funding for teen mother housing support out of the Alaskan budget yes, absolutely, is this a matter of public debate.

Those who would say that Sarah Palin’s family should be off-limits are forgetting one very important fact: By virtue of her position of power Sarah Palin has decided that it’s her right as a government executive to force her political & religious ideology onto the citizens of her state.  Now maybe Alaskans are OK with that.  After all, Alaska is one of the reddest states in the nation.  If that’s their choice that’s fine.  But if McCain gets his way Sarah Palin won’t be in charge of just Alaska; she’ll be a heartbeat away from being able to dictate family policy to the entire nation.

Her opinions on family values, sexual education, and teen mothers absolutely matter.  How she raises her family matters.  Not because it’s our right to know, but because she has a record of shaping public policy on how everyone else gets to raise theirs.  If she can’t even follow her rules within her own family what gives her the right to tell us how to do so in ours?  As commenter Sean of Poligazette say:

Gov. Palin has made her daughter’s pregnancy relevant to public debate for two reasons: 1) she has made ‘family values’ a central theme of her public personae; and 2) she seeks a position of incredible power and influence. McCain is wrong; Obama too. Unless Palin is willing to declare that if elected, she will not allow her own ideas about family to effect her policy positions, then we have not just a right, but a duty to inquire about into both the content and the efficacy of her views.

High-minded declarations about the sanctity of family privacy might reflect a world we all wished we lived in, but - thanks in large part to politicians like Palin herself - such is not the case for the world we must actually confront.

This isn’t about Bristol, it’s about Gov. Palin.  If some people are outraged and decide that this is reason enough to vote against Obama (even though he’s called for civility) there’s not a lot anyone can do to stop them.

This all boils down to one simple soundbite, and it has nothing to do with Bristol:  Sarah Palin thinks it’s her right to tell us how to raise our children.  Why should we listen to her if she can’t even raise her own?