I’ve been talking to a member of the McCain/Palin team this morning about what to expect from Palin’s speech to the convention tonight. These speeches often feature a lot of biographical material, introducing an unknown candidate to the world. There will be some of that, I was told, but it won’t dominate the speech. “It’s not going to be super-heavy on that,” my source said. “It’s going to focus on her reform background. Yes, this will be an opportunity to introduce her to a much larger audience, but it is going to be heavy on reform. She tackles big issues.” The McCain campaign wants to present Palin in “a very strong way…she’s very dynamic…she commands.”
How will Palin address the family issues that have arisen since her elevation to the GOP ticket? My source didn’t want to address that — not because Palin isn’t going to do it, but because that’s the kind of thing the campaign wants to leave for the speech itself. Still, my source said, “We said on Monday and Tuesday that this discussion for us is over. We’re asking people to respect their privacy.” Well, they can dream. In any event, the campaign will release excerpts of the speech later today that might give us a hint where that particular issue is going.
On a question that is flying around here in St. Paul: What about the presence of one Levi Johnston, the 18 year-old father of Bristol Palin’s unborn child? At the end of this kind of speech, there is usually a lot of applause, music, and the candidate’s family up on stage. Johnston is in St. Paul, I am told, but there has been no final decision about what he will do tonight.
“This is not an issue that we’re going to act ashamed or scared about,” my source told me. “Despite the media coverage of this, voters still have such a great response to [Sarah Palin]. This just makes her more real.” So, I asked, does that mean Johnston will be on stage with the Palin family? “At this point we don’t know whether he will be up on stage,” I was told. “It remains to be seen. There hasn’t been a decision made yet.”
Perhaps I’m focusing on an irrelevant issue, but the presence, or non-presence, of Johnston on the stage tonight strikes me as important. It’s one thing for delegates to be understanding and compassionate about the fix these two teenagers have gotten themselves into. It’s another to actually celebrate it. And, given what we’ve learned in the last few days, if Johnston is up on stage with his girlfriend and the Palin family, and Republicans are wildly cheering, it will certainly look like they are celebrating this situation.
I don’t usually engage in these scenarios, but I’ll do it here. If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.