It All Comes Down to This

Forget Mr. Toad's Wild Jet Ride from Texas to Anchorage. Forget that rumors that Bristol Palin was pregnant can be dated to before March 2008. Forget that Sarah Palin was the skinniest 44 year old pregnant woman ever on the planet. Forget that she didn't tell her own mother she was pregnant until she was seven months. Forget that a woman with five high risk factors chose to give birth attended by a family practice physician at a rural hospital with no high-risk facilities. Forget that not one photograph of the "happy family" is available from the time of the birth. Ignore it all.

Assume only two things: rumors begin to fly on August 30, 2008 that Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin was not Trig Palin's mother and that the McCain campaign decides that the rumors must be countered. (Both of these things are indisputably true.)

You have two choices:

1. Ask the physician whom you have stated publicly delivered Trig, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, someone for whom you wrote recommendations on at least one occasion that helped her get a prestigious award, someone you appointed to a state medical advisory board, someone who had delivered one of your previous children - accompanied by perhaps Norman Stephens, the Mat-Su Regional Hospital CEO - to give a press conference. Ask her to make one statement: "On 6:30 a.m. on April 18th Sarah Palin gave birth to Trig Palin here at Mat-Su Regional Hospital. I was the physician in attendance. Sarah Palin is Trig Palin's biological mother. The rumors and allegations that Sarah Palin is not Trig Palin's biological mother are entirely false. Thank you."

OR

2. Announce to the world that your 17 year old daughter is five months pregnant (while providing no actual proof), making her the most notorious (and I don't use that word lightly) pregnant teen on the planet, opening not only your daughter to endless speculation and scrutiny but allowing a dialogue on your own parenting to begin, something that can in no way help your candidacy.

Hmmm. Tough call. Number one, number two. Number one, number two. Oh, hell. Let's go with number two.

It all comes down to that.