A Perfect Storm?

As Hurricane Gustav makes its way across the Gulf Coast, and the GOP scrambles to reconstitute its National Convention, I can only imagine the colors John McCain's pallor must have gone through since the revelation of the pregnancy of VP pick's daughter Bristol Palin.

But, since the announcement came on Labor Day Monday, McCain and his team must be sighing a small sigh of relief that they, and the party's glitterati can use Gustav's arrival as a way of ducking the otherwise inevitable spotlight on this new example of judgment by the would be Chief Executive.

All reports claim that McCain and his staff were aware of the pregnancy before making the VP announcement. Given the exhausting vetting process one hopes the candidate must have gone through, the campaign must have been aware of the situation. Which once again speaks to McCain's underestimation of the American voter. Not only does he seems to believe that, as The Daily Show put it, "Vagina-Americans" would vote en masses for a female candidate, but that the erstwhile base of the Republican Party would ignore its Veep candidate's daughter's teenage pregnancy. Will they?

But what if they weren't aware of this news? What if the McCain camp learned about it after the announcement Friday morning. An announcement so perfectly timed to deflate the post convention bounce Obama and the Dems were hoping for.

In political news lore, Friday is traditionally "Take out the Trash Day" A day when news that the progenitors want ignored is traditionally put out on the feeding tables of the press. Nobody reads the Saturday newspapers after all. Well in 2008 and in this election season Friday August 30th was not "Take out the Trash Day".

It was the day that McCain would roll out his pick. To be greeted by mildly inappropriate pictures of the candidate's admittedly shapely legs - as Drudge did (left) Under the headline from The Times (London) of "Conservatives Find Their Dream Girl".

But did their dream turn quickly into a nightmare as the old shibboleth of the conservative right, "teenage pregnancy" reared its head?

What would have been the mood, the pallor, the strategy in the McCain camp? They had lost their trash Friday, not just lost it but embraced it themselves with the news. They were facing the entire world's press corp on Monday as the GOP gathered in the Twin Cities. They needed a diversion.

I watched slightly bemused as the stories unfolded over Saturday and Sunday about the Republicans plans for the convention in the light of Gustav's path to the Gulf. But even as the reports showed that, mighty though the storm would be it was not on the scale of Katrina, the Republicans seemed to rush to contingency plan after contingency plan. McCain dissed Bush by saying that they wouldn't be making the same mistakes as in the post Katrina aftermath; Bush and Cheney canceled appearances; and finally on Sunday the convention was scaled down to 'business only".

Then I woke to Monday's levy wall to levy wall coverage of wet streets and full levies. Seemed like the networks weren't going to make the same mistakes either. It was only when I turned to The Guardian that I saw Bristol Palin's plight. It was also only after I started to read further into the news articles that I discovered that apparently Left-Wing bloggers were spreading the rumor that candidate Palin's fourth, six month old, child was actually the progeny of her daughter.

Of course Sarah Palin had to scotch those rumors. It was not true! And to prove it here's Bristol, 5 months pregnant,marrying the hapless lad and having the child in December. So There!

A perfect storm? Maybe not. But if McCain couldn't leak the news of his running mates pregnancy issue, at least he got the chance to throw the baby out with the stormwater.