A political theory of relativity

On Friday morning John McCain picked his vice president. By Sunday morning the leftist rumor mills and scandal factories websites had gotten to work.

There seem to be two chief "scandals" in Governor Palin's history.

Let us deal with them briefly.

The first scandal centers on her firing a political appointee. (He was offered another job.) The publicly stated reason was inability to do his job and failure to cooperate in cutting spending. Apparently, this is not in dispute; but he says that he was also fired because he wouldn't fire her former brother in law.

There were a whole bunch of functional reasons for needing to fire the man but apparently the Governor's interest in it had to do with him threatening to kill her father.

The second scandal is rather more salacious but apparently much less backed in truth. DailyKos had a lengthy story calling on Governor Palin to admit that her last child was not her own but was in fact her granddaughter. [I'll spend a few words below explaining why this theory isn't quite fully baked.]

I was also recently reminded of the scandals used in the press to discredit Governor Romney. You'll remember how he made a dog ride on the roof of his car once. Then there was the way he hired a lawn care company that employed illegal immigrants.

On the reverse side, you've got Barack Obama's scandals. Among the more notable ones that come to my mind are the whole Rezko mess [if you don't know the details you should probably make yourself familiar with it] and the Ayers fundraiser.

These are of course minor compared to the shenanigans of the last Democrat in the oval office.

To me the interesting part of all of this is that there is no apparent sense of the disconnect to the people who accept the second group of scandals and harp upon the first.

I present for your consumption therefore, the following theory of scandal relativity.

The ridiculousness of ones political positions is directly proportional to the ridiculousness of what one thinks scandalous.

It has a close corollary that one's abhorrence to real scandal in those one supports is inversely proportional to the intrinsic evil which underlies the goals one politically seeks to achieve.

The theory stands on its own for clarity. The corollary deserves a brief example in application to clarify the point. In addition to the myriad other reasons why moral people everywhere were outraged by our last President, his horrific conduct was demeaning to women. Now, if only there were some kind of national organization of women that could have decried his conduct... oh wait, there is. I'd guess that NOW is just still working on their statement condemning him. Things like this take years to get right. Especially when statements condemning anti-abortion laws are gobbling up so much of the press release writers time.

I'm curious can anybody think of any counter examples? Sensible political positions paired with ridiculous inability to properly stack rank scandals or the converse.

[I promised above a few thoughts about the latest controversy out of Seward's folly. Here they are:]

So, let me first state that I am not suggesting that these allegations are impossible. Much as I could walk up to a person here in Seattle and say to that person, "Your shoes are brown therefore you must be from Augusta, Maine" and be right. These people could be right. The logic is just absurd either way and if they are right it's simply an absurdly lucky guess with no credit due them for being right.

There are two points in the incredibly creative scandal write up that caught my attention.

One is a picture that shows the oldest Palin daughter with a slightly distended stomach. It turns out the photo was taken in 2006 though which makes it a hard sell for a 2008 pregnancy. This of course means that they have to claim that the dating on the photo is fake. As evidence they point out that the local anti-Palin newspaper references her age as 16 in the picture which says 2006 on it. Then they say since she is 17 now that proves it must have been taken in 2008. [1/3 of 2008 remains as I write this.]

The second point of note is that apparently Governor Palin had some minor complications with her pregnancy in Dallas just before giving birth. The side spinning the scandal side of the equation would have you believe that since no one would fly to rural Alaska while having contractions, the baby must not be hers. Here's the thing and it goes directly to my equation above: let us suppose you weren't pregnant. (Probably not too hard to do for most of the readers at any given moment.) Now, if you were not pregnant and you needed to conceal the surreptitious trade of a baby which of these approaches would you take:

1. Claiming an urgent problem and hurrying back to Alaska in a way that would look very suspicious.
2. Flying back to Alaska and as the plane landed announcing that you thought you were going into labor and asking to be rushed to the hospital.

I'll wager that if you picked #1, you also think that government should be managing your health care.