Palin by Comparison

Forget about the experience question. Leave aside any concerns that the pick was a pander to far-right social conservatives and/or a cozen to women voters.

There are three things to know about Sarah Palin (the far right picture is her as Miss Congeniality Alska in 1984) that should instantly and automatically disqualify her from the vice presidency:

1. Palin didn't tell anyone she was pregnant with her latest child -- not even most of her family or staff or government colleagues -- until she was nearly to term.

2. Palin didn't tell her children that she had accepted the veep slot on the Republican ticket until mere hours before she took the podium in Dayton with John McCain last Friday morning.

3. Palin's latest child was born with serve disabilities related to Down syndrome, a condition that could not have been made better by Palin's obvious concerns with keeping her weight down during her preganacy or her insistence on delaying delivery for nearly a day after her water broke. She was back at work three days after the child was born, and now she is hitting the presidential campaign trail. (BTW: Mr. Palin, oil-field worker and commercial fisherman, is not a stay-at-home father.)

Children are often ignored -- or worse, exploited in the name of -- career and political advancement, but what Palin has been doing and continues to do constitutes negligence at best and abuse at worst. Who doesn't tell their children they're running for national office? What kind of mother who has the ability to do so doesn't take time off after giving birth to make sure her child is doing as well as possible?

This is not sexism. If Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine had been named the Democratic vice presidential candidate, I'd have the same concerns that he was looking after the best interest of his children. He appears to be doing so. And are the Obamas making sure their kids are doing okay? Aside from letting them stay up way too late each night last week and using them as props a couple times, I'd have to say they are.

For all of her pro-life bona fides, Palin's actions paint a picture of a person who is putting just about everything before her family, especially the welfare of her children. That makes her a hypocrite in extemis, and we already have enough of those in Washington.

Even if a voter could get past all the troubling antiparental behavior, he or she will then have to confront that fact that Palin has been active in Alska politics for the past 18 years and has never once called for the construction of a fence along the Canadian border. Palin is soft on Cannucks, which is something that simply cannot be allowed to go unpunished. How much longer must those 1,538 miles go unmilitarized before someone draws a line in snow?