Mother and Child

Oh, Susannah! Long ago and far away I was so impressed by your dogged determination during the Rathergate thing. That said, how about easing off your inner cynic? If the woman had appeared on stage without that baby her detractors would be yelling about how she was "hiding" him. She appears with him and cynics call it a pr stunt. Speaking from experience I know (and so should you with 2 new babies) that being up late at night or in a noisy, bright setting has 0 impact on 4 month olds as long as he was being well cared for.

It is fascinating that people are contending that candidates for President need experience as US Senators, rather than Governors. After all, how can one have foreign policy experience? The irony, is that in the last 20 presidential races (going back to 1924), only ONE president was a US Senator: John F Kennedy. Why? Because Americans have tended to be more comfortable with candidates with executive experience, rather than senatorial experience.

This year marks an exception to the rule, in that our new President will be a Senator. So the selection of a Governor as Vice-President, as John S. McCain has done with Sarah Palin, helps to provide the executive experience the American people have traditionally expected.

I am proud to see Senator McCain round out his ticket with someone OTHER than a US Senator.

The speech was excellent.

As a cynic, I immediately thought she was playing the "special needs" card, for which I felt scorn, not admiration. She's already thrown the pregnant daughter to the wolves for her own political ambition. But I hadn't thought of the hour until I heard someone else mention it, and you're right, what was he doing out late at night in a hall filled with screamers? I know I was really digusted by the number of times they cut to the shot of the girl or first dude holding the baby, and Spindly McCain rocking her own black one. These horrifying phonies will stop at nothing and people keep buying it. Chilling.....

am I supposted to vote for John McCain because Sarah Palin has a child with Downs Syndrome or a 17 year old daughter who is 5 months pregnant? These are the cirumstances of her life and I wish she and her family well in dealing with them, but are we Americans really so simple minded? I want to know how she and McCain will fix the economy and get us out of Iraq. I want to know why after 8 years of horrible governing, any republican anywhere should get anybody's vote.

You gottta be friggin kidding me!!! What impresses me is when a single mom who works two jobs waitressing and has a sick child at home, and little or no health insurance makes sacrifices to take care of her family. This over priviledged lady is no where close. I don't feel sorry for her in the least. 5 kids? Someone needs to tell her that it's a vagina, and not a clown car! This right wing, bible thumpin', polar bear hatin', environmental disaster waiting to happen needs to go. We already had 8 years of this ideology and look at where we are. At war, record debt, soaring fuel costs, shredded constitution, no habius corpus, and the list goes on. Last time you voted for the person you wanted to have a beer with. Now you want a hockey mom for president because your impressed she has a disabled kid? Wake up and vote for someone that can really heal the wounds from this last adminstrations abuses. All of our allies would get behind Obama. In fact a poll showed that Europeans would vote (if they could) for Obama: 94% Obama, 6 % McCain. These are our friends and allies talking to us. Not terrorists. I guess I can sit here and spill out facts forever, but there are always going to be a large number of people that will vote for the person they can discuss diapers and face creams with, or have a beer with, over someone that is ivy league educated, charismatic, and loved by our allies. And i'm sure these are the same people that will say being loved by our allies is not a good thing too. Ignorance abounds at dangerous proportions.

I am a middle-aged white woman with a child and a professional career. Unless she and her husband plan to have someone else raise their children, there is no way that she/they can do the job of VP and give full-time to that job--which is what all of us should expect. The problem is that their children should also be able to expect more than this type of position will allow.

I found her "speech" to be little more than a family slide show followed by a series of trite, rude, superficial criticisms of the careers of other people. The tone and the superficiality of it lead me to believe that she is not a person who thinks deeply, there was no evidence that she has any knowledge of current issues, and the persona scripted for her ended up reminding me of one of the characters from the movie "Best In Show". She is hardly ready for prime time and, it seems to me, she (and we) would be better off if she went back to Alaska, dealt with her family issues, got more seasoning as a state-level politician and left the VP position to some other woman--surely there is a Republican woman whose house is in order and who has an appropriate level of experience.

She and her speech left me cold. I am not impressed.

I share your concern; here are few thoughts that I and my wife wrote down after her speech.

5 month old baby belongs neither in the audience nor on stage, surrounded by loud screaming and flashing lights, at a gathering of thousands.

Trig Palin was born with Down syndrome. According to NADS (National Association for Down Syndrome) ???Many children with Down syndrome have health complications beyond the usual childhood illnesses??? [they] have a higher incidence of infection, respiratory, vision and hearing problems as well as thyroid and other medical conditions???.

Perhaps Trig Palin suffers from none of these ailments, but any infant???s high susceptibility to infection might be reason enough for the parents to avoid subjecting him to large crowds. Would it not have been wiser if baby Trig made his appearance in the convention hall via satellite from a hotel room in care of a family member or a baby-sitter?

Trig Palin is obviously a very quiet child. He does not scream or struggle the way other infants his age might have done. Down Syndrome genotype affects a toddler???s response threshold and intensity (1). Because of a muted response to stimuli, infants with Down syndrome can appear less volatile and fearful than other babies, and often exhibit less anxiety upon being separated from their mothers (1). Baby Trig's inability to express the level of discomfort and anxiety he is experiencing seems to have made him an ideal political prop for his parents.

Governor Palin would like us to entrust her with the welfare of all the children in this country. Yet in caring for her own baby, she showed an alarming lack of judgment.

Dr. Pavel Osten and Julia Kuhl

Reference:
(1) Children with Down Syndrome: A Developmental Perspective; Edited by Dante Cicchetti & Marjorie Beeghly; Cambridge University Press