Sarah Palin's Questionable Judgment

By Rogers Cadenhead

Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 01:09 PM

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's an up-and-coming Republican leader who could've been an interesting presidential or vice presidential candidate in four or eight years. It is reckless insanity to believe she's ready to step in as commander-in-chief now, particularly to serve a 72-year-old president with health concerns after two bouts with skin cancer and five-and-a-half years' mistreatment as a prisoner of war.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's an up-and-coming Republican leader who could've been an interesting presidential or vice presidential candidate in four or eight years. It is reckless insanity to believe she's ready to step in as commander-in-chief now, particularly to serve a 72-year-old president with health concerns after two bouts with skin cancer and five-and-a-half years' mistreatment as a prisoner of war.

Palin, only two years removed from being the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 6,700), had to be told two months ago what the vice president does:

Larry Kudlow of CNBC's Kudlow & Co asked her about the possibility of becoming McCain's ticket mate.

Palin replied: "As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?"

Because McCain did so little to familiarize himself with Palin -- he only met her once prior to this week -- and she's a little-known and untested politician from a low-populated state, I have a gut feeling that we're headed for another Thomas Eagleton situation where a vice presidential nominee is dropped before Election Day.

Start looking into Palin's life, as thousands of reporters and activists are now doing, and there's a strong undercurrent of weird. Some of it is charming, Northern Exposure stuff -- her parents were out caribou hunting when news broke of her selection as running mate -- but a lot of it makes you wonder how well anybody in the GOP vetted her. Some of McCain's advisers like Karl Rove are the same geniuses who thought Harriet Miers belonged on the Supreme Court.

One bit of weirdness associated with Palin concerns the birth of her youngest child. As the Alaskan media reported, Palin was attending an energy conference in Texas on April 18 when her water broke four weeks before her due date. After this happened, Palin didn't head to a hospital or even leave the conference, even though the premature rupture of fetal membrances is normally a cause for an immediate examination by an obstetrician, who will observe the fetus on a monitor to guard against infection and other life-threatening complications. Two other reasons for heightened concern were Palin's age, 43, and the fact that prenatal testing indicated the child had Down syndrome.

Palin stayed at the conference and delivered a 30-minute speech, then boarded a 12-hour Alaska Airlines flight from Dallas to Anchorage, neglecting to tell the airline her water had broken -- most airlines won't fly a woman in labor. The motivation for all of this appears to be the Palins' desire that the child be born in Alaska. Her husband Todd told the Anchorage Daily News, "You can't have a fish picker from Texas."

When she arrived home, Palin was hospitalized immediately and the baby was born prematurely after labor was induced in the middle of the night.

Maybe Palin's actions can be written off as Alaskan grit, since she's a macho hunting governor who jogs in freezing temperatures and dines on moose burgers. But as a parent myself, I think the Palins were extremely fortunate that their reckless stupidity did not end in tragedy. As middle-aged parents who already had four kids, the Palins had to be completely familiar with all the things that can go wrong in a pregnancy. One commenter on the Washington Times laid out the enormous risk she was taking:

Airlines are unequipped to handle most emergencies at 30,000 feet, particularly the kind Palin put her unborn child at markedly increased risk for. These emergencies include birthing a premature infant or uncontrolled maternal bleeding. This was her FIFTH pregnancy and delivery can happen rapidly and unexpectedly. The baby or Palin could easily have died.

In the ADN article Palin downplays her decision to fly, implying traveling was reasonable as she wasn't in labor. If so, then why was she immediately hospitalized after returning to Alaska? Why was there an induced delivery of a 36-week infant by 6:30 am soon after her return? Again, ask any OB doctor. Induced delivery of a premature infant ALWAYS indicates a problem. The two most likely would be fetal infection, (a likely event given her failure to seek meaningful medical attention for her baby) or fetal distress by monitor.

Ask your OB doctor if the risks Palin took with the life of her unborn child are risks they would have advised for ANY reason.

I'm sure that some people will consider raising this subject a cheap shot, since the child was born healthy and it all worked out for the Palins. But you have to question the judgment of a person who took so many risks with her life and that of her baby.