The news about Sarah Palin's daughter is making big headlines. There's no sense at all that conservative support for Gov Palin has been harmed. If anyone has come out of this business looking bad, it's some of the aggressive Democrat bloggers who started by running the untruthful tale that Gov Palin's own youngest child was actually the offspring of her daughter. The fact that Sen Obama has publicly denounced such muck-raking and pledged to dismiss anyone in is campaign who gets involved in it, tells me that the Democrats' private polling is saying that this is not an issue for point-scoring.
I think that this episode shows that in the US as in Britain, it is possible, indeed laudable, for people to stand up for family values and good behaviour while accepting that we are all fallible human beings who make mistakes and misjudgements. I think that's why David Cameron's approach strikes such a chord at home.
But what effect is all this furor having on the 17 year old girl herself? Most politicians accept that we chose to go into public life and that the intrusiveness of the media is something that must be endured. Our children made no such choice.
