The GOP's pregnant pause

Let me preface everything that appears here with the following caveat: I am not a parent, nor have I ever been. I hope to be someday, but until that great day occurs, I don't know what it's like to wake up at 3 a.m. with a fussy baby, or watch that child take his/her first steps or watch them catch the bus that first day for school or score that first goal or struggle over a term paper or march down the aisle at graduation.
All that said, I find it a little surprising that the national media/punditry, in its zeal to get all up into the business of Sarah Palin and her daughter, Bristol, over the 17-year-old girl's pregnancy, has failed to ask what, to me, is a pertinent question:
Namely, why didn't Sarah Palin turn John McCain's invitation to run as his vice president to spare her daughter precisely this kind of scrutiny?
Look, it's not the place of me or anyone else to question how the Palins live their lives. As the uncle of a woman who gave birth to twins while she was in high school, I have some feel for what is happening in that house, and one shouldn't wish that kind of emotional torment on anyone else, regardless of what side of the political aisle you sit on.
But, if you believe, as I do, that a parent's No.1 responsibility is to protect their children from harm, wouldn't it make sense that said parent would do their best to shield their child from the kind of media scrutiny Bristol Palin is going to have to endure in the name of her mother's political ambition?
No one would suggest that Sarah Palin should have to resign as Alaska's governor because her daughter made a mistake that millions of American teenagers make on a regular basis. But Sarah Palin could have limited the attention Bristol Palin will have to suffer to a couple of whispers around Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks, rather than compounding that chatter exponentially to the entire nation.
For the protection of her daughter, Sarah Palin should have just said thanks, but no thanks to John McCain.