This article in the Washington Post has got me to thinking: Doesn’t this all sound a little too familiar?

“Eight working mothers from the Virginia Run development in Centreville went together to the Palin-McCain rally yesterday because Sarah Palin is ‘just like us.’ “

Remember when everyone thought that George W. Bush was just like them? A guy you wanted to have a beer with was campaigning for the Presidency, and you thought that it would be a good idea to vote for him.

Beth Tweddle, a woman who showed up at the rally, said that Palin is “real” because American families have more pregnant teenage daughters than kids at Harvard.

I cannot understand this kind of thinking. Is she implying that someone with a child at an Ivy League school is somehow less American than one with a knocked-up high-schooler?

Teen pregnancy was a big issue long before super-fertile Bristol Palin graced the national stage with her presence (no, it’s not her fault that she’s a national symbol. It’s her mother’s fault. But let’s not dwell on that). American teenagers have the same amount of sex as teenagers in other advanced countries, but we have a teen pregnancy rate that’s about 5 times greater.

Could it have something to do with the fact that those countries have instituted age-appropriate sexual education as a part of the national curriculum?

There are two months left before the election. Sarah Palin gives a good speech and her story is interesting. Once her policies are subject to the kind of questioning that all vice-presidents must endure, then her appeal will dwindle until only the far-right embraces her as “one of them.”

Unless the press keeps talking about Bristol and her fiancé. Because, you know, that’s what’s important here.

One more thing; anyone who wants to bet on whether or not those two get married if McCain loses the election, I’ll be laying 7 to 1 odds. See your bookie, tell him Frank P. sent you.