Assumptions of Intention

I had an exchange with an old friend (We'll call him Joe. Not his real name) that made me think. I was responding to the following comment:

Joe is upset that the republicans think it is ok to use palin's daughter and her baby-daddy for their own political gain. All of a sudden teen pregnancy is cool.

As a Palin supporter, naturally, I took exception to this. I responded,

It doesn't have anything to do with political gain or scoring points. They only made the announcement when they did to head off some nasty lying accusations that her 5-month old son was really her grandson. Besides, the knowledge would have become public soon enough anyway with all the attention (good and bad) the family is getting right now. Nobody's saying directly or indirectly that teen pregnancy is cool. You may not like Palin, but at least dislike her for honest reasons.

I was mostly content to leave it at that, I neglected the inherent cynicism involved in such a statement:

I am not saying in any way that it should, or should not have been released. Oh no, I'm saying that they are using this pregnancy for their own political gain, all the way to the teenage father of her baby being glad-handed by a presidential candidate right in front of a staged media event.

Well, okay. So it's about a campaign move? Showing off for the cameras? Fair enough. Campaigns can be slimy things, but I don't think that's what this is:

Eh. Maybe. I don't read into it too much, and like to give people the benefit of the doubt. If you get cynical, it's possible to make the argument that everything that happens on a campaign is a calculated political move. And that road goes both ways. I'd rather concentrate on stuff that matters instead of nitpicking and over-analyzing what may very well be irrelevant, or assuming meaning where there is none. Life's too short to worry about conspiracies and manipulation under EVERY rock.

And then a response so simplistic that I actually found it hard to respond to. I can see a certain truth to it, but as a way of thinking of things, I believe unhelpful at best because it completely reduces a complex issue to a worthless platitude, effectively dismissing further discussion:

Everything in a campaign is a calculated political move, regardless of sides.

Barring of course complete and actual knowledge of what went on behind the scenes, which frankly, I doubt is ever going to be public knowledge. After all, how could it? We don't know the private family discussions leading up to and discussing the announcement, or the arrangements for the fiance to be included in public appearances. How arrogant to assume there was not family discussion and consent, especially with how proactive McCain/Palin were in this. The teenage daughter and fiance were NOT dragged into the spotlight by the media. Although there is little doubt they would have been exposed and attacked eventually anyway, given the flood of slash and slander aimed at the Palins in recent days. My final response thusfar:

Even if true, that doesn't mean "everything" is significant or relevant to everybody or anybody, or that actual intentions are immediately clear, or correctly reported. "Political gain" is too generic; a useless platitude, being that it doesn't really tell us anything without being supported with additional information including an explanation of why it's a good or bad thing. Also, you have to consider what factors, attitudes, and circumstances unknown to you are driving decisions. Was the announcement and subsequent inclusion done with the express and sole intention of gaining political favor? That seems to be the assumption you're working from. Is that fair? Or is it also likely that both the announcement and the appearance at the convention more a statement of "You're going to find out anyway, so you might as well find out from us that we have nothing to hide. Here we are. This is what we are. Come what may."? Two completely different but valid outlooks on the same events.

That response actually went through a couple revisions. At first I included a couple sentences about needing to analyze cause/effect relationships. I removed it partly because of space constraints (I think I was limited to 250 characters or something), but mostly because I didn't think it was a very good way to say what I wanted to get across, and that was the need to think about driving motivations behind a decision. Similar idea to cause effect, which tied in like this: Did the political advantage cause the release of the information? Or did the release of the information for other reasons ALSO happen to have some political impact? My argument is the latter, but trying to frame the question in those terms is awkward at best, because the bit of truth in Joe's statement of "everything in a campaign is a calculated political move..." is that it is likely that whatever the McCain/Palin campaign's reasons for the actions they took, rest assured that they did NOT ignore the political ramifications of those actions.

So while it's true that just about everything a candidate does, and says (at least the stuff that's planned ahead of time) is calculated and analyzed, it does NOT mean that the results of that analysis are the primary decision drivers behind the actions. For instance, John McCain knows that politically, promoting campaign finance reform is harmful to him among the conservative base, he still does it. Case in point right there. Not all decisions are purely politically driven.