COMM 386: Did McCain campaign orchestrate pregnancy story?

An interesting theory by Andrew Malcolm of The Los Angeles Times that the GOP presidential campaign has orchestrated the release of damaging information about vice presidential designee Sarah Palin. Too Machiavellian to be true? Especially when it exposes a 17-year-old to the glare of national media attention at the same time it calls on the media to respect her privacy? I don't know, I just don't know.

Malcolm takes as his starting point an "availablity," an apparently imprompteau press conference by McCain-Palin campaign manager Steve Schmidt, who just happened to walk into a print media area Monday. He answered questions about Palin's daughter Bristol, whose pregnancy had just been announced a half hour before. Malcolm continues:

Finally, after nearly a half-hour of pushing and shoving and competing to get questions in, Schmidt said he had to go. And walked off with a squad of newly-appointed Palin aides who'd been standing by not smiling.

The excited media, now fed new details, rushed off to write their stories and flash them out to the world.

Precisely as Schmidt hoped they would.

It was a classic, illustrative and instructive case of political damage control. ...

I thought it seemed a little over the top when I first read it, but Malcolm argues a good case -- if you have damaging information, release it on your own timing, preferably when no one is paying attention. And if you want to bury a news story, Labor Day is as good a time as any to do it. Adds Malcolm:

Now we all know why Gov. Palin had no public events scheduled for Monday and why her husband Todd took all the children back home away from the spotlight Sunday night.

Monday morning, when least expected, the news release about the pregnancy went out, causing quite a commotion and extinguishing the planted online rumors that Sarah Palin's recent pregnancy was faked to cover up the pregnancy of her daughter, now a reported five months along on a real birth.

Schmidt's seeming spontaneous appearance in the convention's media area allowed him to elaborate on the news release the way he wanted to elaborate on it with his carefully formulated responses.

Some conservative family groups, now with their own stake in Palin, issued immediate statements of sympathetic support. And even Obama, noting that his mother had him as a teen, said family matters should remain private and out of political bounds.

Millions of Americans were closing up summer homes, preparing for school this morning, returning from the beach and generally paying no attention at all to the news on the last holiday of summer.

And because Schmidt's press encounter occurred unannounced in the print area, there were no TV cameras to create those annoying video loops for replaying a thousand times later as negative reminders.

Playing the story -- and the media -- this way does something else, as well. It keeps the focus on Palin's daughter, whom we can all sympathize with, instead of the mounting evidence coming out of Alaska that Palin either lied or flip-flopped about the "bridge to nowhere" and she is under investigation for abusing her authority as governor of the state in a personal vendetta.

Later: As I was finishing this post, I noticed an update to the LA Times' blog carrying the news that Palin's daughter and her fiance will attend the GOP convention. Says Malcolm, who sounds like he might be getting a little tired of this soap opera:

So much for family privacy: Imagine the attention this couple will confront in the media-filled Excel Energy Center arena where the hurricane-truncated convention is playing out.

The Palin family already has captured the attention of this hall, after Sarah Palin and husband Todd announced Monday that their daughter plans to have the baby and wed the father. They also asked the media to respect the young couple's privacy.

Good luck with that this week, as the small town hockey player makes his national TV debut.

But it does keep the media's attention where the McCain campaign wants it. And it is consistent with Schmidt's ability to use the media like a cheap screwdriver.