COULD ANDREW SULLIVAN BE HELPING PALIN GET ELECTED PRESIDENT?

OK, that headline is hyperbole -- but really, enough already with the Trig trutherism, Andy:

Palin Puts The Trig Question Back On The Table

... Palin says [in an interview and Facebook post this week] that all inquiries into a candidate's veracity, record, associations, and medical history are legitimate forms of inquiry. She therefore backs this blog's near-solitary attempt to get her to provide evidence -- after very serious questions of fact emerged -- that she was indeed the biological mother of Trig....

Palin has never produced Trig's birth certificate or a single piece of objective medical evidence that proves he is indeed her biological son....

Look: Sarah Palin is, except to her base, a national joke. Much of America regards her as undignified, unserious, and unfit to hold the office of president of the United States (and becoming president is obviously her goal). The only thing that can make her sympathetic to most Americans is below-the-belt attack politics. Mock her words or her thoughts or her behavior? Fine -- most Americans have no problem with that, because she's voluntarily put herself in the arena and said and done dumb things that warrant criticism. But go after the circumstances of her child's birth? That runs the risk of making her seem legitimately aggrieved -- at a time when her political career (which has the potential to be very dangerous for America if it's ever successful) is taking on water.

In politics, when an opponent is drowning, you should throw in an anvil. But giving her a legitimate reason to complain about mistreatment isn't throwing her an anvil -- it's throwing her a life preserver. And it's discrediting the left, with which Sullivan is (inaccurately) associated.

Really, why the hell would Palin conceal one illegitimate pregnancy on her daughter's part and then take the VP slot, a move that would reveal another such pregnancy to the entire nation and the world? It makes no sense.

Some people, including at least one of my commenters, apparently want Palin to produce documentation for one reason only -- because it's satisfying payback for the right's Obama birtherism. Sorry -- the pleasures of tit-for-tat aren't a good enough reason to sink into the gutter with the birthers.

The right is far more effective than the left at making people who take edgy or dodgy positions into national laughingstocks. The risk is that Palin will succeed in portraying Sullivan as a symbol of all of the right's enemies -- the media, the liberal Internet community, urban sophisticates in general, even people whose sexual choices aren't "traditional" -- and possibly regain an aura of legitimacy for herself that way. Yes, I suppose that's not going to be easy if it's Sullivan alone raising these questions, but why run the risk? What good can come of it?

Atlantic, please either fire Sullivan or refuse to let him use your bandwidth to continue promulgating this nonsense. It's not helping.