As Sarah Palin's Family Life Becomes Public, Will She Stay on the GOP Ticket? By Steven Rosenfeld

The questions surrounding the family life of the putative Republican vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are deepening and not going to go away, despite efforts by Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain to move on to other issues.

In the past 36 hours, a Daily Kos blogger assembled photographs and other documentation alleging that Palin was the grandmother, not the mother of five-month-old Trig Palin, the infant she has said is her fifth child. The Kos reports said that Palin has been "lying" for months about the infant's parentage, in order to protect the child's real mother, her 17-year-old daughter.

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The stakes here are deeper than the usual sniping in presidential campaigns, which will no doubt revisit Palin's record as governor -- including allegations of abusing her office to take revenge on her ex-brother-in-law in a messy divorce. The question is not whether she made right and noble choices to protect her daughter, but if her repeated public statements were lies, suggesting a temperament unfit for high office.

If that is the case, McCain will have shown the nation that his hasty judgment in selecting Palin reveals another, more serious character flaw: a recklessness with decision-making. Proving that he is a maverick Republican is not the same as being presidential.

In politics, the truth always comes out. Tom Eagleton's ghost is stirring.