Why Andrew Sullivan shouldn't be talking about whether Sarah Palin is "nutty enough."

So that prince of a man Levi Johnston is luxuriating in Vanity, saying:

Sarah told me she had a great idea: we would keep it a secret—nobody would know that Bristol was pregnant. She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn’t have to worry about anything. Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging—she wouldn’t give up. She would say, “So, are you gonna let me adopt him?” We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn’t want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.

Springing into a posture of triumph, Andrew Sullivan is all:

So, according to Levi, Governor Palin was very, very interested in avoiding embarrassment for her daughter - and a political problem - by passing off someone else's child as her own and adopting him. This kid's name was Tripp. But this exercise is called "proof of principle." If anyone believed that Palin wasn't nutty enough to try to pass off her own daughter's baby as her own, they need to reassess.

First, there are 2 babies — Trig and Tripp — born too close together for both to have been Bristol's. But Sullivan says it's a "proof of principle" exercise. (Is that common parlance? Maybe in England. WikiAnswers says: "A proof of principle experiment is one designed to see if the idea is workable. Usually little if any data is collected.") So the point is: If we are to believe Johnston — a humongous "if" — then Palin is the sort of person who would adopt a baby — Tripp, in that case — then she might have also adopted Trig.

But let's examine this:

First, Johnston didn't say that Sarah would pass the baby off as her own, only that she would adopt it. Whose baby is Trig supposed to be? Who else in the world would Palin have wanted to protect by taking on a new baby? The motive would have to be entirely different, such as thinking she'd look good having a Down Syndrome baby. So the principle is a different one.

Second, is it nutty for a grandmother to take over the role of raising a child born to a too-young mother? Let Andrew Sullivan step up and answer a clear yes to that if that's what he thinks. Do you realize how many women he is tainting with an accusation of insanity? Many, many women — including Barack Obama's grandmother — have done that over the ages. No one with any sensitivity to the condition of women in society should say that it's crazy for a grandmother to step in. It is a good and gracious thing that many good women have done, and emphatically not crazy.

Third, if you want to talk crazy, how crazy is it to want so badly to paint Sarah Palin as crazy? She is your political opponent, Andrew, and you don't think she's good enough for high office. It's not so dramatic. It's utterly banal. Ironically, Palin draws energy from your overheated hatred. Have you heard she's about to make $100 million?