Guest blogger Political Dad: Despite a building natural disaster and a teen pregnancy scandal, the RNC begins.

With Hurricane Gustav barreling toward the Gulf Coast, the Republican Party scrambled to avert disaster, scaling back the opening night of the convention--lest they be seen whooping it up during a Katrina-like tragedy.  President George Bush and Vice-President Cheney decided to skip the show and huddled with FEMA.  Senator McCain appeared via satellite declaring, "I wanna thank all of my fellow Republicans as we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats and we say, 'America, we're with you. America, we're going to care for these people in their time of need."  Cindy McCain and First Lady Laura Bush delivered abbreviated remarks and made a plea for hurricane relief.
 
Luckily, Gustav down-shifted to a Category 1 storm and slipped to the west--and as of now, the levee system appears to be holding and New Orleans and the Republican Party breathed a sigh of relief.  Then the other storm hit, not one born of "mother nature" but of "human nature."  Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Senator McCain's pick for vice-president, announced that Bristol, her 17-year-old unwed daughter, was pregnant.

•Governor Palin released a statement saying, "...Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates."

In hours, this real life Juno story whipped up into a perfect storm.  Reporters scrambled for answers.  Did Senator McCain know about Bristol's predicament before he picked Palin?  Wasn't the governor a firm supporter of abstinence-only education?  How serious did the McCain campaign take the vetting process?

By the afternoon, Senator Barack Obama weighed in before reporters, "I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics."

By the end of the day, I couldn't help feeling bad for everyone involved, especially Bristol and some pimply kid named Levi in Wasilla, Alaska.  And it seemed to me that teenage lust was a lot like a hurricane: fierce and unpredictable.  That perhaps we need more than abstinence programs to avert the misfortune of teenage pregnancy.  That maybe, like those levees, we should invent some kind of a barrier to protect against the gale force winds of an adolescent libido.  Turns out we do--they're called condoms.