Because Bristol’s own philosophy seems, at minimum, tentative, it’s hard to tell whether she believes that cheerleading for abstinence should be coupled with education about birth control methods. She and Levi used condoms, except when they didn’t.

Her mom has said in the past that she opposes “explicit” sex education, which kind of sounds like ... sex education. And while encouraging kids to wait is obviously fine, the evidence is pretty clear that abstinence education is worse than useless. Texas, where virtually all the schools teach abstinence and abstinence alone, is a teen pregnancy disaster zone. “It’s had one of the highest rates for as long as I can remember,” said David Wiley, a professor of health education at Texas State University.

Bristol appeared Wednesday at Event to Prevent, a teen town hall, during which she said very little except to assure her audience that having a baby is no picnic. (“You have so much responsibility. It’s just hard work all the time.”) It’s hard not to suspect that for her, being the anti-pregnancy ambassador is just a good excuse to get out of Wasilla.

But where were her parents? Her mom ought to know by now that the only way to protect your family from becoming tabloid fodder is to make it clear to the media that the kids are absolutely, totally off limits. You can’t put them on network TV one day and then complain the next when a reporter asks whether the baby’s other grandmother is still facing drug charges.

“We contacted the governor’s office, and the next thing we knew Todd Palin was on the phone and said Bristol wanted to talk,” Cole said, explaining how his ambassador had been recruited. And indeed, there was Todd, beaming as his beautiful daughter stood in front of about 50 shrieking photographers, smiling a fixed smile.

We have seen so many bad plans about breaching the public-private divide lately. Elizabeth Edwards’s book tour. Eliot Spitzer’s media blitz. (Can we point out here that when 51 percent of the public tells pollsters that they would rather have Spitzer as governor than the current incumbent, David Paterson, that is not the same as saying they would like Spitzer to come back? You could probably get 51 percent of the voters to say they would rather have Vlad the Impaler than David Paterson. Or at least 30.)

But when a teenager goes out on this kind of mission, you have to wonder where her parents’ heads were. What does this say about Sarah Palin’s judgment?

Although we’ve sort of answered that question before.