I’m looking forward to hearing this song – not just because of my fondness for Martina McBride, but because of the story behind it.

This is the story of a defeated senator, his crying daughter, a Nashville songwriter and Martina McBride, the country music star.

It begins in Pittsburgh on election night 2006. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), losing to Democrat Robert P. Casey Jr. by a wide margin, gathered his wife and six children around a hotel ballroom microphone and conceded.

The little girl at his side, Sarah Maria Santorum, then 8, wept. She squeezed her eyes and wiped her tears. She buried her face in her father’s arm, pulled away and cried some more — all on live, national television.

The image became an instant Internet sensation, fueled by snarky blogs like Wonkette, which declared it the “official screenshot of the 2006 congressional midterm elections,” and was debated for weeks on comment boards.
Now itÂ’s a country music single.

McBride released the song, “For These Times,” on Monday — a social commentary inspired, in part, by Sarah Maria Santorum.

* * *

Hundreds of miles away from the Pittsburgh hotel, where the Santorum children took their pre-marked positions on stage — their names were scribbled on masking tape pressed to the floor — Leslie Satcher watched the election returns on a big-screen TV in her Nashville home.

The songwriter already had one hit with McBride (“When God-Fearin’ Women Get the Blues” in 2002), and was trying for a second.

Inspiration struck on election night.

Satcher and her husband — “big Fox News junkies” — were riveted by the scene.
“I saw the cameras zoom in on that little girl,” Satcher said.

“That’s awful. They are not even showing Rick. They are showing her crying. She is hurting, and she knows her dad is hurting.”

As blogs parsed and parodied the image — some gleefully made fun of it, others questioned the wisdom of putting a distraught child in front of the camera — Satcher went to church. Her pastor held up the Bible.

“For these times in which we live, you are going to need this book,” he said. Satcher scribbled the words into the back of her book.

At 3 a.m., she wrote the song.

It is a song of love, of compassion, and of faith – things which are highly valued by most Americans, including Satcher, McBride, and the Santorum family.

The song pans the picture.

In these times in which we live
Where the worst of what we live
Is laid out for all the world on the front page
And the sound of someoneÂ’s heartbreak
Is a sound bite at the news break
With a close shot of the tears rollinÂ’ down their face
Blessed be the child who turns a loving eye
And stops to pray
For these times in which we live

One can think what one likes of Rick Santorum, but the exploitation of the image of that hurting child by the many of the same lefty bloggers who later decried even asking questions about Graeme Frost and his family is more than a little bit hypocritical. And their level of compassion is revealed in some of the comments connected to the Politico story IÂ’ve quoted above proves that compassion and decency are not concepts that they truly understand.

And let me add a note of full disclosure – my opinions of Rick Santorum go back significantly longer than most Americans. You see, we graduated from the same high school, though our school careers did not overlap (he’s class of 1976, I’m class of 1981). More than once during my high school years, I was compared to the future senator by teachers we were blessed to have shared. And I look forward to his eventual comeback, because I know that he is too good a man to be kept down by the results of the 2006 election.

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