By ADAM NAGOURNEY

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - For at least the time being, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska appears to have survived after the disclosure that her unmarried teenage daughter was pregnant.
“It’s a challenge, and I just think we have to deal with it,” said Katon Dawson, the Republican chairman of South Carolina. “But it’s just not going to hurt her. This is a family problem that people have.”
But the news about Ms. Palin, whom Senator John McCain has chosen as his vice-presidential running mate, presents at the very least an unwanted distraction for the Republican campaign.
Mr. McCain’s advisers said they were confident the story would fade soon. Still, it seemed certain, along with other disclosures about Ms. Palin’s service as mayor of a small Alaska town, to interfere with the campaign’s careful effort to portray her as a socially conservative, corruption-fighting hockey mom.
In many ways, how the country will react to the pregnancy of Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is more a sociological question than a political one. Yes, many officials in both parties - including Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Mr. McCain’s Democratic opponent - were quick to say the private lives of candidates should be off limits.
But this clearly stands as a challenge to the traditional image of a potential first family, and will provide material for provocative conservations around kitchen tables or sly references by comedians on late-night television.
It will test again what voters deem private, at a time when the Web has pulled down so many barriers, and what in these times is considered a normal family life.
“Families get in trouble all the time,” said Rick Scarborough, a pastor and the founder of the conservative advocacy group Vision America. “From what I see this family is dealing with it honorably. They are going to carry this baby to a full term as a further testimony of their commitment to life.”
In the short term, the disclosure about Ms. Palin served to illustrate just how much Mr. McCain’s selection of Ms. Palin had helped him among conservatives. They not only rallied around Ms. Palin, but also praised her daughter for deciding to marry and have the baby.
“The media is already trying to spin this as evidence that Governor Palin is a hypocrite,” said James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family. “But all it really means is that she and her family are human.”
He commended her for “not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.”
And Mr. McCain’s aides said they had raised close to $10 million since he announced he had chosen her, which they took as a vote of confidence from a conservative wing that had until now been skeptical of Mr. McCain’s conservative credentials.
The sentiment was echoed at the Republican National Convention here. “I am a high school coach, I interact with 17-year-olds every day,” said Fergus Cullen, the New Hampshire Republican chairman.
“And there are a lot of parents out there of 17-year-old high school students. If anything, this is a reminder that Sarah Palin is a real person who has the same experiences that regular Americans do.”
“There is no such thing as the perfect candidate,” he continued. “She is an outstanding choice, very helpful to the ticket.”
Yet with this news, the McCain campaign has moved into unfamiliar, potentially difficult territory.
That is particularly true if more surprising disclosures about Ms. Palin follow. She is already the subject of a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner.
Further unwelcome news is something that Republicans are worried about as the portrait of this little-known woman from Alaska is more fully drawn in the days and weeks ahead.