Llewellyn
King
Read Llewellyn's bio and previous columns
September 15, 2008
Sarah Palin as Joan
of Arc
You see Sarah Palin,
governor of Alaska; I see Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who vanquished
the English in France and facilitated the crowning of Charles VII as
King of France, thus ending English claims to the French throne.
Like Palin, Joan was
an invigorator: She inspired the French to fight the English. When she
failed to win over the generals and the nobles, she went over their
heads to the people of France. Soon she had liberated Orleans, after a
string of victories, and cleared the way for Charles's investiture at
Reims. Even before his ascent to the French throne, Charles had made the
teenager co-commander of his army.
There is dispute
over whether Joan actually fought or just carried the French standard in
battle. No matter. She electrified the French. And although the 100
Years War dragged on for another generation, Joan had shaped the future
of the French nation, giving it a sense of national identity that it had
lacked.
She galvanized all
levels of French society, revitalized a sick and cautious political
establishment, and ignited the new feelings of nationalism in the French
army and the peasantry. Essentially, what Palin has done so far for the
Republicans.
Joan believed that
she was the instrument of God – that she had heard voices from the age
of 12, urging her to expel the English from France. Unfortunately, the
voices were to be her death knell. She was captured by the English, who
handed her over the an ecclesiastical court, which tried her for heresy.
She was convicted and burned at the stake. She was just 19, but she had
changed the course of European history.
Later, the Roman
Catholic Church decided that it had made a terrible mistake and
denounced the trial, finding her innocent after the fact. But Joan was
not canonized for another 500 years.
Look at Palin and
see the “Maid of Orleans”: She has fought the Republican establishment
and energized the rank and file of the party. And that is probably where
the similarity ends, although she seems to be quite certain about God's
purposes.
The speculation in
Washington is when the Palin bubble will burst. So far, she has been
repeating the same speech on the stump and has only granted one
television interview.
The strategy of
keeping Palin from the public is beginning to wear thin. And even John
McCain himself seems to be hankering for the recognition that he is the
nominee for the presidency not the trophy vice presidential candidate
from Alaska.
Yet for McCain, it
is also all about Palin. If he wins the presidency, she will be credited
with attracting women and blue-collar voters to the Republican standard.
If she falls apart in the next month, through a combination of hubris
and ignorance, she will take down the McCain candidacy.
Also, the
speculation in Washington is that Barack Obama's forces are retooling
for an assault to coincide with the one and only vice presidential
debate. It is a debate fraught with peril for both the Democratic
vice-presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and for Palin.
Biden is given to
talking too much and he knows too much, which is sometimes a
disadvantage. He will be struggling to appear neither avuncular nor
condescending. Palin needs to memorize talking points on every issue and
stick to them. This is a dangerous tactic, but it is her best option.
And it more or less worked in her interview with Charles Gibson of ABC.
Henry “Scoop”
Jackson, the late senator from Washington state, who I interviewed on
many occasions, answered the question he thought you should ask not the
one you asked. He did this especially on television, as I found out when
I was part of a panel on NBC's Meet the Press.
Palin's strategists
will probably also try to give her a disarming one-liner that she can
repeat frequently, in the way that George W. Bush did with “fuzzy math”
in debating Al Gore. People tend to remember the one-liner and forget
the rest of the question.
Although Charles
ennobled St. Joan and her family, he resented the fact that she had done
what he had failed to do against the English aggressor. History may be
repeating itself with John McCain.
© 2008 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback
about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This
is Column # LK063.
Request permission to publish here. |