Jeffrey Lord: Governor Palin Possesses "Head of the Table" Trait

Jeffrey Lord has an interesting article today in The American Spectator. I have to admit that the title of Lord's article, "Is Sarah Palin the Next Ted Kennedy", gave me considerable pause. What could the two possibly have in common? Despite my misgivings, I felt compelled to read Lord's article. In his piece, Lord spends at least as much time comparing Governor Palin to Winston Churchill as he does comparing her to Ted Kennedy. I find the Churchill comparison much more appropriate.

Mr. Lord begins his piece with an account of one of Winston Churchill’s famous quotes:

The British statesman was a guest at a dinner in a private home. The dinner hour arrived and the guests made their way to the dining room. Churchill moved to a chair along the side of the table. Mortified, the hostess was quickly at his side, gesturing to the empty chair waiting for him. "Mr. Churchill," she said, "your seat is at the head of the table." To which Churchill responded in typical Churchillian style. "Madame," he said, "wherever I sit is the head of the table." And with that -- the Great Man sat down where he was.

Essentially, Lord's comparison between Governor Palin and Ted Kennedy revolves around his contention that both Kennedy and Palin, as well as Churchill, have (had in Kennedy and Churchill's case) a certain ineffable quality of leadership which only a select few have – the ability to change history through the sheer force of their personality and charisma.

With regard to Ted Kennedy, Lord cites the infamous Robert Bork’s America speech he delivered to the Senate within an hour of President Reagan's nomination of Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. Lord grants that Kennedy’s speech was one of his “less glorious” moments since it was, in my opinion, one of the most disingenuous and demagogic speeches I have ever seen Kennedy make (and that's saying a lot). But that misses Lord's point:

Whether you liked what Ted Kennedy said that day or hated it, whether you loved Ted Kennedy or couldn't stand him -- millions of people paid attention to him when he said it. In fact, in that instance for better or worse, depending on one's politics, Kennedy's statement signaled not just that Bork would have a difficult time being confirmed. His blunt remarks from the Senate floor set the stage for Bork's outright defeat, something initially considered impossible at the time. After all, Ronald Reagan was a popular president and Robert Bork was commonly considered by even opponents to be a legal giant. With his startling speech from the floor of the Senate, the sheer power of Ted Kennedy's personality and rhetoric changed the course of history.

Personally, I have never found anything admirable about Kennedy's role in preventing a man I consider to be the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in my lifetime from being confirmed. But again, that isn't Lord's point.

Lord also sees that rare "head of table" quality in Governor Palin.

This is a rare quality in political leaders. In reality it's a human trait, not a political one. Your Aunt Sally could possess Churchill's "head of the table" characteristic and not your Uncle Jim. Yet in the rarefied world of politics, where there is by definition a handful of nationally prominent politicians at any given moment, possessors of Churchill's "head of the table" trait stand out.

They possess, as did Winston Churchill, an unquantifiable capability that can not just electrify a room full of supporters but send them into passionate fits of ecstasy -- while simultaneously sending opponents into a furious, foaming rage. If these politicians master the art of using this quality, they can instantly play a huge role in anything from a winning political campaign to driving a piece of legislation across the legislative finish line. Or stopping it. By now, a year after her emergence on the national scene, it is crystal clear that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has this "head of the table" gene in spades.

[…]

Just as Kennedy managed to sink a once sure-thing Supreme Court nomination with his famous Bork speech, Governor Palin has managed to explode Section 1233 of the ObamaCare House bill with her vivid description of "death panels," severely damaging the President's entire legislative priority in the process.

Lord also discusses the unenviable position Governor Palin's potential GOP rivals will find themselves in if she does in fact run for president in the future:

Most Americans had trouble at any moment from 1963 until this past week identifying more than a handful of U.S. Senators -- but everybody knew Senator Kennedy. So too is Sarah Palin an instant standout among her Republican leadership peers, most of whom are unidentifiable to the vast American public.

[...]

It takes nothing away from Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee or Tim Pawlenty and others who may be presidential candidates the next time around, all of whom have had criticism of ObamaCare, to say that it was Sarah Palin almost single-handedly who has dealt a once hugely popular president a stunning defeat on a major aspect of his key legislative program.

[...]

Can you imagine how you must feel if you are an in-state rival like Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski? Who? Exactly. No one in Washington much less the rest of the country is huddled in a corner whispering -- "what did Lisa say?" Nor does America take much notice of Palin's potential 2012 rivals like Romney, Huckabee or Minnesota Governor Pawlenty. The New York Times isn't wasting ink being catty about Ms. Murkowski because, with no disrespect intended to Senator Murkowski, like most of her Senate colleagues her "head of the table" factor is exactly zero. There are no thundering editorials of disapproval for Romney, no Maureen Dowd snipes at Huckabee, no Keith Olbermann tirades about Pawlenty. It's Sarah Palin they can't stand, and it's visceral -- an immediate tip off to her Kennedy-like "head of the table" status.

[...]

Did you hear what Sarah Palin said today?

Chances are excellent that just as was true of Ted Kennedy, the answer will be "yes."

Read the entire article here.

Let me state for the record that I am still a bit uncomfortable with Mr. Lord's comparisons of Governor Palin to Ted Kennedy. However, Mr. Lord does a lot to assuage my initial concerns in some responses he makes to commenters at the end of his article. These comments are worth reading as they shed further light on Mr. Lord's article and the rationale behind it. In one of his responses, at 2:44 PM, Lord provides an excellent defense of Governor Palin's brilliant death panel metaphor:

ObamaCare is about government rationed health care. Or, as the president himself put it, taking one pill that's less expensive than the other because we can't get into judging people's spirit.

Well who exactly is the "we" here? Who is getting into the business of telling a patient they should take the blue pill and not the red pill? And why do they get to judge anything? The answer is "we" under this plan is the government, and the government is going to decide whether you are worth saving by rationing, end-of-life-counseling, cutting off your options. Read the bill. Also, take note of the case of Barbara Wagner in Oregon. Told by the state ObamaCare plan that they would not pay for her treatment, they were kind enough to send a letter informing her they would pay $50 bucks for the barbituates she could use to kill her self. Wake up, here, Rick. This amounts to a death panel - a perhaps vividly descriptive yet frighteningly reality that is being sold every time you hear the phrase "we need to cut costs." We do need to cut costs. Tort reform, not government rationed care, would be a starter. Fire a few lawyers, don't unplug Grandma. Then again, the lawyers gave more money to Obama than Grandma.

Back to Ted Kennedy who, in my opinion, was a buffoon. I never thought of him as a leader but as more of a bomb thrower, and not a particularly intelligent one at that. I continue to believe we would have never heard of the man if not for his wealthy and influential family who financed his successful Senate race in 1962. Once elected, his longevity had more to do with him being a Kennedy in Massachusetts and a desire for personal aggrandizement than anything else. I simply don't see Ted Kennedy as having had the "head of the table" trait that Winston Churchill had and Governor Palin clearly has.

Governor Palin, unlike Ted Kennedy, achieved all of her success on her own: no famous father, no famous brothers, and no vast family fortune. She is entirely self-made. She initially entered politics not to satisfy an overinflated ego but for the far nobler goal of improving the quality of education for her children. That is what true leadership is all about.

Despite my misgivings above, Lord’s article is quite thought provoking. He is a conservative and a supporter of Governor Palin. His comparison of Winston Churchill and Sarah Palin is intriguing to me. I have always been a huge fan of Mr. Churchill and I find Mr. Lord’s comparison to be spot on. Both fought for what they believe, regardless of the political fallout. “Politically speaking, if I die, I die” is inarguably a Churchillian attitude. It is the attitude of someone with that “head of the table” trait to which Mr. Lord refers.

(H/T Brian72)