Sarah Palin and the Narrative Arc
Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, September 20, 2010
Political campaigns are like a jumble of improv artists crowded onto a stage, with two or three directors working with two or three competing scripts. When the audience walks away thinking that they saw "that play," and not "the other one," then the relevant director wins.
I actually used to do something like that as an exercise when I taught rhetoric at New St. Andrews. Two students would get up in the front of the class with two different readings, and they had to declaim at the same time, competing for the attention of the class. No shouting allowed, and you had to get and hold the attention of the class with somebody else trying to do the same thing.
So that is what political campaigns are like. A large part of the action is getting control of the narrative arc, because when you get control of the narrative arc you are in control of the story that grips. What story does everybody think they are watching?
An entire industry of pollsters, consultants, managers, and agitprop artists has grown up in the field of poltics and, not surprisingly, there is a "conventional wisdom" about it. In this conventional wisdom, there are certain assigned signals you send that indicate your willingness to join the improv artists, and then one of the two or three directors sends back some signals on his willingness to have you in his troupe.
The positions range across the staqe, right to left, and the whole process does have a goodly bit of entertainment value. But occasionally someone breaks the informal rules of the whole competition, which is okay, right, because they are all improv artists, right? And when they do this, the whole thing is so unusual that they get everybody's attention. Of course, that attention is made up of withering scorn and adulation both, but everybody is still looking at that improv artist and not the other ones.
I should say one other thing. The usual rules for this competition that develop, and which the directors all agree on, will usually fit right in with the wisdom of this world. The way to get ahead is by getting ahead. The way to have others promote you is to promote yourself, and so on. This ethos is promoted by that powers that be, because watching out for number 1 is the attitude that is most easily managed by the smart guys in the back rooms.
The reason Sarah Palin is in the position she is in is that she has turned this process on its head. She understands the kind of narrative arc that commands attention, and the others do not. Since her elevation to the vice-presidential nomination last go-around, and the general election loss, she has done everything backwards. She has resigned the governorship, she has avoided a good number of "must appear" events, and she has spent a lot of her time and energy promoting the political interests of others. Not only so, but a bunch of them have been longshot others. If the midterms in November are the bloodbath for the Democrats that I suspect they will be, and if Palin continues to operate in this same way, then I think the nomination will be hers to lose.
When Jesus said that the first would be last, and the last first, He was not just teaching us how to enter the kingdom of heaven -- although that was the subject at hand. I am not applying His words out of context, because once we get things right between God and our soul, we should exhibit a little narratival curiosity. The reason why we enter the kingdom of heaven this way is because the entire world works in that same way. I once saw two ensigns come on board our submarine at the same time, and one commanded respect because he understood this, and the other didn't because he didn't. I am not comparing leadership of sailors on a submarine to the kingdom of God, but I am saying the the principles that Jesus taught concerning the kingdom do extend to everything. They apply all the way down, down to boys playing in the backyard with sticks.
Jesus was, among other things, teaching us about narrative arc. And all I am saying is that Sarah Palin has one that commands interest, and which does so for reasons that are not superficial.
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