When Sarah Palin's ships came in

Did the course of American history change on a pair of Holland America cruises in the summer of 2007, sometime between the flotation-device drill and the farewell dinner?

Maybe. In the latest New Yorker, reporter Jane Mayer suggests that two passing cruise ships that summer played a crucial role in lining up Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the Republican vice presidential nomination this year.

Of course, the timing could have been coincidental. Also, McCain-Palin could lose on Nov. 4. But if McCain and Palin should win, those Alaska excursions just might join the list of great moments in waterborne tourism that have changed American history — a list that, for our money, should include Christopher Columbus, Mark Twain and Leo DiCaprio.

So how did Gov. Palin’s ships come in?

As Mayer reports, on June 18, 2007, the 936-foot-long M.S. Oosterdam of Holland America Line (pictured below) docked in Juneau carrying a passel of writers for and admirers of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Among those who disembarked and were charmed over lunch by Alaska’s governor: William Kristol (editor of the Weekly Standard, columnist for the New York Times and frequent Fox television commentator); Fred Barnes (executive editor of the magazine and cohost of the Fox News talk show “The Beltway Boys”); and Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for President Bush.

The gang from the National Review (founded by William F. Buckley Jr.) arrived in Juneau six weeks later on Aug. 1. Delivered by the another Holland America vessel, the M.S. Noordam, and welcomed to a reception featuring a seafood spread and Gov. Palin, this group of influential conservatives included Rich Lowry (editor of the magazine), Robert Bork (a former federal judge), John Bolton (President Bush’s ambassador to the U.N. from 2004 to 2006) and Dick Morris (a consultant who appears often on Fox News and writes a column for The Hill).

It isn’t unusual for magazines and other common-interest groups to arrange such trips to rally reader or alumni allegiance, and Juneau gets all kinds of port calls every summer. (Right now, travel agencies are offering seven-day Holland America Alaska cruises next June on that line out of Seattle for as little as $983, excluding airfare.) But these particular trips, and Palin’s eagerness to join the itinerary, apparently set a major wake in motion.

Through the days, weeks and months that followed, the alumni of these cruises told their friends, colleagues, readers and television audiences about the remarkable woman they’d met in Juneau, and how she deserved a role on the national scene. By the time McCain named her as his running mate in August 2008, it had been less than two years since her election as governor and about 14 months since those Holland America vessels came calling.

So where do Palin and her admirers fit into hydro-politico-touristic history? Maybe somewhere beneath these crucial moments.

- In 1492,  Columbus, an Italian free agent working for the rulers of Spain, sails the ocean blue in the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria and winds up in Haiti. (Well, he landed on the island of Hispaniola, which these days includes Haiti.) This opens the New World for centuries of European exploration and colonization. In a move later copied by countless pleasure cruisers, he also wanders around the Bahamas.

- In 1620, Pilgrims from England land in Massachusetts and soon join with native people in the fall ritual of rooting fruitlessly for the Red Sox.

- Eager to see Trenton, N.J., on Christmas Day in 1776, George Washington and some friends cross the Delaware in a surprise attack against German troops. (Well, not exactly German troops. Soldiers from Germany whose rulers sent them off to help the English put down the revolutionaries in North America.) It works. Not only does Washington get to see Trenton, but the U.S. eventually frees itself from the British Empire. From Washington’s Continental Navy emerges the U.S. Navy, whose history will not be messed around with here.

- In 1861, after more than four years on the Mississippi as an apprentice and then a riverboat pilot, Samuel Clemens loses his gig: River traffic is halted by the Civil War.  So the pilot goes on to find another gig. And as Mark Twain, he creates the most important imaginary cruise in American history - the exploits of Huck and Jim in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

- In 1869, on a mission less probable than the plot of “Huckleberry Finn,” a one-armed, steel-willed explorer named John Wesley Powell leads a ragtag crew of nine men (three of whom turn up dead) on a three-month journey down the Green and Colorado rivers, making the first recorded passage through the Grand Canyon. His trip helps fuel westward expansion, raises appreciation for the region, and leads to construction of an IMAX theater.

-In 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic crashes into an iceberg and sinks into the Atlantic, killing 1,517 people, inspiring the 1960 musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” and then, some decades later, causes director James Cameron’s people to call Leo DiCaprio’s people and Kate Winslet’s people, which in turn causes moviegoers worldwide to hand over more than $1.8 billion, which in turn prompts construction of a theme park in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, which brings revenue to Rupert Murdoch’s New Corp., which owns the Weekly Standard.

— Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photos: Top - Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin gives a wink and a thumbs-up at a rally in Virginia Beach, Va. | AFP / Getty Images. Bottom - M.S. Oosterdam / Holland America Line Inc.]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 10:25 am by Christopher Reynolds and is filed under Alaska, Luxury Travel, News, Tips & Advice, Tours & Cruises. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.