A headline asks, “Could Palin Factor Save McCain?” and their story brings back memories of another Cinderella tale–how Grace Kelly came to rescue Prince Rainier of Monaco half a century ago.
In the New Yorker, Jane Mayer says of McCain and Palin: “By the time he announced her as his choice, the next day, he had spent less than three hours in her company.”
Their whirlwind courtship duplicates how the movie star and the Prince got together over half a century ago and for some of the same reasons.
Monaco, a tiny country surrounding a casino in Monte Carlo, was in as much trouble then as the McCain campaign this summer, until Grace Kelly was briefly introduced to Rainier while shooting “To Catch a Thief” there.
Soon afterward, the Prince visited the Kelly family in Philadelphia and, after being alone with her for only a few hours, asked the movie star to marry him and she accepted.
Rainier’s advisor was a priest named Father Tucker, and it turns out that the McCain-Palin union was brokered by a less spiritual team led by William Kristol and Dick Morris.