In her new book, former Alaska Gov.. Sarah Palin describes the push-and-pull between John McCain's campaign headquarters and her plucky "B" team on the road. As Palin recounts it, her natural instincts to reach real voters and reach out to the press were frequently foiled by an overprotective senior staff, led by strategist Steve Schmidt, that did not trust her.
Palin acknowledges "going rogue" at points - but usually to positive effect, such as the time she rewrote a speech to special needs children or her wondering out loud about "why I was prohibited from calling the other ticket out on more of its strange associations."
At one point, Palin criticizes the campaign for forcing her to spend too much time glad-handing donors and local elected officials. "Why couldn't we focus more attention on the everyday folks who attended our rallies," she asks.
Interviews with staff, and e-mails obtained from a former McCain
campaign aide and confirmed as authentic by several recipients, add
some layers to Palin's description of life on the road.
As
the campaign came to a climax in October, Palin isolated herself from
headquarters, refusing to communicate with them directly. Her staff,
suspicious that McCain's retinue of lieutenants were trying to sabotage
Palin simply because she was Palin, began to skirmish with McCain's
staff, bollixing up
carefully planned events. At the same time, it seems clear that
McCain's senior staff evinced little sympathy for how tough a 24/7
presidential campaign can be on a mom with a day job.
Tension
reached a boil on Wednesday, October 15, the start of a two-day trip to
New Hampshire. Scheduled events that day included a radio call in to a
national conservative talk show host, Mike Gallagher, at least two
local print interviews, a one-on-one TV interview with Manchester's
WMUR-TV, a rally in Laconia, an "off the record" event in Concord. A
rally in Salem capped off the evening. Then Palin would retire to a
hotel in Manchester to watch McCain debate Barack Obama.
Palin
would wake up that morning in New York. A few days before the trip,
Palin decided that she wanted to slough off some of the local
interviews and spend the morning cooking with Rachel Ray, the host of a
popular syndicated television program.
She instructed a top aide to inform headquarters that the Dover rally would have to be canceled.
The response from McCain's headquarters was firm: absolutely not.
"She says she wanted interviews [with the press], but pushed back against the interviews that were
scheduled," a campaign aide who worked with Palin said.
When
Palin's advance team arrived to plan the events with New Hampshire
campaign staff, shouting matches arose. Palin's team balked at
allowing former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci to shake Palin's
hand as she exited the campaign bus. A Palin advance staffer
interrogated one of the campaign's senior political officials about
Cellucci's intentions; three rounds of "permissions" later, and
Cellucci was finally allowed to have his handshake. In Palin's
defense, her plane was 45 minutes late in arriving to New Hampshire,
which compacted the schedule. Accounts differ as to whether the delay
was caused by a scheduling snafu from headquarters.
A
top campaign planner e-mailed headquarters: " We worked for many days
on the programs taking into consideration all the political
implications and working with advance to get everything flowing
smoothly. Then, at literally the last minute, for 3 of the 4 events,
someone with some apparent authority calls our advance on the ground
and fucks everything up."
That someone was
identified as Jason Recher, Palin's head of advance, a ten-year veteran
of the Bush political operation who had become increasingly loyal to
his new charge. In her book, Palin lavishes praise on Recher.
Palin
wasn't fond of letting outsiders on her campaign bus, and Recher
reportedly vetoed a ride-along with Schonda Schilling, the wife of
Boston Red Sox player Curt Schilling. Carla Eudy, the campaign's chief
fundraiser, had added Schilling on the passenger manifest for the ride
from Laconia to Salem. But at the last minute, Schilling was told that
she wouldn't be able to ride the bus and had to find her own
transpiration to Salem.
At that night's "off the
record" event in Concord, the campaign prepared for a normal sized
crowd to hang with Palin in a shoe store. The television visuals would
be cute - an acknowledgement of the shoe-leather life of a candidate.
But a half before Palin was scheduled to arrive, an advance staffer
called ahead, panicked, and demanded that the field staff find more
people to show up. McCain aides had to borrow from a nearby phone bank
and managed to fill the store with ten minutes to spare. The OTR had
turned into a campaign event.
"This has
so far resulted in pissing off two United States Senators and the
creation of a total cluster which has reflected very poorly on the
campaign," was how one staffer contemporaneously described it.
Recher, in an interview, described the chronology as false.
Of
the e-mails and the attempts by McCain advisers to rebut Palin's
account of the campaign, said Recher: "Maybe the McCain aides would
have been better served trying to get McCain's positive message out and
less time clustering away e-mails like squirrels before winter
This anonymousness... is not in the John McCain spirit."
He
notes that Palin requested from the campaign a certain amount of down
time each day to tend to her children or to the business or her day job
as Governor of Alaska. That day, the "down time" was coincident with
the motorcades to and from Salem, New Hampshire. "She wanted to be
respectful to her hosts, but she also wanted to focus on her job as
governor, because it was in John McCain's interest for her to do well
in that job," Recher said.
As for the
"OTR" at the shoe store, Recher said the entire account was fabricated.
"The notion that I would call to assemble a crowd at a shoe store is
false," he said.
By late October, Palin and headquarters staff were communicating through intermediates.
On October 26, after a long day of stumping in North Carolina, Palin issued an edict to her traveling staff.
"We
were informed today that she no longer wishes to do talk radio
interviews in the car. It's too distracting," wrote a senior Palin
adviser, in an e-mail to senior headquarters staffers. "We were
informed today that she no longer wishes to do TV or print interviews
post-rally. She's drained. We were informed of her displeasure that
her host and US Senator Richard Burr was allowed to ride the [Straight
Talk Express II] with her. "
He ended the e-mail: "I don't know what else to tell you."
The more i read these name calling the more i question McCain judgment and wisdom in choosing this lady to be the VP. Also what does it say about our national media for not holding him responsible for all these stuff.
Stan...
It's a year + from his announcement of Palin as running mate and you're just now questioning McCain's judgment in making that decision. And what does it say about our national media? Seriously?
I'm agnostic but surely if a God was ever looking out for this nation it was when John McCain lost his bid for the Presidency...imagine this women a heartbeat away...
Gawd these emails portray someone who is too tired for the work of a real national campaign which is grueling and complains non stop about it. Aside from not being qualified she obviously thinks being a politician is like posing for a pageant. Get a clue lady, its hard hard work.
Big Pussy is not a character in The Sopranos. It is Steve Schmidt, who ran the most inept presidential campaign in a generation, and continues to try to deflect attention from his ineptitude by anonymous leaking. When Palin criticizes someone, she goes on record. Same with Jason Recher, Randy Scheunemann, and others involved with the campaign. And then Big Pussy Steve Schmidt comes back with more falsehoods and/or inconsequential crap, leaked with a promise of anonymity by lazy MSMers working at Politico or The Atlantic.
Pathetic.
where's the news in this?
campaigns have lots of internal debate, and all this shows is that some folks disagreed with how palin or how the mccain staffers who staffed palin went about their jobs.
I am waiting for McCain to apologize for putting this woman next in line to a 72 year old heartbeat of the Presidency....
Amen. He should apologize for not only risking that she could become president, but for foisting her on the nation and the Republican Party. She'd still be an obscure figure from a far corner of the nation, which is where she should be, if he hadn't done that. I used to respect McCain, but no more. He'd gain a little of my respect back if he'd man up and apologize. In retrospect, he almost has to realize how big of a mistake that was.
Sarah's not only incompetent, but lazy. Go figure. Being a politician takes a lot of hard work, and dissing the people that are necessary to create a viable candidacy, particularly those sending the checks and mustering up the voters, and of course, not lending her star power and media attention to equally attention-starved pols, is an absolute no-no. Unless you want your candidacy to go down in flames, you eat food you don't want to eat, say things you don't want to say, shake the hands of people you don't want to shake, be nice to people you hate, and in general, do a lot of things you don't want to do. (That's how you get elected.)
This says a lot about McCain's incompetence that he selected her in the first place.
Let's add something else to the mix:
Palin's insistence on running the day-to-day business of governing Alaska via her Blackberries (she carried two BBs with her everywhere) instead of turning that duty over to her Lt. Governor, like every other Governor engaged in campaigning has done.
What was she afraid of, that he was incompetent? SHE appointed him to the position, and he's her successor now that she quit.
And the other thing: McCain should have told her to leave her family retinue at home for the bulk of her campaign, even before he nominated her. And INSISTED on it, because in retrospect, no doubt it was dragging them around with her that caused her to be "spent".
She obviously didn't have her full attention on campaigning, with these issues occupying valuable time and effort.
But if McCain had insisted on that, and Palin acquiesced, little Trig would have not been the campaign political prop that he was -- and still is.
He could have stayed at home getting the careful medical care and therapy DS babies with heart conditions required -- not subjected to frequent flying, bright lights and thundering noise (never mind that, the poor child turned out to be profoundly deaf), and being surrounded by strangers with who-knows-what possible contagious germs.
He's STILL enduring those same conditions, with the same risks, while traveling with Palin on this month-long book/campaign tour.
Somebody should ask Nixon's "Jew Counter" Fred Malek what he thinks about all this. From what I can tell our decrepit media institutions now think he is a legitimate person to ask about political events.
Good grief. Does nobody here recall that BEFORE Election Day, 2008, top McCain staffers leaked insults about Palin like "diva" and "whack job" - anonymously, of course?
A hugely mismanaged presidential campaign, going down in flames - and as it does, those responsible try to distract attention from the disaster by blaming someone THEY invited on board? No matter what Palin's virtues or shortcomings, their behavior was petty and spiteful and crassly self-serving.
McCain was the top of this losing ticket. He allowed the campaign to be mismanaged. As far as I know, he never publicly rebuked his own rogue staffers.
He earned his loss. The petty, self-serving leakers should have earned widespread contempt. Instead, the thoroughly biased among us take the leakers' anonymous word that Palin, not they, were at fault. And second-guessers like Eric Ambinder continue to enable them.
Palin deserves a fair hearing. She has yet to get it.
Palin deserves a fair hearing. She has yet to get it.
Maybe another sit-down with Katie Couric will clear the air.
She's done a few, and will do more softball interviews, where she's asked the questions she wants to answer, and will be seldom be subjected to "belaboring the point".
How is that not a fair hearing? Are you having a hard time deciding what to think about Sarah Palin? I'm not.
I think both McCain AND his campaign staffers were shocked at how poorly Palin took advice or direction from folks other than her long-time close friends -- one of whom accompanied her on the campaign trail at state expense.
I object strongly to the characterization that the McCain staffers abused and blamed in Palin's book cannot speak out in their own defense, but are labelled by Palin fans as "petty, self-serving leakers" -- and that defense BEFORE AND AFTER Election Day 2008 of their reputation and mandate as outlined by McCain himself is turned on its figurative head by a professional victim and pathological liar -- Palin -- and her willing enablers, like Alyosha above.
I agree that I don't believe Palin was ready for a campaign, I am sure she had no clue what all was involved. And as I understand it Steve Schmidt is the one who did the vetting and was integral in her selection as VP candidate.
I really think what we are seeing her are two perspectives of the same chains of events. Probably the opinions are valid on both sides, it just depends on what lens you are looking.
Palin had a great point with Barbra Walters. All of these folks we are hearing from on the McCain side are professional campaign handlers. It is vital to their livelihood that they defend their actions by any means possible. If that means leaking anonymous, and perhaps not complete stories, then so be it, they get another job.
But lets flip things around and look at some things....
She was asked to be a VP candidate....what was she going to do, turn that down? Of course not. Neither would you.
Her campaign experience to date was in the least populous state in the US. I am sure campaigning there was much more relaxed. Even the Governorship was more relaxed than what life would have been in D.C. It doesn't mean that it couldn't be managed, but that it was culture shock.
The initial reports that she was to be the "pit bull" or the campaign and that she represented the conservative side. But suddenly the campaign was telling her to reign it in. I think I would be confused as well.
She had an infant with special needs. She was used to having family time. I am sure she wanted private time, especially on the campaign bus to spend with her family, and especially her son.
Her own campaign began leaking defamatory information about her. From the names Alyosha mentioned above, to the wardrobe and how it was purchased/rented, to how uncooperative she was.
Can you blame her from disassociating from the McCain staff?
I think I speak for most of the commenters when I say I would turn down the vice presidency, what with being unqualified for the office. And its demands on my chosen work and family life would make it untenable.
That Palin didn't realize the last 2 months of a presidential are a hard grind with almost no down time is pretty shocking. Because even those of us who aren't remotely considering running for the office have figured that out.
Exactly, choosing to accept a VP nomination is not something you should do reflexively. I'm not sure how often someone has turned down a direct invitation (I would assume that if you go to the trouble to vet someone you know beforehand that they would accept an offer), but there are certainly a lot of people who make it clear beforehand that they don't want the VP nod for personal and/or professional reasons. Palin, by her own account, didn't think about it at all because, for reasons that remain unclear to me, you "can't blink" when you make serious life-changing (and even history-changing) decisions. Not all the blame lies with her, as McCain, by making a last second decision to pick someone he had barely met and who probably wasn't expecting to be picked, made a quick decision on her part necessary. But she still decided to take it without reflecting on the consequences of that decision. And that probably tells us all we need to know about her -- as well as McCain's -- fitness for the presidency.
Here Here! That was what struck me most about the Palin fiasco - that she had the hubris to think she was remotely qualified.
She had no doubts about her qualifications to occupy the second most powerful spot in the government of the worlds only super power, a post she confessed ignorance of AFTER she had accepted ("What exactly does a Vice President do?"). That to me was a huge warning signal.
What a hoot. Commenters who have probably never been asked to run for the local school board blame McCain's choosing Palin - after his staffers vetted Palin - on Palin!
Deborah, dougjay, and Artifex - who probably also have not read her book - are sure they already know everything about her, especially the failings that led her to accept the VP nomination. No interest in the failings of those who chose her and ran a disastrous campaign and then, despicably, tried to blame its result on her!
Deborah, you demonstrate the same sort of hubris when you claim to speak for most commenters.
As for a fair hearing, the mere act of writing a book does not open the locked-tight minds of such commenters. QED
jb, who prompted these smack-downs - thanks for considering Palin as a real human being, not a pinata, who might actually have valid points to make about her accusers.
My question to the rest is: why do you care so much about someone you clearly despise? If Sarah Palin is such an unqualified nincompoop, why don't you just ignore her? Why must you assert your superiority to McCain and all his staffers and all those reporters and commentators who said on the night of her nomination speech, "A star is born" - and, of course, to her fans and defenders? Why do you care?
Vanity, vanity. What a hoot.
Alyosha, your ignorance is astounding; either that, or you implicitly believe everything Palin, a professional victim and life-long pathological liar, says.
1) Palin was NOT vetted. She was the only one of the four candidates on the ballot last fall who was not privy to day-to-day national intelligence briefings because she did not have security clearance, BECAUSE SHE WASN'T VETTED.
2) One doesn't have to read Palin's book. There are summaries available all over the Internet, in great detail, by those who HAVE read the book.
Unfortunately for Palin, a number of those summaries and critiques are by bloggers in Alaska who have known Palin or who have followed her political career since her Wasilla mayoral terms in the '90s -- people who know Palin much better than fans who became aware of her only 15 months ago, and who have no idea that Palin and the words she utters are not what they seem.
Speaking of hubris, Palin declared in her resignation speech last July that she "never believed that [she] needs a title to do this - to make a difference... to HELP people". Yet she's insisted ever since that she be called "Governor" despite quitting her only 4 year term.
Palin's idea of "a fair hearing" is to ban foreign press, most domestic press, and even fans' recording devices from her for-pay speeches, and to grant tightly controlled interviews to only one cable network, with only pre-approved questions allowed. My, my, shades of the former president, Mr. Bush!
No one really despises Sarah Palin herself -- it's the theocratic dominionist political philosophy she's become a spokesperson for that we despise and rightfully fear.
"Stealth candidates" like Doug Hoffman and Susan Hutchison have already tried (and failed!) to infiltrate elected positions, and there are many dominionists in the Senate and HOR, like Bart Stupak, Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, John Ensign (all members of the secretive Christian group known as the C Street "Family" http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/21/c_street/ ) .
This is a well structured story, but it's full of typos. It hardly looks like it went through an edit. You don't make the strongest point about Palin by littering your story with typographical errors.
"You dance with the one that brung you." Something Sarah Palin couldn't do and something John McCain's campaign didn't know she couldn't do because they hadn't vetted her properly. A lapse that was to cost them in multiple ways. That "Maverick" trait can be expressed in many directions and not all of them desirable or useful for a Presidential campaign. It was all so unprofessional, on both sides. Inept campaign staff and a celebrity-wanna-be in the guise of a politician. Candidate John McCain acting more demented every day as the gruesome end ticked down to his well deserved loss. The only reason that Mrs. Palin has the opportunities she now enjoys is because John McCain and his campaign staff gave them to her. She should go down on her knees every day and thank her God for John McCain and her V.P. run because what came out of it is her international celebrity, the opportunity to profit from that celebrity, the serious regard given to her views and utterances. Most Americans know she did nothing to actually merit these opportunities and, as her book spells out, even lacks the grace and loyalty to be grateful to their source. John McCain gave us Sarah Palin and now we're stuck with her. Now we get to watch ad nauseum as they mud wrestle over whose fault it was. Thanks a lot John. Really appreciate it.
"And second-guessers like Eric Ambinder continue to enable them."
Hey Marc, is this "Eric Ambinder" guy your brother? Cousin? Never heard of him before. And you didn't mention him in your article, so where does he fit in?
So I Googled him and [poof]…there he is writing sports features for the Michigan Daily —but the article was published on February 7th, 2005!