Dirty Sexy Politics

by Meghan McCain

  Republicans “got” radio. Conservatives were heard, loud and clear, on those airwaves. But aside from viral lies and mudslinging, like the Swift Boat Campaign against John Kerry, which was a really shameful moment in political history, the party just didn’t get the digital scene. What year was this? 2007. And the presidential campaign was poised to be groundbreaking in terms of communication tactics and media. Digital was definitely the place to be. For a political candidate, the blogosphere was exciting, persuasive, and reached voters instantly. Best of all, aside from production costs, it was free. There was Facebook, MySpace, and a day didn’t go by without YouTube. The old world of print journalism was making a crash landing.

  And yet, the Republican Party was stuck in the tar pits, waiting (yet again) for the country to time travel back to the beloved Reagan era, as if wishing could make it so. (The irony is that the Reagan administration was so forward-thinking and creative when it came to media.) But these days, the unwillingness of the Republican Party to enter the real world stunned me.

  Young people found their news on Internet sites and blogs—and were comfortable with outlets like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, that combined frivolity, even occasional vulgarity, with straight reporting and commentary. But so far, I couldn’t see what was being offered online that might help my dad’s race. Most of the news sites were left-leaning and made little effort to even conceal it. Politico, which was launched in January 2007, was smart and not angry—it felt like real reporting without a noticeable political bent, which made it the exception—but it wasn’t exactly a laugh riot.

  It’s not that young people can’t be serious. But they are accustomed to being entertained—and are drawn to reality shows and, at least, a feeling of realness that a good blog creates. My idea was to produce a daily record of campaign highlights as seen through my eyes and, more than anything, update the image of Republicans. If we were going to attract a younger following, we really had to start there.

  In politics, passion counts for a lot. The side with the most juice and spirit, and the loudest voices, gets heard the most. This is why, politically, the Republican Party is drifting toward the interests of the Christian Right, who are organized and very passionate. Moderates, by comparison, come off as compliant and easygoing and kind of weak-spirited. It’s like they have nothing except their equanimity to organize themselves around.

  So if you are young and moderate, like me and tens of millions of other voters, you are part of the great misunderstood—and missed—voting bloc. But we count for as much as one-third of the electorate.

  Young people are passionate, that’s for sure. But they aren’t scared and filled with hate. They are excited by change, new ideas, and fresh starts. It must be a law of nature. The young are meant to challenge the status quo and question conventions. Our job is to critique the progress made by the previous generation and push back with new ideas.

  But lately, in the Republican Party, anybody with a new idea is labeled “progressive,” that dirty word, or just ignored. I can’t think of a greater turn-off. Why would a vibrant young person, full of energy and passion and lots of creativity, be interested in the Republican Party if new ideas and fresh starts aren’t welcome? This might explain why the vast majority of the under-thirty vote aren’t registered Republicans.

  When I joined the campaign, I wasn’t even one.

  Chapter 5

  Elephants in the Bathroom

  My period of total estrangement from the Republican Party began when I was fifteen. I’m sure that I didn’t understand the concept of principles at that age, or what the political parties stood for. I had grown up in an insular world where conservative thought was accepted, and its basic tenets weren’t challenged, so I didn’t have too many opportunities to think about them much.

  That’s how it works, usually. If things are handed to you easily, even if they are ideas and beliefs, you take them for granted and don’t bother evaluating them. That’s how it was for me, anyway, as a little girl. My mom used to dress me up in red-white-and-blue outfits and give me a flag to wave at rallies. I assumed that everybody was a Republican, and that everybody collected as many elephants and as much elephant iconography as my parents did. We had them all over our house in Phoenix—elephant sculptures, paintings, picture frames, and wall hangings. We even had an elephant bathroom that had elephant wallpaper with small bronze and silver elephants in it. I had my own elephant collection too.

  Really, until my dad ran for president the first time, in 2000, I had a very idyllic, all-American, and sheltered childhood—devoid of much awareness about my father’s fame or his job or even politics. My mom ran the house and our lives, pretty much, cooking our dinner most nights and gathering us around the table, where we were each asked to describe “the high” and “the low” of our day. Mom has always been the go-to person in our lives, the parent who solved our problems and dispensed practical advice and knowledge. She can tell you how a plane flies, how a car is put together, and how to unstop a plugged toilet or balance a checkbook.

  Our house was always busy, a little messy, and crazy noisy. The louder and noisier it is, the more Mom loves it, especially if it’s filled with kids and animals. Over the years, we’ve had five fish tanks, packs of dogs and cats, and a beloved parade of pet hamsters, bunnies, turtles, and even a ferret named Daisy.

  My dad called every day from his office in DC, but he rarely brought up his work, or political matters. We talked about my stuff, how school was and whether I was fighting with Jack and Jimmy, my younger brothers, whom I liked to boss around. Dad made me laugh—he always does—telling me stupid jokes. On weekends, he flew home and liked to relax by watching football or grilling, which he’s passionate about. He’d drive us all up to Sedona, where our family ranch is, and listened to sports on the radio the whole time, even when the radio station started to fade away and get scratchy as we drove farther from the city.

  When I think of how much hiking I did as a kid, it makes me laugh. Dad loves to hike—and build dams in the creek with piles of rock. And every year, no matter how hot it is, he and my brothers go camping in the Grand Canyon and sleep in smelly tents.

  He still doesn’t “feel” famous to me, he feels like my dorky dad who came to tea parties in my bedroom and let me put bows and clips in his hair when I was little. To me, he’s the dad who snores so loud it wakes up the dogs, the dad who makes the most disgusting fried eggs with tons of grease, and makes the best campfires ever.

  When I think of him, I think of the Father’s Day when my kindergarten class went on a father-daughter picnic out in the Arizona mountains, and all of the girls gave their fathers tie-dye T-shirts that we’d made for them as gifts. All the other dads stood around in their regular clothes, their polo shirts and whatnot, smiling and holding their tie-dye shirts in their hands. But my dad immediately tugged off his shirt in front of everyone and put the tie-dye shirt on. All the teachers began clapping and it started a trend with the other dads, who put on their tie-dye shirts too. I remember being so embarrassed while it was happening, because my dad is so hairy—he has a ton of white and gray chest hair—and then he kissed me on the cheek and said, “Anything you made I will love forever.”

  That’s how I think of my dad. A trendsetter, doing things before everyone else, taking risks and loving everything about me. The tie-dye shirt, that’s how I see him. I wasn’t much older when he taught me how to hook a worm and fish in the creek at Sedona, and gladly took me to see The Little Mermaid, the Disney movie, seven times. When we played in the swimming pool in Phoenix, he would throw me in, over and over again, and make me scream with laughter.

  I was just fifteen when he ran for president for the first time, and things changed quickly. I remember being shocked when I heard that he was parodied on Saturday Night Live. Wow, I thought, he must really be known if SNL is parodying him!

  For lots of reasons, I was really excited that he was running. I’m sure most girls love feeling proud of thei
r dads. But I have always felt a particularly deep bond with mine, a sense that we almost share the same soul. He gets me and always has.

  My memories of watching him campaign in New Hampshire in 2000 are really vivid. I hadn’t spent much time in snowy New England, and hadn’t been exposed to its gorgeous, almost storybook setting. It is hard for me to put it into words, but New England almost doesn’t seem real to me. And my memories of New Hampshire are so strong, like a beautiful movie that I can step into.

  For those who have trouble keeping the election process straight in their heads, New Hampshire follows the Iowa caucus by a few days, so it is one of the most important primaries of the campaign and has the potential to shift national preferences, sometimes dramatically. You can start out an underdog, but if you win New Hampshire, you are suddenly a frontrunner. You win New Hampshire and you have momentum, and promise. A domino effect kicks in. You win New Hampshire and the campaign donations start flooding in too.

  My dad was an underdog in the race in 2000. George W. Bush had come away the victor of the Iowa caucus, had a much bigger campaign war chest, and was leading in the polls with 64 percent of the predicted vote. Dad had only 15 percent. But he is never one to give up. He loves New Hampshire, particularly for the way politics gets done there—town hall by town hall.

  The best thing in the world for me was seeing him conduct a town hall. I watched in total amazement, aware immediately that he loved every second of it—the contact with people, the setting, and the bizarre and surprising range of questions. He listened, looked people in the eye, and answered their questions in the same way that he answered all the life questions I asked him when I was growing up. He was comfortable and real, and so strong.

  I had never seen anything like it—democracy in its truest form, unclouded—and I remember feeling so proud of my dad. People still referred to him as the “grand master of the town hall” and sometimes “the governor of New Hampshire.” His town halls were jam-packed with people, wherever we went. The experience was so beautiful and emotional. Politics was personal, I saw that so powerfully. At fifteen, maybe I didn’t really understand all the ideals. But I understood the feelings.

  Veterans talked about their military service, elderly people confessed they couldn’t afford their prescriptions, mothers brought their disabled children—and everything else in between. It made me feel giddy and sad, all at once, a roller coaster of feelings. I remember somebody asking my dad how he felt about “hemp” and, not knowing that this was a question about smoking it, he answered that it was great for “making rope.” We had a good laugh about it for years.

  Our mood was high, and we were so hopeful. When he won in New Hampshire that year—a stunning upset of nineteen points against George W. Bush—it was the biggest upset of the political year. Everything was focused on South Carolina, the next primary, just two and a half weeks later. Bush had a fifty-point lead there, but he was losing ground. After New Hampshire, my father was closing in.

  This is where things become ugly and sad. What happened in South Carolina in 2000 is what caused me to reconsider everything, and draw away from politics. My father lost in South Carolina, but he didn’t lose fair and square. He lost as a result of one of the dirtiest political tricks ever played. A hate campaign was waged against him and our family—a campaign that spread lies and fear.

  E-mails went around, and became viral, saying that my dad had “sired children out of wedlock.” There was mention of a “Negro child.” Pamphlets—thousands of them—were stuck under car windshields showing a photograph of all of us, my mom and dad; me; my brothers, Jack and Jimmy; and my sweet sister, Bridget, who was adopted by my parents from a Bangladesh orphanage when she was a baby. The pamphlets led people to believe that Bridget was the “Negro child” my father had sired out of wedlock.

  Something called “push polls” were conducted. Republican voters were called at home and informed that my father was mentally unstable from his years in prison as a POW or a Manchurian candidate secretly planning to spread communism. There were mentions of the “Negro child” during the push polls, and my mother, who had struggled with a prescription drug addiction after back surgery six years before—and had talked publicly about it—was smeared as a drug addict.

  It was sick, disgusting—and everything it will go down in history for being. And it was so dirty and secret that it became impossible to trace who was responsible, directly or indirectly, except to know the man who won that primary: George W. Bush.

  For my family, it was devastating. My whole world, the people whom I loved most, my parents, and brothers, and baby sister, were suddenly at the center of ugliness and unwanted attention. To lose a race is hard enough. But to lose unfairly is brutal and haunting. I blocked out the pain, and tried to forget, but at the same time, it stayed with me—the way feelings do when you try to ignore them. Someday I’d want to know what happened, I figured, but not yet.

  Three or four years later, when I was in college, I came across an article in Vanity Fair that went into explicit detail about the South Carolina primary, and I remember feeling really uncomfortable reading it. I wanted to know the details, but at the same time, I didn’t. My mom had explained a few things—but not too much.

  She had been waiting until we asked questions, and were old enough to understand, except I don’t think there is a way to understand.

  People in politics, and those of us raised in political families, are told not to take politics personally. But, of course, we do. We must. Otherwise the world of politics will become even more dehumanizing and impersonal. If we don’t take politics personally, we aren’t honoring what it means to be human—and risk winding up as cruel and unfeeling, as inhuman, as the ones who spread lies and win unfairly.

  The trick, I think, is to remain human and just forgive.

  My father moved on—that’s how he is, he moves forward, doesn’t look back, doesn’t get burdened by hate or the wrong actions of others. He leaves things for history to judge. But for my mom, and the rest of us who love him so much, it was impossible. Eventually, when I was in college, I asked my mother about South Carolina. And I guess my brothers, Jack and Jimmy, eventually did too.

  But my little sister, Bridget, the youngest in our family, didn’t know anything about it until she was sixteen years old and, just for kicks, she happened to google her own name and found herself linked, in almost every item, to the South Carolina primary of 2000.

  She called me immediately, extremely upset, crying, and—not understanding what had happened—she feared that somehow she, and the color of her beautiful skin, had affected the outcome of that election, and caused our father to lose the race. It was heartbreaking, so heartbreaking.

  I told her a few things that I knew, mostly that it was sick, and screwed-up people did things like that. I told her that I believed in karma—and that what goes around comes around, and those events will live with President Bush and Karl Rove, his creepy campaign “mastermind,” and with the individuals from the Christian Coalition who had helped to orchestrate it and did the push polls.

  I told her that I loved her and that it was our job to make sure that things like this didn’t happen in politics again, because it was wrong and terrible for our country.

  “Does President Bush hate me?” she asked.

  This was the saddest of all.

  “No,” I said. “He can’t hate you. He doesn’t even know you.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “He just wanted to win.”

  We’ve all moved on now, my whole family, including Bridget. My father set the tone and we followed. He has taught us about looking forward, forgiving and moving on. But when I was nineteen and registering to vote in a presidential election for the first time in 2004, it wasn’t possible for me to vote for a man who had been responsible, directly or indirectly, for causing so much sadness and pain in my family and for debasing the democratic process with dirty tactics and smears. He had never apologized or even
distanced himself from the wrongful actions of his followers.

  At nineteen, politics was only personal to me and not distinguishable from my feelings about my family. So it was out of anger, and sadness, really, that I registered as independent and voted for John Kerry. I didn’t switch my party affiliation and officially become a Republican until June 2008, after nearly a year on the road with my father’s campaign.

  Hard-core conservatives focus on this fact now, a way to dismiss me as not conservative enough, an untrustworthy “progressive,” a Manchurian daughter, a RINO or a “Republican in Name Only.” But I think if they walked a mile in my shoes—something my dad always taught me to do before sitting down to judge another person—they’d understand.

  Chapter 6

  Shannon and Heather

  My brothers and sister and I were too young at the time of the 2000 presidential race to be allowed on the road. We were flown in for big moments, like town halls in New Hampshire and a few primary election nights. But my parents felt that the day-to-day work of a national political campaign was not a place for kids. It was a stressful environment, the air is charged with complicated emotions—ones that aren’t easy for kids to process.

  But back at our house in Phoenix, my parents had stacks of photo albums from the race. In high school, I would sometimes sit for hours and look at them. I saw the happy faces in the crowd, the streamers of the rallies and parties, the sea of people at the convention. I wondered, what was it really like? What else went on?