Dirty Sexy Politics

by Meghan McCain

  Did my dad win or lose? I don’t really remember what my own judgment was. I just felt exhausted and restless and down. After my idyllic days in the heartland, enjoying the small pleasures of town-to-town campaigning, it was hard to suddenly find myself surrounded by main campaign staffers and honchos, not to mention the Three Groomsmen. Their anxiety seemed infectious.

  I was so proud of my dad, and wondered, once again, how he handled the tense atmosphere and stress so amazingly well. He was always assured and strong. Was there anything that fazed him? If only I had inherited that personality trait too.

  EARLIER IN THE YEAR, WHEN COUNTRY MUSIC LEGEND John Rich and his band came on the road for my dad, Shannon, Heather, and I had made friends with them instantly. They were a lively bunch—unforgettable, really—and their friendship and company became a wonderful break and relief after so many weeks around the stressed-out campaign types. In particular, I had bonded with John’s sidekick, Fred Gill, aka “Two Foot Fred,” a little person and incredible dynamo who opened John’s show. Some people really come into your life at just the right moment. And Fred sure had.

  At a time when it felt like no rock star would ever come out in support, John and Fred and the rest of the band not only came on the road for my father, but performed with great enthusiasm and energy. He had even written a song called “Raising McCain,” which we used to play at rallies to get people fired up.

  I also knew from previous trips to Nashville that it was a fun, warm, welcoming Southern town that was full of Republicans and loaded with fun bars. I’m not the only one who feels this way: There is definitely something unique in the air of Nashville that makes you want to stay out all night, and soak up every second of life.

  And after that debate, I needed to soak up something.

  That’s how my friends and I wound up at The Spot. It was John Rich’s private bar overlooking Broadway, the Nashville strip—and exactly as exclusive, crazy, fun, and kitschy as you would imagine a country legend’s private bar to be.

  “So what did you think of the debate?” I asked John as soon as we sat down with a drink.

  “In all honesty,” he said, “I thought your father went too easy on Obama.”

  I appreciated John giving it to me straight. You can always count on him to tell it like it is. This was a common complaint among Republicans, that my father and the campaign were not hitting Obama hard enough, particularly on his ties to Reverend Wright and ACORN. Say what you want, my father chose the classy route. He rises above the fray.

  I changed the subject, realizing that I wasn’t up to talking shop, particularly if I was going to have to defend my dad. I had another idea, anyway. Hoping that Frank, Shannon, Heather, and I could see more of Nashville—I’d been talking about what a fantastic city it is for the last week—I asked John if he’d take us honky-tonking, Nashville-speak for bar hopping. The tradition was to go from country bar to country bar along the strip, drinking and listening to the most talented group of singers you could ever find in a one-mile radius.

  And honky-tonking we did. Wherever we went, John created quite a stir—and the more I drank, the more I loved the stir that we were making. We went to the famous Tootsies, then another bar, and another, finally hitting the last establishment at the end of the strip.

  There were a few beers in me. And I had no idea how late it was—or how early in the morning—when I asked John if he’d sing “Raising McCain” to everybody in the bar.

  “Only if you introduce me,” he said.

  I was still scared about speaking in public in those days—to the point of being totally neurotic about it. That bit of “media training” hadn’t helped. Instead, it made me worry about every single word (like) that came out of my mouth. But I wanted to hear John sing.

  Josh and Shannon patted me on the back and somebody—who was it?—poured me a big shot of whiskey. I polished it off in a gulp and ran to the microphone, trying hard not to stumble in my way-too-high heels.

  I jumped onstage and then, to everybody’s astonishment, I hollered at the top of my lungs, “WHAT’S UP, NASHVILLE?!?!”

  The bar roared back.

  And when I identified myself by saying that my father was running for president, the room went crazy—an explosion of sound and applause, yelling and cheering. I had never heard such beautiful noise. And in that moment, it didn’t matter how glamorous Barack and Michelle Obama were, or what all the pundits in the universe were saying, or how uptight and condescending the Groomsmen were being to me.

  Nashville loved my dad.

  And I loved Nashville.

  John Rich came onstage and sang “Raising McCain,” and then his hit “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” and then a few other songs, all of which I danced to, with great joy and abandon and happiness, I’m told, but which I am sad to say I was too drunk to remember.

  We were all crazy hungover the next day. But no hangover has ever been so sweet.

  Chapter 18

  There Are No Secrets

  After Nashville, sweet Nashville, we traveled to seven states in two weeks straight, on the bus, in planes, and sometimes in a big disgusting fifteen-passenger van—if my dad’s campaign needed all the buses. The blog was going full tilt and so were we, doing campaign events every day, getting the hang of it, finding a groove. We went to Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

  The more we circled Ohio, the more we laughed, and danced, and hugged, and loved Ohio. How nice are those people?

  Heather’s faking-it strategy, that we look happy, even jubilant, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our bus tour of the heartland was a raging blast, and would eventually bring some of my happiest memories of the campaign.

  We were like a family—Melissa, Frank, Meghan, Shannon, Heather, Josh, and Jay—and had our inside jokes, practical jokes, and silly jokes. We were always laughing, making the most of it. We gave our road trip a nickname, “The Shut It Down Tour,” because we were going to have so much fun, and be so raucous and spirited, that we’d shut it down wherever we went. The London Times described us as the only happy people on the presidential campaign. When I look at pictures from those days, I am standing in a pumpkin patch in Maine with a huge smile on my face. I am cheerily reading My Dad, John McCain to a grade-school class.

  Our posts were so upbeat and happy, in fact, we started to get e-mails and calls from stressed-out staffers back in headquarters telling us how jealous they were. We were having all the fun—and they were having none. The pitch of their voices was strained. They talked too fast and their attention span had dwindled to a few seconds before the conversation inevitably returned to one topic: Sarah Palin. She was turning out to be somebody who leaves a wake of confusion and chaos—to the point of dizziness—wherever she went.

  Katie Couric’s interview with her before the vice presidential debate had been disastrous. Unhappy with her performance, Palin seemed to blame the interview on the campaign. And she continued to blame other poor interviews and snafus on the campaign too. Under immense stress, she had lost her appetite and, like my mom and dad, was losing weight. Worrying about Sarah, my mom suggested that she come to the ranch in Sedona to decompress and do her debate prep there.

  Her performance at the debate was terrific, but the sense of media frenzy and gossip around Sarah only grew. “The Time Bomb” was still ticking, and ticking, and valuable media coverage about substantial issues of the campaign gave over to intense fascination with Sarah—her personality, her looks, her sex appeal. It’s hard to say it any other way except that Sarah became the story, not the campaign. The story was Sarah, and not the war, the economy, or health care, or what kind of president my dad would be. She attracted so much attention that it became counterproductive—distracting, distressing, and the message of the campaign became lost.

  My dad never complained, not once, about Sarah or the attention she got. He seemed genuinely happy about both. It was left to the Groomsmen to work out any problems with gett
ing the message out, and dealing with Sarah—and her own growing unhappiness. But they didn’t seem to know how.

  The campaign split into two camps—and were taking shots at each other. The main problems emerging, as far as I could tell, were that Sarah had no experience with a national presidential campaign but didn’t seem to acknowledge it. She stuck to her gut, and the way things were done in Alaska, and second-guessed many of the decisions being made. But the Groomsmen didn’t like being second-guessed. No big surprise there. They had been running this campaign for a long time by then, and most of them had been in national politics for decades. If Steve Schmidt had a different personality, he might have eased the tension and tried harder to get along. But Steve being Steve only made things worse.

  WE WERE IN DENVER WHEN I CELEBRATED MY TWENTY-FOURTH birthday. My mom had flown in for some campaign events and then came to celebrate with me in my room at Brown’s Hotel. Heather was taking pictures for the blog when Mom appeared in a powder blue bathrobe—wanting to wish me happy birthday. Heather quickly offered to put her camera away. She wanted to make sure Mom felt comfortable.

  “Oh, I don’t care,” Mom said, “go ahead and take pictures. It’s Meghan’s birthday!”

  Which is how pictures of my mother in a blue bathrobe made it onto the blog. She brought me a fantastic fake-fur Juicy Couture jacket for a present. Lindsey Graham dropped by to give me a hug. And room service arrived with a sheet cake and candles. But honestly, the best birthday present of all was hanging with Mom, relaxed and sweet and not caring how she looked.

  We sat down on the bed together and caught up. Since my bus tour had started, I hadn’t been alone with her and my dad much, if at all. We’d gone to public events together, where I shared them with dozens of advisers and supporters. But it wasn’t the same. My banishment from the main campaign had driven a wedge between us, but when I stepped back and looked at what was really happening, our separation wasn’t about me. They were busy, caught up in the campaign, and working as hard as they could.

  The stress was hard to imagine, and getting worse. Just the day before, the Republican National Committee had confirmed that it had spent $150,000 to dress the Palins for the campaign.

  They needed clothes, no doubt. What they’d arrived with, in their bags from Alaska, just wasn’t going to hold up in the harsh light of a national election. Look at the unbelievable focus that Michelle Obama’s wardrobe had gotten, with every J.Crew sweater set and sleeveless dress discussed and swooned over.

  I wasn’t surprised by the price. That’s what it costs to outfit seven or eight people in designer clothes. Other candidates had spent just as much, or more, but kept those kinds of expenses under wraps—sunk into promotion and advertising costs. What surprised me was that our campaign couldn’t do the same.

  Sarah had never been anything but pleasant to me. This almost made it harder to sort out all the complicated feelings I had about her. On a personal level, our contact had been limited. She and I did not have meals together, or travel much together. Our one-on-one exchanges were brief. I’d asked her to please tell Bristol to call me if she needed anything—anything at all—or just wanted to talk.

  “I know how it feels,” I said.

  Nothing ever came of it. Things between our families hadn’t really jelled either. It probably sounds naïve, but I had thought we would become one big happy family, warm and close, like the Partridge Family on tour. I was shocked when it wasn’t like that—and might never be. I wondered if the tension of the campaign was driving everybody apart. And if Dad won, I supposed things would have to change. Wouldn’t Bristol and I become friends?

  I had asked Sarah if Bristol and her baby would be coming to live at the vice president’s mansion in DC, and Sarah had said, “Yes! It would be such an amazing experience.”

  I wasn’t sure what was normal—or supposed to happen between a president’s family and a vice president’s. But I know what I wanted: for everybody to get along.

  My mom had a similar impulse. She reached out to the Palins and I don’t think she always felt they had reached back. Words fell through the cracks. Offers to help—and bond—went unrecognized. My mom really hit it off with Todd, and liked her time with him, and both my parents were incredibly supportive of Bristol and Levi. My mom had even suggested that she and my dad would love to be godparents to their baby, if they were interested. But she never got an answer.

  A part of me loved Sarah—and how comfortable she was creating waves. She brought so much life and juice and energy to the campaign. When she appeared at events with my dad, the crowds tripled and quadrupled. She seemed to enjoy doing her own thing—“going rogue”—and I have to confess that I enjoyed how she took on Steve Schmidt and didn’t let him treat her like a dumb woman. He was used to snapping his fingers and making women jump. But she wouldn’t jump.

  On the other hand, she wasn’t much of a team player, was she? The more I saw of her, the more perplexed and fascinated I was. And it was only the beginning of a very long roller coaster ride as I tried to make up my mind about her, and never could.

  I’ll confess, the swirl of chaos that October made me nostalgic about my birthday the year before in New Hampshire, when Heather had gotten up incredibly early and decorated the campaign van with Hawaiian leis, fake palm trees, streamers, and a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game. And we went to Ruby Tuesday for dinner, where I loved the salad bar. It was a simple birthday, and the beginning of an amazing year—spent entirely on the road campaigning. It felt like a really long time. And I’d learned so much. I felt one hundred years older.

  “Remember last year?” I said to Mom.

  She looked in my eyes and seemed to know that I was just barely keeping it together. The rest of our visit was upbeat, and Mom kept the conversation positive and constructive. The more stressful a situation is, the more focused she becomes on the things that really matter. This is probably the secret of her endurance, and how she’s survived as a political spouse. The harder things are, the stronger she becomes.

  “Just hold your head high,” Mom said. “Keep a sense of dignity—no matter what happens.”

  Such simple advice, and so useful. If only I could remember to follow it, the way my mom always does.

  Chapter 19

  The Art of Talking Points

  Are we going to lose?

  Are we?

  Is it Sarah Palin’s fault?

  I WAS DOING A TV INTERVIEW WITH A LOCAL DENVER affiliate, a day or two after my birthday. Melissa had coached me beforehand. The magic trick to doing television was remembering a list of things you wanted to say, or were supposed to say—aka talking points—and finding sneaky ways to weave them seamlessly into the interview. This sounds easy but it’s not. I had been practicing and practicing on my book tour, but was only incrementally better.

  Artistry is involved. There are definitely masters of talking points, people who can control the interview and have their say, no matter what topic is raised. The better you are, the more gracefully and seamlessly you are able to slip the talking points into your responses.

  It’s performance art and, like acting, it is about conveying something real and authentic while saying rehearsed lines and, in my case, regurgitating campaign speak. It was the last stop in fake—and the sort of thing I usually rail against. But I was determined to get better.

  GOD LOVE MELISSA. I WOULD HAVE RUN FROM TV INTERVIEWS if it weren’t for her. She encouraged me, kept my sanity alive. She hadn’t asked to be assigned to me, I’m sure—handling press for a banished daughter-of must have been the lowest press job on the campaign. But Melissa never balked, complained, or treated me with anything less than respect and care. People had even started calling her “The Meghan Whisperer,” because she had a spooky way of getting inside my head and convincing me to do things that nobody else could. Melissa is sensitive and, like me, maybe too sensitive for politics. She had a sixth sense about how I was doing and—even more amazing—where I was headed. She
was unusually good at catching me when I wandered, or stumbled. But that day, I wandered so quickly, it was impossible to help.

  The reporter with the Denver station was a really nice woman, and asked me an innocent, easy question—something anybody with half a brain could have answered without causing controversy. I don’t think in a million years that she was trying to manipulate me or wanted me to make a fool of myself. But I did anyway.

  She asked me about Sarah Palin. The reporter was only trying to discuss Sarah’s immense popularity and all the excitement about her. It was an easy lowball.

  “You must really like Sarah Palin,” the reporter said, “and be so excited to have her as your dad’s running mate.”

  But that list of talking points that Melissa and I had rehearsed was suddenly gone from my brain. I had lots of nice things to say about Sarah, but increasingly, I had doubts about her too. This made me not want to discuss her at all. So I said something dismissive, like, “Sarah Palin and I are very different women.”

  Not an obvious blooper, I realize. Not something that anybody ran to post on YouTube as a thigh-slapping gaffe to embarrass my dad’s campaign. But if you study this remark under the giant magnifying glass of TV, as I had learned to do, it was obvious that I was distancing myself from my father’s running mate when the general election was only a week away. I was calling into question, actually, whether I even liked her.

  This wasn’t a place that a daughter-of should ever go. I worried that one of the Groomsmen would call and complain, but luckily, they never seemed to notice.

  Later, when I looked back on that day I realized it was when I first thought we could lose. And if we did, I wondered if it was Sarah Palin’s fault.