Game Change

by John Heilemann

  From early in the morning until late at night, he was distracted, tense, and gruff. Like Iseman, McCain was hearing that a wide range of his past and present associates was being contacted by the Times for the story. He dispatched friends with connections at the Gray Lady to try to penetrate its veil of mystery. “Where do you think we are on this?” McCain would ask. Umpteen times a day, he’d phone Davis, Salter, Black, or Schmidt, all of whom were dealing with the story in one way or another. What’s happening with the Times? Have we heard from them? What do they want? What do we have to do?

  McCain’s attitude about the likely outcome was dark. “They’re out to get me, boy,” he’d say. Or, “They’re coming after us.” Or, “They’re going to fuck us.”

  Finally, in early December, McCain decided he could take it no more. He thought the way the paper was handling the story was shoddy, its tactics bordering on harassment. He believed he had a solid relationship with Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times. On a conference call with Davis and the rest of the campaign’s top brass, McCain said, “Fuck it, I’ll talk to Keller.”

  McCain was astonished when, after reaching Keller, almost the first thing out of the editor’s mouth was: Is it true? “I have never betrayed the public trust by doing anything like that,” McCain replied, and then got off the phone in a hurry.

  The next two weeks were a frenzy within the McCain camp as the Times appeared to be moving toward publishing the story—which, apart from whatever seamy stuff it might contain, was apparently going to take a substantial look at McCain’s efforts on behalf of corporate interests and their water-carriers. Salter was spending three quarters of each day doing nothing but diving into cardboard boxes, excavating ancient records, and pulling up documents in response to the Times reporters’ detailed questions.

  On a parallel track, the campaign was preparing its defense strategy. Schmidt’s well-honed and long-held view was that you couldn’t go wrong in Republican politics by attacking the Times. To help with handling the media circus that was bound to ensue, McCain hired the Washington power lawyer Bob Bennett, who had served as Bill Clinton’s personal attorney during the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.

  Meanwhile, Iseman hired a lawyer of her own—actually, her second—and was in a bad way. She felt sick, wasn’t eating, had lost a parlous amount of weight; her paranoia was stratospheric. She was talking with Davis constantly, sharing with him her answers to the written list of questions the Times had provided at her request—a degree of coordination about which few were aware. At the top of her reply, Iseman wrote, I am a private citizen. You are destroying my life. She again insisted that she never had a romantic relationship with the senator.

  The McCain campaign braced for the story to run the week before Christmas, and sent Bennett to meet with the Times reporters. Then, on December 20, the Drudge Report blared an item with the headline “MEDIA FIREWORKS: McCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY.” The banner was a reference to the Keller call, but the tantalizing part of the post was elsewhere. The reporters “hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday,” it said, “but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election.”

  The revelation that the Times was pursuing such an explosive line of inquiry caused the political world to gasp. The Romney campaign saw the item and worried that the piece would never be considered fit to print. For Romney, the publication of the story before New Hampshire would all but guarantee that he won the state. For McCain, the calculation was the converse: if the story ran, he was dead.

  The whole thing was excruciating for McCain; fending off such personal attacks, true or false, felt like South Carolina all over again. “I do find the timing of this whole issue very interesting,” McCain told the Associated Press on the day the Drudge item appeared. “And we’re not going to stand for what happened to us in 2000.”

  But Schmidt was certain that no act of defiance would be necessary at that point. They don’t have the story, he told McCain. If we get to Christmas and they don’t publish, we’ll be fine. They’re not going to put something out a few days before Iowa. It’s just not going to happen.

  “I hope you’re right,” McCain replied, using one of his favorite expressions. What it meant was: Don’t bet on it.

  * * *

  IN THE DAYS BEFORE the New Hampshire primary on January 8, the McCain campaign was suffused in an aura of nostalgia: the Straight Talk Express crisscrossing the snowbanked byways, with McCain in the back of the bus cracking wise, the hack pack huddled around him. McCain’s town hall meetings were jammed, his wit and spontaneity on display. The Sunday before the vote, at an event in Salem, he was questioned by an audience member who objected to his support for Bush’s tax cuts as fiscally irresponsible. “You’re still in purgatory,” the man said.

  “Thank you,” replied McCain. “That’s a step up from where I was last summer.”

  McCain was openly, fanatically superstitious. In New Hampshire, he carried with him his lucky penny and lucky compass, and not only stayed in the same room in the same hotel as he did in 2000, but slept on the same side of the bed. And though such behavior might have struck some as obsessive-compulsive, it reflected his awareness of the role that blind luck had played in his revival.

  Mark McKinnon, the former media adviser to President Bush who was now filling that role for McCain, observed that his current boss’s winning required that he draw a political inside straight. In the last months of 2007, McCain had been dealt the first two cards in that hand: the apparent success of the Iraq surge, and the reduction in the heat surrounding immigration. The results of the Iowa caucuses on January 3 delivered him a third. Huckabee trounced Romney by nine points, leaving McCain’s only serious competition in New Hampshire reeling. The fourth card came courtesy of the Times, which made good on Schmidt’s optimism and continued to hold back the Iseman story. And the fifth was slapped down in front of him by New Hampshire, where he won the primary by five points over Romney. Accepting his hard-earned victory, he told the crowd, “We are the makers of history, not its victims.”

  McCain’s luck at the table continued in the Michigan primary on January 15, though it was less than evident at the time. In a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate and a manufacturing base hollowed out to the point of collapse, McCain had chosen candor over pander—“Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he declared—and paid the price at the polls, losing to Romney by nine points.

  Yet McCain’s long-run prospects were bolstered by the curious strategy pursued by Huckabee. With his energetic base of Evangelical support, Huckabee stood as McCain’s greatest threat in the next primary, in South Carolina, which came four days after Michigan. But seduced by the notion that his appeals to economic populism would play well in Michigan, Huckabee and his team decided to devote several days and a pile of cash—precious resources, of which he had little—to the state. Not only did Huckabee finish a distant third, but he also missed the chance to get a jump on McCain in South Carolina.

  With all eyes transfixed on the Democrats, the Republican primary in the Palmetto State might as well have been occurring in Bora-Bora for all the attention it received. Yet in the contemporary history of the GOP, no contest had been a more reliable bellwether in determining who would eventually claim the Republican nomination. Since 1980, when Lee Atwater pushed his native state to the front of the presidential calendar, every winner of South Carolina had gone on to become the party’s standard-bearer.

  The McCains were nervous as they entered the sprint to primary day. The polls showed a tighter race than John had hoped it would be after his victory in New Hampshire, his lead over Huckabee in the low single digits. Cindy, still scarred by the memories of 2000, was uncomfortable every moment she spent on the ground. And her husband was only minimally less haunted. The possibility of another crushing loss in South Carolina—one that, in light of McCain’s still-threadbare financial circums
tances, might effectively end his campaign—filled him with dread.

  In one crucial respect, however, the McCain of 2008 was a very different animal in South Carolina than the McCain of 2000. No longer the insurgent, no longer the rabble-rouser, he was the candidate of the Establishment. His most loyal supporter, Lindsey Graham, was the state’s senior senator, and had done yeoman’s work in corralling the endorsements of local elected officials early on—and holding them in place during the dark days of 2007. At events across South Carolina in the days leading up to the balloting, McCain stood arm in arm with those officials. He also basked in the glow of the support of the state’s war veterans, some of whom had turned viciously against him in 2000. In almost no other way had McCain’s campaign wound up resembling the Bush model, but he was grateful for these two exceptions.

  By primary night, no one had a clue as to what might happen. Romney had pulled most of his advertising to focus on Florida—that was good. Giuliani had failed to make the smart move and campaign along the affluent South Carolina coast, where there were scads of pro-choice voters—another boon to McCain. But when the polls closed, neither the networks nor the AP were prepared to project a winner. The early returns were screwy, the forecasting models were messed up. It was going to take a while.

  In the McCains’ hotel suite, the tension was nearly unbearable. Always optimistic, Graham began doing his own analysis as the results from certain counties came in, predicting victory. But McCain didn’t want to hear happy talk, even from Lindsey. Don’t say that, he snarled through gritted teeth. You don’t know that. Just shut up.

  Watching her husband pace around the room only made Cindy more anxious. “Is everything going to be okay?” she whispered to Davis, on the brink of tears.

  When word arrived after eight o’clock that McCain had narrowly won, joy washed over Cindy, excitement over her husband—which was unusual. Normally for McCain, the relief of not losing was a more powerful emotion than the thrill of winning. But South Carolina was different. It was about vindication, about slaying demons, about putting paid to the past. McCain wasn’t a drinker, but that night, there was champagne.

  Yet the sweetness of South Carolina lasted only a few hours. McCain now faced what everyone expected would be the decisive primary of the season: Florida, on January 29. With Huckabee and Giuliani effectively finished, McCain was finally going one-on-one against the rival he most disdained, Romney. If McCain prevailed in Florida, the nomination would be his. But if he lost, he would be heading into Super Tuesday mortally wounded, facing a candidate with tens of millions of dollars in personal wealth and little apparent reluctance to spend it.

  For the next ten days, Romney campaigned like a conservative incarnation of Bill Clinton circa 1992. “The economy, stupid” was his leitmotif. McCain talked of little besides Iraq, slamming Romney—in a dishonest way—for wanting to prematurely withdraw American troops. (Earlier in the year, Romney had said he favored “a private timetable” for drawing down U.S. forces.) But by the weekend before the vote, the polls remained razor-edge close. McCain and Romney were in a dead heat.

  Both men had long hoped that Charlie Crist would be their ticket to ride in the Sunshine State. But after all the hide-and-seek of 2007, Crist seemed to have decided to sit out the primary. “I’m not going to endorse anybody; whoever’s going to win is going to win,” he told his adviser LeMieux on the Friday night before the Tuesday primary. The assurance quickly went out from Cristworld to the Republican candidates: Charlie wasn’t going to put his finger on the scale.

  The next day, however, Crist, out sailing with his fiancee, felt a pang of conscience. The governor’s internal polling showed McCain slipping as Romney poured money into the state. Crist harkened back to the endorsement McCain had given him in 2006. The guy’s been really good to me, he thought. I can’t leave my friend behind.

  The following night, McCain was in St. Petersburg for the Pinellas County Lincoln Day Dinner. Crist was slated to introduce him. Upstairs in McCain’s suite at the Hilton where the event was being held, he asked John for a word alone—and told him he would be endorsing him at the dinner downstairs in a few minutes.

  Crist’s intervention propelled McCain to a five-point win in Florida. The other Republican candidates and their advisers may have seen Charlie as a liar, a manipulator, and a no-account betrayer, but he was all right with John. To Crist’s betrothed on primary night, McCain said, “God bless him.”

  THE NEXT THREE WEEKS may have been the most glorious of McCain’s political career. After Florida, much of his party fell into formation and smartly saluted him. Giuliani dropped out the next day and threw his backing to McCain. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Texas governor Rick Perry climbed on board the day after that. McCain’s face graced the cover of Time, above the tagline “The Phoenix.” And on February 5, Super Tuesday, he racked up a clutch of big-state wins—California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York—that put him within shouting distance of clinching the nomination.

  And yet there was still one enemy lurking that potentially had the power to hang McCain: The New York Times. The only questions were whether the Iseman story was in fact a noose around his neck, and whether the paper would ever try to cinch it tight.

  All along, Schmidt had assumed that the piece would eventually run. The Times had invested too much time and effort in pursuing the matter just to let it drop. He was even more certain when, over the weekend of February 16 and 17, the campaign heard that The New Republic was working on its own story about the internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the opus. There was no way the Times would let itself be scooped or embarrassed, Schmidt believed. The Iseman story was coming and coming soon, Schmidt told McCain.

  On February 20, it came. Just hours before the piece went live on the Web, Schmidt and Salter learned from the Times that it was being posted and was set to run in the paper the next day. McCain and his wife were campaigning in Toledo, Ohio. Schmidt and Salter had to get there fast. They raced to Reagan airport in Washington, but their flight was delayed, so they grabbed a plane to Detroit instead, rented a car, and drove the sixty miles south. Along the way, they studied the story on their BlackBerrys.

  It ran to more than three thousand words, the majority devoted to McCain’s dealings with lobbyists. But the story also contended that, in 1999, some of McCain’s aides and advisers had confronted him over an alleged affair with Iseman, and that McCain had “acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance” from her. It also recounted the Weaver-Iseman dustup, with Weaver confirming by email and on the record that he had told Vicki to stay away from John. Weaver’s chief concern, he said, was that Iseman had been bragging to others that she had professional sway over McCain, which threatened the senator’s image as a reformer.

  It was nearly midnight when Schmidt and Salter finally reached Toledo. They found the McCains in their hotel suite. Cindy was distraught, had clearly been weeping. John was hardly in better shape. He said he was sure the campaign was over. That the story wasn’t politically survivable. That he wouldn’t be the nominee.

  “I don’t know how we get through this,” McCain said.

  Schmidt was having none of it.

  “This is going to be fine,” he said. “The story is outrageous. Someone’s going to get crushed on this, and it’s going to be The New York Times!’

  Emphatically, Schmidt laid out his plan for a counterattack. First thing the next morning, McCain would hold a press conference for the reporters traveling with him, Cindy by his side. We’re not going to put a clock on this, Schmidt said. You’re going to take every question. You’ll deny the story, you’ll express your unhappiness with the Times, and you’ll do it in the proper tone. “You can’t get up there looking pissed off,” Schmidt said. “You have to be measured in the response.”

  Although both McCains were furious at Weaver for having gone on the record in the story, Salter told McCain that he had to speak positively about his former wingma
n at the press conference; they needed to avoid giving Weaver an excuse to peddle anything further to the press. As for Iseman, they all agreed that McCain should call her a friend, which was what he said she was.

  The next morning, John and Cindy met the press. In a dark suit, blue shirt, and blue tie, McCain performed to his advisers’ precise specifications. He was calm. He was collected. He showed not the slightest flash of even the mildest annoyance. He answered many questions with a simple yes or no. He said that Weaver was a friend. And that the same was true of Iseman.

  Asked about the Times, he said, “This whole story is based on anonymous sources . . . I’m very disappointed in that.”

  The press conference not only achieved its intended effect but had some ancillary benefits. McCain never believed he would see the day when the raving right rallied around him in unison, yet that was what was happening now. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham—every one of them scorned McCain. Yet within hours, they’d all hastened to his defense, because they hated the Times even more. (“For the first time in history, John McCain won talk radio,” Charlie Black drolly observed.)

  The McCainiacs had feared that the Times story would open up the Pandora’s box that was the senator’s personal life. Although The Washington Post and Newsweek promptly ran their own similar anonymously sourced versions of the Iseman tale, the stories disappeared without a trace. The unequivocal denials of McCain and Iseman, and the criticism of the Times for venturing into tabloid territory, produced the same dynamic as had the paper’s 2006 piece on the Clintons’ marriage: the Gray Lady was forced to play defense, and McCain assumed the self-righteous pose of the aggrieved. Never again would the campaign face another serious press inquiry about the candidate’s personal life.