“This is my speech?” Clinton said. What the hell happened to it?
Your husband happened, her speechwriting team informed her. Bill had shown up with a pile of handwritten notes, ideas about how to restructure the speech to make it better. New lines, language, themes. The speechwriters had dutifully incorporated his edits.
Hillary was furious, apoplectic.
“This is my speech!” she said, and then stalked out of the room and back to her suite.
A few minutes later, Bill walked into the conference room looking sheepish and chastised. The speechwriters were frantically trying to reconstruct the address. There was paper strewn all over the long table, hard copies of various versions of the text. Standing over the addled aides as they cut and pasted on a laptop, Clinton attempted to pitch in. This was here, I added this, I like this, I like that, the former president said.
It was late in the afternoon by then; Hillary had only a couple of hours before she had to be onstage. Reporters were calling, asking why the Clintonites had yet to provide an advance text, accusing them of holding out. Earlier, the edgy Obamans had checked in with Sheehan about the speech and dispatched strategist Larry Grisolano to the Brown Palace lobby to take the one sneak peek that the Clinton people would allow. Sheehan and Grisolano reported back. It’s great, they said. They had no idea that the speech had been rewritten and now was being rewritten again in an effort to restore it.
Hillary arrived at the Pepsi Center in a frenzy, still making edits in the back of the car. Then she walked onstage and knocked the ball clear into the upper deck. “Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president,” Hillary proclaimed. “Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance.”
The next afternoon, the roll call began. The negotiations between the two sides over this had been protracted, but not as tense as the media claimed. The Obama forces had come to realize that Clinton wasn’t wrong; that the depth and passion of her support were greater than they’d imagined; that some degree of catharsis was indeed required. The Clintonites, meanwhile, had come to fear that a full roll call vote might wind up embarrassing Hillary, as large numbers of her delegates defected out of a desire to come together behind the nominee. A compromise solution was engineered, with some states casting their votes for each candidate, but then a call for acclamation—by none other than Hillary herself, making a surprise appearance on the convention floor. “In the spirit of unity,” she said, “with the goal of victory, let’s declare together in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president!”
With Hillary having done her duty, that left Bill. There had been some tsuris between the Clintonites and Obamans over his speech, but again, less than the hyperventilators in the press made out. When the Clintonites learned their boss would be appearing on a night dedicated to foreign policy, they objected, insisting that Clinton wanted to talk about the economy. (Barack, who had relented and called the former president a few days before the convention, told his people, “He can talk about whatever he wants to talk about.”) And as with Hillary, there was no advance text submitted for approval, which unsettled some of the Obamans.
Bill knew they were anxious, but he refused to rush. I’m going to take my time, and when I’m done, I’m done, he told Terry McAuliffe. If it’s not done until a minute before, so be it.
It was done a little earlier than that, but not much. Once again, Grisolano legged it over to the Brown Palace to take a gander. When he finished perusing the speech, Grisolano looked up at the Clintonite who’d delivered it and smiled.
“Hey, you gotta do me one favor,” Grisolano said.
“What’s that?”
“Tell him not to change a thing.”
OBAMA SHARED THAT ASSESSMENT as he watched Bill Clinton up on stage. Clinton did more than a dazzling job with his oratory. He did more than blow the room away with his charm. He said, with clear premeditation, precisely the words that Democrats in the hall and around the country wanted, needed, to hear from him: “Everything I learned in my eight years as president, and in the work I have done since in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job . . . Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States.” Whether or not Clinton believed those words was, in a way, immaterial—as Obama understood. When it was over, Obama remarked to one of his aides, He went out there and did something that was really hard for him.
With all the Clinton-related commotion in the first three days of the convention, there were few other moments that broke through. Ted Kennedy’s speech on Monday night was an exception. The senator, who had been diagnosed with a lethal brain tumor three months before, hauled himself to Denver and delivered what would be (and what everyone in the hall knew would be) his last convention speech—on behalf of the young senator to whom his endorsement had meant so much.
The other exception, on the same night, was Michelle Obama’s speech. Ever since “proud of my country,” Michelle’s public image had been in a bad way. In the campaign’s focus groups, voters volunteered their misgivings: that she was unpatriotic, seemed entitled or angry. (The New Yorker had captured the caricature on its cover that summer with a sketch portraying her as a gun-toting radical with an Angela Davis afro.) The Obamans knew this was their last best chance to rescue her from becoming a toxic spouse in the vein of Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Stealing a page from the Clinton playbook of 1992, they set out to use the convention stage to humanize her; to portray Michelle as the loving mother, sister, and daughter that she was, and one reared not in privilege but in a blue-collar home. Working with Hillary’s former speechwriter, Sarah Hurwitz, and the speech coach, Sheehan, Michelle revised and rehearsed for more than a month. The payoff was worth it. Her performance, slightly nervous but winningly sincere and at times bracingly direct (“I love this country”), wowed the crowd and sent her approval ratings soaring, never to return to earth.
Obama’s speech on Thursday night was, of course, the convention’s culmination, and another of those big-game moments that the candidate seemed to live for. Obama had amped up expectations by deciding to mimic John Kennedy’s I960 acceptance at the Los Angeles Coliseum, delivering his before nearly one hundred thousand people at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos. That Obama would be stirring and poised was not in question. Of course he would. The question was whether he would be effective—making the case for himself and against McCain in terms more concrete and compelling than he had so far.
After taking the outdoor stage amid the starbursty sparkle of thousands of camera flashes, Obama worked his way through an oration less thrilling than some of his best, but more strategic. He did biography, invoking his mother, his grandfather, and his grandmother, citing the last’s rise from the secretarial pool to middle management “despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman” as a nod to Clinton’s voters. He strafed McCain as a Bush clone who was clueless about the economy: “I don’t believe Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know.” He hinted at McCain’s hotheadedness, questioning whether he had the “temperament” to be commander in chief. And he deconstructed the negative campaign his rival had been running against him. “I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he bellowed. “We all put our country first.”
Obama happened to be speaking on the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have Dream” address on the Washington Mall, and he closed with a graceful reference to the “young preacher from Georgia” who said, “We cannot walk alone. . . . We cannot turn back.” Axelrod and Gibbs, watching from the wings, were in tears. For them, the speech was one of the rare moments, in the midst of the campaign’s bustle and insanity, when the magnitude of what they had accomplished sank in.
As the convention closed, Axelrod was well pleased. After the lost weeks of July and August, in which McCainwo
rld had stolen a march on the Obamans, the Democrats had recaptured the flag.
The chattering classes agreed with Axelrod. The convention had been a triumph. The Democrats had found their way to peace and unity. Barack and Michelle had killed. And the Clintons had piled aboard the bandwagon—at least publicly. Hillary and Bill were still bruised and still mopey. But as they flew back east from Denver, one thing had changed. They both were starting to believe that Obama was probably going to win.
Obama believed it, too. The next morning, he rode out to the airport and boarded his campaign jet. He was headed to Pennsylvania with Biden to begin the fall campaign in earnest. The Republican convention was scheduled to start the following Monday. McCain was due to announce his running mate any minute now. The Democratic ticketmates wondered who it would be—and then, like that, Axelrod appeared in the forward cabin and broke the news.
“Wow,” said Obama, picking his jaw up off the floor. “Well, I guess she’s change.”
But Biden looked confused. Swiveling his head, speaking for millions, he blurted out, “Who’s Sarah Palin?”
Chapter Twenty
Sarahcuda
THE PLAN WAS ALWAYS for McCain to shock the world with his vice-presidential pick. For weeks his top advisers had been dreaming and scheming, touching bases and laying groundwork, secretly readying an announcement at once unconventional, unexpected, and unprecedented, which would throw the press and both parties for a loop and redraw the political map. The surprise that McCainworld intended to spring was a running mate named Joe Lieberman. But then something happened on the way to the Republican convention in St. Paul—and, presto chango, there was Palin.
McCainworld’s core conviction was that McCain’s VP choice had to be a game changer. The campaign assumed the progress it had made with “Celeb” was a temporary blip. That Obama’s financial advantages would continue to create a crushing imbalance. That the three quarters of the electorate who were telling pollsters the country was on the wrong track and blaming the GOP would punish McCain at the polls. If McCain’s running mate selection didn’t fundamentally alter the dynamics of the race, it would be lights out.
From thirty thousand feet, the process by which McCain sought his number two looked altogether normal for many months. He’d begun back in April, with about as much time at his disposal to make his choice as any nominee in history. A tight circle of his aides, with his input, produced a long list of possibilities. A prominent Washington attorney with a reputation for probity and discretion—A. B. Culvahouse of O’Melveny and Myers—was retained to head the vetting team. As the list was winnowed, Culvahouse and Co. conducted extensive research on the surviving finalists, preparing a lengthy and intrusive questionnaire and arranging face-to-face interviews with A.B. The customary premium was placed on keeping the pick a surprise, and a plan was developed to maximize its impact: announcing the selection soon after the Democratic convention, ideally the very next day, to stop Obama’s momentum cold.
Yet three of the five short-listers produced by this seemingly rigorous process failed to meet its chief goal. Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist, and Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty all had their virtues, but game changers they were not. The fourth, New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, qualified for the label—but he also was a divorced, pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun, Jewish plutocrat who had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to independent as nonchalantly if as he’d been changing his loafers. Not one of them generated much enthusiasm in McCainworld, or, more important, in McCain. But, for reasons both personal and political, the fifth man did.
McCain’s affection for Lieberman had only grown since the Democratic senator from Connecticut endorsed him in December. Joe became a fixture on the Straight Talk Express, traveling all over during the nomination fight, even to locales where his presence made McCain’s advisers skittish. When McCain suggested that Lieberman campaign with him in South Carolina, Davis thought, God, what are we doing? A liberal, Jewish Democrat—who was Gore’s running mate—in South Carolina for the Republican primary? But McCain wasn’t remotely fazed. “Don’t worry about it,” he told Davis. “It won’t be a problem.”
Lieberman was chummy, too, with McCain’s other regular sidekick on the road, Lindsey Graham; the trio was dubbed the Three Amigos. Between Lieberman’s Shecky Greene humor and Graham’s tall tales about falling asleep during meetings with foreign leaders, McCain was in stitches much of the time when his pals were around. A favorite pastime of the amigos was watching that funny YouTube video of John Edwards fixing his hair. “Let’s look at it again!” McCain would command, and soon they’d all be clutching their sides, emitting peals.
The political case for picking Lieberman as VP was straightforward, if audacious. McCain’s lieutenants maintained that it was essential that their candidate distance himself from Bush and reclaim the reformer’s mantle. Nothing would do that better, went the argument, than presenting the country with a kind of national unity ticket, a pairing that literally embodied bipartisanship. Lieberman’s support for the Iraq War made him reasonably popular among Republicans. His long tenure in Washington would reinforce the campaign’s message of experience and drive the perception that McCain had made his choice with governing, not politics, in mind. The pick would fairly shout McCain’s slogan, “Country First.”
Many of McCain’s most influential advisers—Schmidt, Graham, the former Bush White House communications director Nicolle Wallace—were strongly in favor of the Lieberman option. The worst-case scenario, Wallace contended, was that Lieberman’s pro-choice stance would cause a walk-out of social conservatives from the convention, and even that would have its benefits, sending a message of independence. Astonishingly, no one among the senior staff objected to Lieberman on ideological grounds. Most of them, in fact, saw his selection as the campaign’s best chance to win, assuming they could get Lieberman approved at the convention.
In mid-July, Davis called Lieberman and asked if he’d be willing to be put on the short list and vetted. “Gee, this really surprises me,” Lieberman said. “John doesn’t have to do this to thank me for supporting him.”
“No, no. He’s not doing it to thank you. He’s very serious about this.”
“Honestly, Rick, I don’t intuitively see how this could happen,” Lieberman said. “Well, if he’s serious, it’s an honor. I’m happy to go forward.”
For Lieberman, endorsing McCain had moved him further away than ever from the Democratic Party. And he had already taken another step in that direction by agreeing to speak at the GOP convention. His decision to be considered for the VP slot was driven in part by one thought: Am I ever going to have another opportunity at this? Yet, given the political climate, Lieberman couldn’t also help but wonder, Am I going to have the unique honor to be the only person in history to lose twice as vice president on two different tickets?
As July turned to August, Lieberman received from Graham encouraging reports about his prospects. “Schmidt gets this,” Lindsey said. “He did Schwarzenegger’s campaign. He knows we have to get independents.” Graham added, “Cindy is for you.”
Lieberman still couldn’t quite see how the McCain forces could get him through the convention, given his liberal views on almost every issue save national security. “If he chooses me, do you think I’d get nominated?” he asked Graham.
“Of course, you’d be nominated,” Lindsey said. “Some minority of the convention would walk out. But I think that’s not so bad for John.”
McCainworld had a two-pronged plan for minimizing the negative convention fallout. First, the pick had to be a complete surprise, sprung at the last minute, before the opposition had time to coalesce, so Lieberman could be defined on the campaign’s terms. And second, McCain would agree to take the one-term pledge he’d abandoned in the final hours before his announcement in the spring of 2007, thus eliminating the risk that he would die in office during his second term and leave a Democrat in charge. McCain, once again, balked at the
pledge, but his advisers assured him it would be necessary if he went with Joe. Grudgingly, McCain seemed to assent, while Lieberman readily agreed.
For much of August, McCainworld pursued the Lieberman option with singular focus. Davis and his deputies began calling delegates, state chairmen, and other party leaders around the country, feeling out their level of resistance to a pro-choice pick (without mentioning any names). Davis crafted a convention strategy to see Lieberman through—everything from a whip operation, to a sophisticated communications rollout, to a lunch with conservative grandees that Charlie Black would attend the Friday beforehand to explain the rationale and rally them to the cause.
No one was more gung ho about all this than Graham. He couldn’t stop talking about it with McCain, hectoring him about why Lieberman was his only hope. With the Mormon thing, you can’t pick Romney; you’ll lose by eight, Graham contended. You can’t pick Pawlenty—he’s a nice guy, but nobody’s ever heard of him; you’ll lose by six.
McCain played his cards close to his chest. I hear you, he said. I gotcha.
But Graham’s eager advocacy, and his Biden-like loose lips, wound up sinking the Lieberman option. On August 13, while Graham was traveling with McCain on a campaign swing, he floated the idea of a pro-choice running mate to a group of wary social conservatives in Michigan, asking which they would prefer: a running mate who opposed abortion but caused the GOP to lose or one who supported abortion rights and carried the party to victory?
Within days, the indiscretion had leaked, flooding the mainstream press and the Web with speculation about Lieberman and Republican pro-choice former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, sparking a flaming tizzy in the rightmost precincts of GOP Nation. “If the McCain camp does that,” bellowed Rush Limbaugh, “they will have effectively destroyed the Republican Party and put the conservative movement in the bleachers.”
Game Change Page 38