Game Change

by John Heilemann

  Anticipating this kind of reaction from the right, McCain’s advisers had been quietly trying to recruit a conservative counter-chorus to sing Lieberman’s praises. When they approached Karl Rove, he not only declined but told them that picking Lieberman was a terrible idea. If you nominate him, he’ll probably get through the convention, Rove argued, but the battle will be bloody. The vote will be close, the story line will be bad, McCain will leave St. Paul with a split party—and no time to put it back together.

  That Sunday, August 24, Rove took his concerns to Lieberman directly, pleading with the senator by phone to turn down the VP slot if McCain extended his hand.

  “You know him,” Rove said. “He’s so stubborn he may simply get this in his mind and carry it to you. And you may be the only person who can save McCain from himself.”

  Lieberman listened politely and said, “I hear you. I’ll think about it,” and then hung up, turned to his wife, and marveled at the fantastic strangeness of the situation.

  Lieberman had no intention of taking Rove’s advice. But, as it happened, McCainworld was in the process of rendering the question moot. That same day, out in Arizona, McCain’s senior advisers were meeting again at the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Rove was right. In a pair of meetings, one with McCain present, pollster Bill McInturff informed the group that research data he’d been studying indicated that a pro-choice pick would cost McCain votes among Republicans and gain him few, if any, among independents. With a lot of work and elbow grease, we can get Joe through the convention, Black added. But then we’re going to have to spend September healing the party instead of concentrating on swing voters and Obama.

  The depth and severity of the problems raised by picking Lieberman finally hit home with McCain. “I understand,” he said in a tone of resignation—and from that point on, Joe’s name was never seriously raised again.

  That night, Schmidt and Davis drove over to McCain’s Phoenix condo for dinner. The Republican convention was a week away, and they were nowhere. In the meetings earlier that day, there was no support for Romney, Crist, or Bloomberg. That left Pawlenty.

  “Here’s my view of the politics of it,” Schmidt told McCain as they feasted on deep-fried burritos. “In any normal year, Tim Pawlenty’s a great pick, a no-brainer. But this isn’t a normal year. We need to have a transformative, electrifying moment in this campaign.”

  Schmidt and Davis then placed a new option on the table: Sarah Palin.

  Palin’s name had been on the longest of the long lists, but that was it. Davis told McCain that if he wanted to consider the governor of Alaska, he needed to phone her that night and ask her if she’d be willing to be vetted—and arrange to meet with her, pronto.

  McCain was impassive, but agreeable.

  “I’ll call her,” he said. “Let’s call her.”

  A few minutes later, McCain reached Palin on her cell phone at the Alaska State Fair. Fifteen minutes after that, McCain hung up. And Palin was on her way.

  SHE WAS FORTY-FOUR YEARS old, had occupied the Alaska statehouse for twenty months, and had an 80 percent approval rating, making her, as Schmidt pointed out, “the most popular governor in America.” She’d attended five colleges and been a beauty queen, a sportscaster, and the two-term mayor of Wasilla, the tiny town where she lived with her snowmobiling husband, Todd, and five children. She was pro-life, anti-stem cell research, pro-gun, and pro-states rights. She had captured the governorship by running as a reformer, pledging to clean up the corrupt clubhouse politics of Juneau, and she was often at odds with Alaska’s regnant Republican kingpin, Senator Ted Stevens. Her nickname from her high school basketball days was “Sarah Barracuda.” She was intensely competitive, apparently fearless, and endlessly watchable.

  McCain had met Palin in February, at the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington. She was part of a small group of western-state governors whom McCain had convened to talk about energy policy. Later that day, he and Palin spoke again, for ten minutes or so, at a reception; two nights later, they shared a table at a fund-raising dinner and chatted a bit more. Afterward, McCain told Black that he liked the cut of Palin’s jib. She’s damn impressive, he said.

  It was six months later when Schmidt and Davis came to the same conclusion, almost by accident. In July, Davis, who was in charge of McCain’s VP process, was casting about for unconventional possibilities and sat down one day in front of his computer with a list of names of female Republican officeholders. When he stumbled upon a video of Palin appearing on Charlie Rose, Davis was bowled over. And so was Schmidt, who screened the clip and proclaimed, She’s a star!

  As the Lieberman option became more and more imperiled at the end of August, Schmidt and Davis—afraid that this new VP idea would leak, too—kept talking furtively between themselves about Palin. She seemed to be the answer to their prayers. In a way, she was the anti-Lieberman, hard right and totally fresh. Davis considered her a triple threat: a governor, a conservative, and a would-be historic pick. Schmidt upped the ante, saying that Palin was the only candidate who might achieve all four objectives he saw as critical for McCain: excite the GOP base, rouse women voters, create space between him and Bush, and help him recapture the maverick label.

  On the evening of Wednesday, August 27, three days after McCain phoned Palin, she arrived at the airport in Flagstaff, Arizona, in a private Learjet from Anchorage. Palin was ferried to the home of a wealthy McCain supporter, Bob Delgado, to meet with Schmidt and Salter.

  It was now thirty-six hours from the campaign’s Friday target for unveiling its veepstakes winner. But McCain was leaving the next morning, so the countdown clock was actually set closer to T minus twelve hours. At that point, Culvahouse and his team had devoted just five days to vetting Palin, digging into public records, her hastily completed seventy-four-part questionnaire, and her tax returns—less investigation than a potential assistant secretary of agriculture would receive. Palin had spent just a few hours filling out the questionnaire, which had consumed weeks for other short-listers. She had never met Schmidt. She had never met Salter. Now, in a rush, against a deadline, with little background information, the two McCain advisers had to determine if she was ready for the big stage.

  After offering Palin some pizza, Schmidt commenced his grilling. Governor, he said, in Alaska you’re the boss. You have a staff, advisers, and your husband, all valuable in having helped you get where you are. None of them will have a seat at the table here. Senator McCain is the boss in this effort, and your job, if you’re chosen, is going to be to do what’s asked of you and get comfortable real fast with the people we put around you. What’s your reaction to that?

  I understand completely, Palin said.

  Should this go forward, Schmidt went on, by dinnertime Friday you’ll be one of the most famous and recognizable people on the planet. Your life will never be the same. Have you thought about the impact on your family? Would you and they be a hundred percent committed to this project going forward?

  Yes, a hundred percent, Palin said.

  Do you have confidence in your lieutenant governor and your staff to fulfill your constitutional duties as the governor of Alaska in your absence? Schmidt asked. Because unless there’s an earthquake or a natural disaster of some magnitude, you won’t likely be back home again until after Election Day. You can’t be distracted by your day job. You need to be focused on this job.

  Yes, absolutely, I understand, Palin said.

  You and Senator McCain have differences on some issues, Schmidt continued. He is pro-life, but he’s in favor of exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother being at risk; you are not. Senator McCain is in favor of stem cell research; you are not. We’ll never ask you to make a statement that contradicts your beliefs, but we expect you to support his positions as the policies of the administration you’d be part of. And we may ask you to appear in ads advocating those positions. Do you have a
problem with that?

  No, I don’t, not at all, Palin said.

  Schmidt and Salter both warned Palin that her private life would be subjected to harsh, at times unfair, attacks. Nothing you’ve experienced has prepared you for this, how ugly it can be, Salter said. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  I understand, Palin said.

  Salter had read about Palin on his flight to Arizona, and was concerned about hints that she might be a creationist. “Governor,” he said flatly, “do you reject the theory of evolution?”

  No, Palin said. My father is a science teacher. He showed me fossils. I know how things evolved. I just don’t think that evolution excludes a role for God.

  Schmidt and Salter were approaching Palin from different perspectives. Schmidt, the discipline fiend, wanted to be sure Palin was ready for what she’d face and would toe the line. Salter, the ur-loyalist, wanted to safeguard McCain’s brand, to make sure he wouldn’t be teaming up with a female Pat Robertson. But neither one was poking or prodding to find every possible weakness in Palin. They asked her nothing to plumb the depths of her knowledge about foreign or domestic policy. They didn’t explore her preparedness to be vice president. They assumed she knew as much as the average governor, and that what she didn’t know, she would pick up on the fly. They weren’t searching for problems. They were looking for a last-second solution.

  What reassured them was Palin’s preternatural calm and self-possession. Never once did she betray any jitters or lack of confidence.

  Later that night, Palin spoke for three hours by phone with Culvahouse. Over the previous weekend, he had assigned a Washington lawyer named Ted Frank, who’d worked on the screening of Lieberman, to prepare a written vetting report on Palin. Thrown together from scratch in less than forty hours, the document highlighted her vulnerabilities: “Democrats upset at McCain’s anti-Obama ‘celebrity’ advertisements will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News expressed concern that she often seemed ‘unprepared or over her head’ in a campaign run by a friend.”

  The longest section of the vetting report dealt with an ongoing ethics investigation in Alaska known as Troopergate, in which Palin stood accused of improperly pressuring and firing the state public safety commissioner after a messy dispute with members of her family.

  The report contained a disclaimer: Given the haste in which it was prepared, the vetters might have missed something.

  But Culvahouse seemed to sense that the momentum in McCainworld behind picking Palin was gathering such force that the vet might be irrelevant. “We may be slowing a freight train with boxes of feathers,” he said to his colleagues.

  The first thing Palin told Culvahouse on the phone that Wednesday night concerned a matter that she’d left off her questionnaire (and neglected to tell Schmidt and Salter). Her teenage daughter, Bristol, was pregnant out of wedlock.

  “Is she getting married?” Culvahouse asked, then added, jokingly, “Is she getting married tomorrow?”

  The lawyer pressed Palin about her critics in Alaska who charged that she was too inexperienced when she ran for governor. Palin replied disarmingly, People are still attacking me back home, but you’ll notice they no longer say I’m in over my head.

  The next morning, Culvahouse spoke to McCain by phone. Overall, the lawyer was impressed with how Palin handled herself, but he advised McCain that, compared to the alternatives, there were more potential land mines with Palin.

  “What’s your bottom line?” McCain asked.

  “John, high risk, high reward,” Culvahouse said.

  “You shouldn’t have told me that. I’ve been a risk taker all of my life.”

  Shortly afterward, Palin rolled up to the senator’s ranch in Sedona with Schmidt and Salter. McCain and Palin walked down to a creek that ran through the property. For about an hour, they spoke privately beneath a sycamore tree.

  After they finished talking, McCain introduced Palin to Cindy, took a short stroll alone with his wife, and then approached his advisers for a final powwow about the pick. Salter contended that Pawlenty was young and energetic, a party modernizer but a solid conservative, and an able communicator who could connect with blue-collar voters. Palin, he said, was untested, would undermine the experience argument against Obama, and might damage McCain’s stature. “This is your reputation,” Salter stressed.

  Schmidt conceded that picking Palin could go bad, but he maintained that Pawlenty would gain McCain nothing. “If I was running,” Schmidt said, “I’d rather lose by ten points trying to go for the win than lose by one point and look back and say, ‘Goddamn it, I should have gone for the win.’”

  The most important decision of McCain’s campaign was squarely in his hands, and the circumstances could hardly have been odder or more telling. Unlike Obama and his methodical process, McCain was flying by the seat of his pants. He had left himself no time and no other options; if he went with Pawlenty or any conventional pick, he believed that he would lose. Yet, in judging Palin, he was relying on a vetting so hasty and haphazard it barely merited the name. No one had interviewed her husband. No one had spoken to her political enemies. No vetters had descended upon Alaska. There had been almost no follow-up on any issues that the investigation had raised. Palin’s life still was a mystery to McCainworld. And she was still a stranger to McCain.

  But although McCain didn’t know much about Palin, what he knew, he liked. She reminded him a lot of himself: the outsider’s courage, the willingness to piss all over her party. (He loved that she’d taken on that pork-barreler Ted Stevens, whom he despised.) He saw in Palin a way of seizing back and amplifying his own message of change—real change, not the bogus Obama version. “Trust your gut, John,” Cindy told him, and McCain knew that she was right.

  McCain walked up to the deck outside his cabin, where Palin was waiting, and offered her the job. They shook hands, embraced, went back down to the creek to pose for some pictures—and then McCain was off.

  Palin collected herself and her things and left for the airport in Flagstaff with Salter and Schmidt. They boarded an afternoon charter flight to Dayton, Ohio, where she would rejoin McCain the next morning for the announcement of her selection.

  In the air, Palin, in a black fleece and black skirt, her hair pinned up with a clip, appeared perfectly serene—which again struck Schmidt. Five days earlier, this woman, for all her success in Alaska, had been living in relative obscurity, without even the faintest inkling that she was being seriously considered to be McCain’s running mate. And yet here she was, totally unruffled, utterly unflustered, not even terribly excited.

  “You seem very calm, not nervous,” Schmidt said to her quizzically.

  Palin nodded and replied, “It’s God’s plan.”

  THE LORD’S STRATAGEM CERTAINLY appeared to be working the next morning in Ohio. The campaign had pulled off a hell of a coup, secrecy-wise. When Palin took the stage with McCain, jaws dropped and eyes popped across the country and around the world. Before a throng of more than ten thousand, the biggest crowd the campaign had yet seen, Palin delivered a knockout speech, filling her partner with delight, a gratifying gift on what was his birthday. After name-checking Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic VP nominee in 1984, she gave a shout-out to Clinton and made a bid for her disaffected supporters. “Hillary left eighteen million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling,” Palin said. “But it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”

  In Ohio, Schmidt, drawing on his experiences managing the Alito and Roberts nominations, told Palin that the introduction of a veep was a lot like a space launch. The period of time from the ignition of the rocket until the capsule was in orbit was ten or twelve minutes of violent kinetic energy, Schmidt said. That’s the dangerous part. But once the vehicle escaped Earth’s atmosphere,
it was safe.

  Schmidt’s analogy was all too apt—and that was the problem. A successful space launch requires years of meticulous planning by scientists and engineers, stress-testing the components of the rocket, running through countless simulations, discovering every potential pitfall, implementing fail-safe systems. McCainworld had done precisely none of that with Palin. Her record and background, like those of any nominee, presented political challenges, but none was insurmountable with sufficient preparation. But the swiftness of the vetting, the obsession with covertness, and the suddenness of the pick meant that the campaign was ill equipped to present and defend McCain’s choice.

  From the moment Palin stepped onstage in Ohio, McCain headquarters was in turmoil. The phone lines were jammed with calls from reporters trying to figure out who she was. The McCain press shop was just as clueless as the journalists. There were no basic talking points in circulation or any of the materials from the Culvahouse vet, let alone some secret, comprehensive Palin briefing book. Frantic staffers were reduced to Googling Palin’s name or hitting the State of Alaska website, which was constantly crashing due to overload.

  Meanwhile, Palin’s team was being assembled almost entirely on the fly. Her designated sherpa, the Republican operative Tucker Eskew, was hired on the spot that Friday after he sent an unprompted email to Nicolle Wallace with some ideas about how to put forward Palin. (Great! Yes! Have you got sixty-three days? Wallace wrote Eskew back.) Palin’s traveling chief of staff, Andrew Smith, was first approached that Sunday; a friend of Schmidt’s, he had almost no political experience. Before the announcement, most of the members of Team Palin couldn’t have picked their new boss out of a lineup or properly pronounced her name. They had no answers to even the most routine questions about her.