Dirty Sexy Politics

Chapter 14 The Diva Who Fell to Earth

It was beginning to dawn on me that I wasn’t quite as valued on the campaign as I had previously thought. Looking back, I realized that it had been going on for a while, and showed itself in the way people treated me, how they danced around certain subjects, and tiptoed, timidly. Nobody was being real or direct with me. Instead, they were vague and spoke in super-calm voices, like Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

They didn’t feel lucky to have me. No. In the eyes of the campaign, I was like a curse, a brat, a diva, a monstrous daughter-of. Or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit again. I was a small and pretty unimportant detail, in the vast scheme of things. All I needed to do was keep my mouth shut.

In the beginning, when I first joined, there were only a small number of us—we called ourselves “the Originals”—and it felt like a family. In places like New Hampshire, I felt safe and wasn’t particularly careful about everything I said. The rule that I live by—there are no secrets—worked for me in that environment. But not anymore.

Now I annoyed people. I know that. Just being young, and acting young, can be super-irritating to older people. I was the daughter of the candidate, too, and this added to the sense of entitlement that people seemed to suspect I was carrying around. But this is not how I have ever thought of myself. My brothers and sister and I were all raised to be real, and pull our own freight, and not walk around expecting the world to wait on us. My two brothers are both in the military. I don’t think it gets more un-entitled than that.

The last thing I wanted to do was call my parents and whine. They had enough on their plate as it was. What was I going to say, Hey, I know you are running for president, but so-and-so forgot to invite me to that reception…

Forgot to put me on the list…

Forgot to tell me where to go…

I felt lost in the shuffle. But, like I said, in the scheme of things, my complaints were small potatoes and so was I. What bothered me most was that, underneath all the drama, I felt a separation building between me and the rest of the campaign, which had been my home since graduating from college. And worse, I felt a separation growing between me and my parents. With each passing day, it was becoming a bigger hassle to get past security just to see them.

NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE, OR WHERE YOU COME FROM, you had to think that Sarah Palin’s lipstick on a pit bull speech was incredible. There was so much tension building beforehand—everybody wondering whether she would choke, how she would look, whether she could pull it off. I don’t think anybody on the campaign was relaxed about it. And it seemed to make matters more stressful that very few people had met her, or even seen her. Almost as soon as she was announced, she had gone underground to prepare her remarks.

And when she delivered her speech with such confidence, so naturally, as if she had given millions of convention speeches already, even ad-libbing some jokes, the sense of excitement in the hall was palpable.

In the family box in front of the TV cameras, the Palins were assembled, looking inhumanly gorgeous and well groomed. The media frenzy around them was astonishing—they were rock stars, from Bristol and Levi down to little Trig.

I wish I could have been a better sport about the fact that Sarah and her family now seemed to dominate the entire convention. Everyone was so excited by the Palins’ newness and real-life dramas, their exotic Alaskan lifestyle and their cohesiveness. The campaign’s focus, as well as the world’s, was suddenly completely on them. But it was starting to seem like reality TV to me. I kept wondering, why are these people taking over our lives?

Later that night, I happened to be sitting in the hotel lobby bar with Shannon and Heather when Sarah walked by—and the campaign staff and journalists in the room exploded in spontaneous applause, and then charged at her. A rope line formed, almost magically, as people began waiting their turn to talk to her, ask for an autograph, or to have their picture taken with her. I mean, even journalists were waiting to be photographed with her.

Sarah was basking in a kind of golden haze of glory—and who could blame her? She was not just an overnight success or even a political Cinderella story. She was a sudden, freakishly huge, full-fledged phenomenon. It seemed too much. And it seemed too easy. From my chair across the way, I watched with incredulity. I had never seen anything like it, ever, even in all my travels with Dad.

Maybe there was a chip on my shoulder or maybe I was jealous. It was hard to collect all the complicated feelings I had. But earlier that day, it had been made painfully clear to me how low I’d sunk, in terms of status on the campaign.

I had wandered down the hallway outside my room at the convention hotel, where I was staying on the same floor as my parents, my brothers and sister, as well as senior staff. My hair was wet and my face was bare. I was heading to the “makeup room” in the middle of our floor, where two hairdressers and two makeup artists had been installed to glam up everybody. And I mean everybody. There was nothing more important, suddenly, than how we looked.

The scheduling of these miraculous makeovers was really crazy, and stressful. We all needed to look perfect and camera-ready when we needed to be, but quite often there weren’t enough stylists to accommodate all of us—my parents, both Sarah and Todd Palin, and our families.

I was running late that morning, and hoping to get some help with my hair for a photo shoot. I entered the makeup room and looked around. But all the chairs were taken. The stylists were busy with the Palin kids, as well as Levi.

“Can you make time for me?” I asked.

“You’ll have to wait,” the makeup artist replied. Levi, Bristol, Willow, and Piper, who was seven, needed to be styled first.

The makeup artist shook her head slowly, always the sign of a power trip going on. “They’ll be getting more airtime.”

Silence fell over the room. It was so quiet you could hear the sound of the reality check going on inside my head. I tried really hard to call upon Meggie Mac, my alter ego, the perfect, polite, and smiling daughter-of. But she failed to appear.

There was only one thing left to do: Go back to my room and do my hair and makeup myself.

The Palins had taken the lead now. The makeup artist was right. I should have thanked her for making me take that big red pill. All my delusions of having an impact, or the importance of my fan base and the unique hits on my blog, vanished like the steam rising from my hair dryer.

I was irrelevant. And in fact, I might have never been relevant to begin with—even way back in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, when we only had one damn bus.

I felt a joke in the air, but it was on me.

MY DAD WAS THE LAST TO SPEAK. IT IS A BEAUTIFUL tradition of a political convention, when the nominee finally appears in front of the jubilant hall and accepts the nomination. Seeing Dad come onstage and make his acceptance speech was one of the top five best moments of my life. I was entranced by him, and uplifted. His voice and strength grounded me, as they always do. Then I started to cry.

I was in the family box—that place where you aren’t supposed to show anything except a kind of mesmerized stare—and tried to fight it, and fight it. But my mind began to play back moments from the past year, our days in Iowa and New Hampshire, and all that the campaign had been through, the road trips and dustups, the intrigues and hilarity. I thought about my dad and all that he’d been through—as a boy, as a soldier, a senator, a dad, a candidate running for president. He’d tried so hard, and given so much. And here he was, accepting the burden and honor and great responsibility of representing the Republican Party in the coming election.

I looked around the great hall. It seemed like the biggest room I’d ever sat in. It was humbling, and real. All these people had gathered, all this hope and energy, because of what my father had done and who he is. And what he represents. My dad was what I believed in. He was what I had signed on for. His commitment to change, and to making the country a better place, was daunting and inspiring and made me feel so good. I cried harder and tried to muffle the crying sounds coming out of my mouth. Little mouse squeaks came out instead.

It was true, I saw that now. I was lucky to be there at all.