Dirty Sexy Politics

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.

COULD WE REALLY LOSE?

Could we?

I just refused to believe that.

Or could I?

IT BOTHERED ME HOW CRUEL THE BLOGOSPHERE WAS about my dad. He was painted as an old white guy, and so out of it that he didn’t know how many houses we owned.

All the counts against him didn’t seem like big negatives to me. People kept saying how old he was. Could he keep up? Did he have enough energy? What if something happened to him and Sarah Palin had to take over?

In our family, we never really thought Dad’s age was a big deal, until the media kept pointing it out. To us, he was the man who was passionate about his work, the man who could hike farther than anybody, who kept the most grueling campaign schedule of all. Anybody who can keep a schedule like his was obviously not an “old” man.

Just eight years before, in 2000, he had been a darling of the media, a Washington renegade. But now the media seemed to urgently need him to be a different person—not daring or exciting, or even a war hero, but a tired “Washington insider” who, like all Republicans, was tainted by the unpopular Bush administration and everything that went along with that.

I didn’t recognize Dad anymore when I watched the news—or read the political blogs. To me, my father is an iconic figure, outspoken and honest, an old-school American hero. His character had been strengthened by the unimaginable things he’d been through. To be honest, I wasn’t able to read his memoir, Faith of Our Fathers, which includes descriptions of being a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The thought of my dad having to endure something like that… well, it was just too hard for me, too painful, to read about. Someday, I would. But I wasn’t ready yet.

I didn’t see how anyone couldn’t believe in him as I did. Even with all the shortcomings of the campaign and all the missteps, at the end of the day, I believed that he was the more qualified man. He had the experience to run the country, and the strength to fight. He is realistic about the scary times that we live in. As a member of a much younger generation, I thought my father’s experience would trump everything else in the end.

I thought that people would look at his résumé, at everything he had done in the Senate—and see him as the safer, better choice.

Running for president wasn’t supposed to be like American Idol. But with each presidential election, each decade, appearance and coolness seemed to matter more. It wasn’t just the candidates. The whole family had to be gorgeous, and media-genic. Was the most qualified candidate the most beautiful one, and the one who was so hip that he had Jay-Z on his iPod?

I was sure America wouldn’t let the best man get away.