Dirty Sexy Politics

Chapter 13 I Love My Mom and Here She Is

Within just a couple days, Bristol Palin’s sweatshirt was gone—replaced by a stunning wardrobe. She looked fresh and beautiful, if not downright angelic. The campaign had announced that she was pregnant a couple days before the convention started, causing a sensation almost as big as Hurricane Gustav, which had lost steam as soon as it hit land.

The campaign had done its job “dealing with it” all right. Rather than an uncomfortable subject to talk about, Bristol was being heralded as a pro-life role model.

I found this troubling. And I thought about my sister, Bridget, and how many conversations she and my mom and I had had about teen pregnancy and the importance of waiting until you were older to have sex. While I admired anyone who didn’t try to make an unwanted pregnancy disappear privately with an abortion, I couldn’t help but feel a very important message was missing.

Rather than seizing an opportunity to discuss the importance of contraception, the campaign seemed to be glamorizing teen pregnancy. And rather than a sense of remorse about Bristol’s situation, there seemed only glee and excitement. Did the campaign really want to suggest that a pro-life message was more important than a message of how to avoid teenage pregnancy to begin with?

But I kept those thoughts to myself, or mostly to myself, and kept cheerleading myself to go along, be quiet, and mind my own business.

CONVENTION PROTOCOL DICTATES THAT THE NOMINEE arrives after the show has started. When my dad flew into Minneapolis, the campaign notified my family that we were supposed to assemble and greet him on the tarmac. Like everybody else, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of this “event” was, aside from a kind of symbolic welcome. But dutifully, I went along and was loaded into a bus, along with my mom and brothers and Bridget. I was wearing leggings, a wrinkled gray dress, and a pair of flats. My hair wasn’t brushed and I had very little makeup on. I figured it was a crowd shot, at the very most, and it wouldn’t matter what I looked like.

But I was wrong about that. As soon as we got off the bus, I noticed white TV trucks with satellite dishes. There was a giant flatbed truck parked on the tarmac and a riser crowded with what looked like one hundred photographers and cameras.

Uh-oh. This wasn’t just a photo op. It was a mega op.

What was going on?

On the tarmac, the Palins gathered too. But unlike my family, who looked a little mismatched, and our clothes barely pulled together, the Palins were stunning, gorgeous, and color-coordinated. They are a spectacularly beautiful family to begin with, no matter what they are wearing—and perhaps even better looking in person than on TV. Now they shined with movie star perfection. Their hair had been cut and styled. Their makeup was professionally done. Their clothes were amazing. All together, they looked so wholesome and all-American, it was dazzling. “They look like a J.Crew ad,” Heather said.

“Yeah,” my brother Jack said, “and we look like crap.”

I couldn’t help but zero in on Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s boyfriend at the time, who was almost unrecognizable from the guy who’d appeared two days before. The transformation was incredible.

My father got off the plane, waved, and came down the steps. He walked over immediately to embrace Bristol and Levi.

Huh? The whole thing seemed off, like he had traveled here to bless their union—and their unborn child. I told myself it was just one of those unfortunate but necessary fake moments that can happen on a campaign—but which I hated and my dad usually managed to avoid. How had we wound up here? I longed for a simpler scene and a simpler running mate, a straight-ahead and experienced politician like good old Joe Lieberman, who always kept it real and didn’t make himself the center of dramas or chaos.

But here we were instead, putting out forest fires, contorting ourselves to make everything seem fine, and trying too hard to not show how scared we were.

The Palins were nice and down-to-earth. I’ve said that before. And I mean no disrespect to them when I say this, but when they arrived from Alaska and unpacked their bags, they brought dramas, stress, complications, panic, and loads of uncertainty. And they brought a tabloid-attention-getting quality that my family has never had—and, God willing, never will.

For my father’s embrace of Bristol and Levi, the cameras began clicking and recording. The media heat of the moment was palpable. We were all photographed, again and again, and within hours, we would all be splattered across the Internet.

Great, I thought, looking down at my lamentable outfit. One more bad photograph of me at a convention that will live on forever. There were so many of those. So many, I was almost used to it.

HAPPILY, THERE ARE NO PICTURES OF ME AT MY FIRST Republican convention, when my mom and dad were delegates for Reagan in 1984. That’s because I was in utero. In 1996, when I was in fifth grade, the convention was in San Diego and Senator Bob Dole was nominated. My brothers and I made hokey homemade glitter signs that said, “We love you, Dad,” and stuff like that on them. It is against the rules to bring a homemade sign into a convention—that’s why all the signs you see on TV are so uniform, a way to communicate order and control—so when we stood on chairs and waved our unique signs, a swarm of reporters came over to interview me, because I was the oldest kid.

That year produced lots of hideous photos that still make me cringe, and sometimes when I’m having an overblown fantasy of fame, I imagine that they will be used to shame me and destroy all chances of me being thought of as a cool person. I wore an American flag dress to that convention. Yep. But it wasn’t the only one, either. For years, my mother dressed me in a wardrobe of embarrassing all-American outfits. She had a weakness for anything with stars and stripes or red, white, and blue.

Four years later, at the convention in 2000, I was about to start high school and was feeling very grown-up. I remember having a really great time in Philadelphia. My dad was still sort of the wild card of the GOP in those days and I was aware of that on some level, and loved it. I got to sit and watch him give a beautiful speech on the convention stage. Our family was placed in one of those “family boxes” in the front row of the balcony, so the TV cameras can record every single facial expression.

It’s really like sitting in a cage. While you are looking at the stage, the cameras are looking at you. The nice thing is that it doesn’t last long. The family box is only for the family of the person giving the speech. So as soon as Dad was done, and the clapping had died down, we had to evacuate the box so that the next family could sit there.

Something like musical chairs, I guess. Cameras don’t move. The families do. The only thing that matters is that you keep your face from registering any emotion while it’s happening. My mom is incredible at this, and sphinx-like. Her face rarely flickers with emotion in a public setting. But I can always look in her eyes and see what’s really going on.

My other vivid memory of the 2000 convention is seeing a giant effigy of a penis with George Bush’s face on top of it, just beyond the convention center barriers. I was really confused. Was it supposed to be a penis or was it George Bush?

I had never seen a really distasteful political protest before. And I couldn’t understand why people hated Republicans so much. This was before George W. Bush was elected—before the Florida recount, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, or anything else you want to blame the Bush administration for—and yet, even then, there was vitriol. Such anger.

No one would ever feel that way about my dad, right? I remember thinking that he was much more special than most politicians, and more beloved. But of course I was wrong about that. Extremists like to protest and they don’t seem to care about subtleties or distinctions. The world is only black and white to them. This is true of the Left as well as the Right. The enemy is the enemy to them, no matter what. And whoever that enemy is, they just can’t be human.

AFTER ALL THOSE MOMENTS OF STANDING SILENTLY AT conventions in the past, of looking perfect and doing my little wave to the crowd and flashing a smile, it was unimaginable to me that someday I might be able to open my mouth and actually say something. To be animated and alive! To be allowed a voice!

Most of all, I was really excited about introducing my mother. At the Democratic convention, Chelsea Clinton had introduced her mother and I had paid close attention to what an excellent job she did. Chelsea was so poised and almost spookily calm. In my head, I imagined just how I’d be—and what I’d say. My mom was really excited too.

But whenever I raised the subject with the Groomsmen, I could not get any traction—or even schedule a meeting to discuss it. It was so frustrating. I had done my part and seen the image consultant. I’d cut off my long hair. My clothes were toned down. I’d even tried very hard to prevent so many likes from falling from my tongue.

Whenever I asked about it, nobody had an answer.

The convention was not about me. I knew that. But when you are twenty-three years old everything seems about you, despite all evidence to the contrary. And as much as I tried to keep my focus and remember that the real goal was to get my dad elected, I kept becoming distracted by my own issues and concerns.

Was I introducing Mom or not?

Was I?

The days passed and nothing was said about it. Eventually too much time passed—and obviously a decision had been made against it. When I pressed, there were all kinds of explanations that might have been true, but at the time, I didn’t buy for one second. Like “There isn’t enough time to prepare.”

Or “Nobody can think of something for you to say.”

So lame.

It didn’t seem complicated to me. “I know what to say,” I told them. “Hello, my name is Meghan McCain. I love my mom and here she is!”

My convention speech was quickly becoming just another bad bargain that I made with the campaign. When I complained to one of my dad’s advisers, he said, “You are lucky to even be here at all.”

Really? Was that true?