Dirty Sexy Politics

Chapter 18 There Are No Secrets

After Nashville, sweet Nashville, we traveled to seven states in two weeks straight, on the bus, in planes, and sometimes in a big disgusting fifteen-passenger van—if my dad’s campaign needed all the buses. The blog was going full tilt and so were we, doing campaign events every day, getting the hang of it, finding a groove. We went to Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

The more we circled Ohio, the more we laughed, and danced, and hugged, and loved Ohio. How nice are those people?

Heather’s faking-it strategy, that we look happy, even jubilant, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our bus tour of the heartland was a raging blast, and would eventually bring some of my happiest memories of the campaign.

We were like a family—Melissa, Frank, Meghan, Shannon, Heather, Josh, and Jay—and had our inside jokes, practical jokes, and silly jokes. We were always laughing, making the most of it. We gave our road trip a nickname, “The Shut It Down Tour,” because we were going to have so much fun, and be so raucous and spirited, that we’d shut it down wherever we went. The London Times described us as the only happy people on the presidential campaign. When I look at pictures from those days, I am standing in a pumpkin patch in Maine with a huge smile on my face. I am cheerily reading My Dad, John McCain to a grade-school class.

Our posts were so upbeat and happy, in fact, we started to get e-mails and calls from stressed-out staffers back in headquarters telling us how jealous they were. We were having all the fun—and they were having none. The pitch of their voices was strained. They talked too fast and their attention span had dwindled to a few seconds before the conversation inevitably returned to one topic: Sarah Palin. She was turning out to be somebody who leaves a wake of confusion and chaos—to the point of dizziness—wherever she went.

Katie Couric’s interview with her before the vice presidential debate had been disastrous. Unhappy with her performance, Palin seemed to blame the interview on the campaign. And she continued to blame other poor interviews and snafus on the campaign too. Under immense stress, she had lost her appetite and, like my mom and dad, was losing weight. Worrying about Sarah, my mom suggested that she come to the ranch in Sedona to decompress and do her debate prep there.

Her performance at the debate was terrific, but the sense of media frenzy and gossip around Sarah only grew. “The Time Bomb” was still ticking, and ticking, and valuable media coverage about substantial issues of the campaign gave over to intense fascination with Sarah—her personality, her looks, her sex appeal. It’s hard to say it any other way except that Sarah became the story, not the campaign. The story was Sarah, and not the war, the economy, or health care, or what kind of president my dad would be. She attracted so much attention that it became counterproductive—distracting, distressing, and the message of the campaign became lost.

My dad never complained, not once, about Sarah or the attention she got. He seemed genuinely happy about both. It was left to the Groomsmen to work out any problems with getting the message out, and dealing with Sarah—and her own growing unhappiness. But they didn’t seem to know how.

The campaign split into two camps—and were taking shots at each other. The main problems emerging, as far as I could tell, were that Sarah had no experience with a national presidential campaign but didn’t seem to acknowledge it. She stuck to her gut, and the way things were done in Alaska, and second-guessed many of the decisions being made. But the Groomsmen didn’t like being second-guessed. No big surprise there. They had been running this campaign for a long time by then, and most of them had been in national politics for decades. If Steve Schmidt had a different personality, he might have eased the tension and tried harder to get along. But Steve being Steve only made things worse.

WE WERE IN DENVER WHEN I CELEBRATED MY TWENTY-FOURTH birthday. My mom had flown in for some campaign events and then came to celebrate with me in my room at Brown’s Hotel. Heather was taking pictures for the blog when Mom appeared in a powder blue bathrobe—wanting to wish me happy birthday. Heather quickly offered to put her camera away. She wanted to make sure Mom felt comfortable.

“Oh, I don’t care,” Mom said, “go ahead and take pictures. It’s Meghan’s birthday!”

Which is how pictures of my mother in a blue bathrobe made it onto the blog. She brought me a fantastic fake-fur Juicy Couture jacket for a present. Lindsey Graham dropped by to give me a hug. And room service arrived with a sheet cake and candles. But honestly, the best birthday present of all was hanging with Mom, relaxed and sweet and not caring how she looked.

We sat down on the bed together and caught up. Since my bus tour had started, I hadn’t been alone with her and my dad much, if at all. We’d gone to public events together, where I shared them with dozens of advisers and supporters. But it wasn’t the same. My banishment from the main campaign had driven a wedge between us, but when I stepped back and looked at what was really happening, our separation wasn’t about me. They were busy, caught up in the campaign, and working as hard as they could.

The stress was hard to imagine, and getting worse. Just the day before, the Republican National Committee had confirmed that it had spent $150,000 to dress the Palins for the campaign.

They needed clothes, no doubt. What they’d arrived with, in their bags from Alaska, just wasn’t going to hold up in the harsh light of a national election. Look at the unbelievable focus that Michelle Obama’s wardrobe had gotten, with every J.Crew sweater set and sleeveless dress discussed and swooned over.

I wasn’t surprised by the price. That’s what it costs to outfit seven or eight people in designer clothes. Other candidates had spent just as much, or more, but kept those kinds of expenses under wraps—sunk into promotion and advertising costs. What surprised me was that our campaign couldn’t do the same.

Sarah had never been anything but pleasant to me. This almost made it harder to sort out all the complicated feelings I had about her. On a personal level, our contact had been limited. She and I did not have meals together, or travel much together. Our one-on-one exchanges were brief. I’d asked her to please tell Bristol to call me if she needed anything—anything at all—or just wanted to talk.

“I know how it feels,” I said.

Nothing ever came of it. Things between our families hadn’t really jelled either. It probably sounds naïve, but I had thought we would become one big happy family, warm and close, like the Partridge Family on tour. I was shocked when it wasn’t like that—and might never be. I wondered if the tension of the campaign was driving everybody apart. And if Dad won, I supposed things would have to change. Wouldn’t Bristol and I become friends?

I had asked Sarah if Bristol and her baby would be coming to live at the vice president’s mansion in DC, and Sarah had said, “Yes! It would be such an amazing experience.”

I wasn’t sure what was normal—or supposed to happen between a president’s family and a vice president’s. But I know what I wanted: for everybody to get along.

My mom had a similar impulse. She reached out to the Palins and I don’t think she always felt they had reached back. Words fell through the cracks. Offers to help—and bond—went unrecognized. My mom really hit it off with Todd, and liked her time with him, and both my parents were incredibly supportive of Bristol and Levi. My mom had even suggested that she and my dad would love to be godparents to their baby, if they were interested. But she never got an answer.

A part of me loved Sarah—and how comfortable she was creating waves. She brought so much life and juice and energy to the campaign. When she appeared at events with my dad, the crowds tripled and quadrupled. She seemed to enjoy doing her own thing—“going rogue”—and I have to confess that I enjoyed how she took on Steve Schmidt and didn’t let him treat her like a dumb woman. He was used to snapping his fingers and making women jump. But she wouldn’t jump.

On the other hand, she wasn’t much of a team player, was she? The more I saw of her, the more perplexed and fascinated I was. And it was only the beginning of a very long roller coaster ride as I tried to make up my mind about her, and never could.

I’ll confess, the swirl of chaos that October made me nostalgic about my birthday the year before in New Hampshire, when Heather had gotten up incredibly early and decorated the campaign van with Hawaiian leis, fake palm trees, streamers, and a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game. And we went to Ruby Tuesday for dinner, where I loved the salad bar. It was a simple birthday, and the beginning of an amazing year—spent entirely on the road campaigning. It felt like a really long time. And I’d learned so much. I felt one hundred years older.

“Remember last year?” I said to Mom.

She looked in my eyes and seemed to know that I was just barely keeping it together. The rest of our visit was upbeat, and Mom kept the conversation positive and constructive. The more stressful a situation is, the more focused she becomes on the things that really matter. This is probably the secret of her endurance, and how she’s survived as a political spouse. The harder things are, the stronger she becomes.

“Just hold your head high,” Mom said. “Keep a sense of dignity—no matter what happens.”

Such simple advice, and so useful. If only I could remember to follow it, the way my mom always does.