Game Change_ Obama And The Clintons, McCain And Palin, And The Race Of A Lifetime Part 19

Yes, a hundred percent, Palin said.

Do you have confidence in your lieutenant governor and your staff to fulfill your const.i.tutional 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 this job. 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 G.o.d.

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 a.s.sumed 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 rea.s.sured 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 a.s.signed a Was.h.i.+ngton 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 doc.u.ment highlighted her vulnerabilities: "Democrats upset at McCain's anti-Obama 'celebrity' advertis.e.m.e.nts will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue Vogue in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News Anchorage Daily News expressed concern that she often seemed 'unprepared or over her head' in a campaign run by a friend." 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?" 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, 'G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I should have gone for the win.'"

The most important decision of McCain's campaign was squarely in his hands, and the circ.u.mstances 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 p.i.s.s 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 unfl.u.s.tered, not even terribly excited.

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

Palin nodded and replied, "It's G.o.d's plan."

THE LORD'S STRATAGEM CERTAINLY appeared to be working the next morning in Ohio. The campaign had pulled off a h.e.l.l 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 gla.s.s ceiling," Palin said. "But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.n.a.logy was all too apt-and that was the problem. A successful s.p.a.ce 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 cras.h.i.+ng due to overload.

Meanwhile, Palin's team was being a.s.sembled 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 p.r.o.nounced her name. They had no answers to even the most routine questions about her.

By the time Palin arrived in St. Paul on Sunday night, August 31, there were plenty of queries. What foreign countries had she visited? Had she ever been to Iraq? Had she really killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska, as she claimed? Did she wors.h.i.+p at a Pentecostal church where people spoke in tongues? Had Todd been arrested for driving drunk? Had her son, Track, been busted for drugs? And, most incendiary of all, was her infant son, Trig, who had Down syndrome, really her baby-or was he Bristol's?

As the media typhoon whipped through St. Paul on Sunday, the McCain operation was also dealing with a genuine meteorological event. Hurricane Gustav was about to hit the Gulf Coast, raising the specter of the Republican failure to handle Katrina. Davis decided to cancel the first day of the convention, relinquis.h.i.+ng one night of precious airtime. But there happened to be a silver lining to that cloud. For months McCain and his aides had been dreading the prospect of Bush and Cheney onstage. Charlie Black had floated the idea of having Bush spend convention week in Africa, speaking to the delegates via satellite and restricting himself to the administration's programs to combat AIDS and malaria. At the same time, Black tried to convince Cheney to decline his convention invitation; Black thought the VP had agreed, but then signals got crossed and Cheney accepted. Now, with Monday night scotched, Cheney's appearance had been, too. And Bush would be relegated to delivering a short talk by video hookup from the White House.

On Monday, the embattlement of the McCain press shop reached code red. To stamp out the Trig rumors-whipped up by photos on the Internet showing a supposedly very pregnant Palin looking remarkably svelte-Sarah and Todd acknowledged that Bristol was expecting, and therefore couldn't be the five-month-old baby's mother. But now The National Enquirer The National Enquirer was reporting that Palin had had an affair. Another story popped up claiming that she had once been a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). And even more threatening politically, reporters were starting to turn their attention to Palin's vetting. The press shop insisted the vet had been thorough, but journalists were skeptical, especially since McCainworld was having such difficulty nailing down simple facts about Palin. was reporting that Palin had had an affair. Another story popped up claiming that she had once been a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). And even more threatening politically, reporters were starting to turn their attention to Palin's vetting. The press shop insisted the vet had been thorough, but journalists were skeptical, especially since McCainworld was having such difficulty nailing down simple facts about Palin.

Schmidt and Davis had a lot on the line here. The questions about the vet went to their performance and credibility, and to the core of McCain's sense of responsibility about governance. McCain was seventy-two and had a history of cancer scares. How seriously had they really examined the woman who would be in line to replace him?

The next morning, Schmidt and the senior staff gathered in the communications bunker in the Minneapolis Hilton. When Schmidt asked if the campaign had figured out if Palin was ever a member of the AIP, he was told they still weren't sure.

Schmidt exploded, pounding the table, hollering, ranting, and cursing. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, he shouted, we are under attack! This is a fight for survival! We have to get our s.h.i.+t together!

A few days earlier the campaign had dispatched a SWAT team to Alaska to help deal with the Palin inquiries. Schmidt wanted to get them on the horn and have the history of her AIP registration checked immediately.

"But it's two in the morning in Alaska," someone said.

"The phones don't work at f.u.c.king night there?" Schmidt bellowed. "Call them! And keep calling them until they pick up!"

Schmidt had been involved in two presidential campaigns, two Supreme Court fights, and any number of corporate crisis-management brouhahas, but never had he experienced anything so intense, so savage, or so crazy. Under fire, he s.h.i.+fted to a tactic he had turned into an art form: blaming the liberal media. From The New York Times The New York Times to the lefty blogosphere, the press was trotting out "smear after smear after smear," on a "mission to destroy" Palin, Schmidt charged. to the lefty blogosphere, the press was trotting out "smear after smear after smear," on a "mission to destroy" Palin, Schmidt charged.

Yet the truth was that Palin's critics weren't only on the left. The reaction to her selection in much of the GOP Establishment ranged from stupefaction to scorn. When Bush first caught the news of the pick on a bas.e.m.e.nt television set in the West Wing, he thought at first he heard "Pawlenty." (Interesting (Interesting, he mused.) But then he realized that the name was Palin, and he was completely baffled. (Where did that come from?) (Where did that come from?) The current occupant of the VP's chair had a harsher reaction. Palin was woefully unprepared, and McCain had made a "reckless choice," Cheney told his friends.

Similar criticisms were pouring into the ears of reporters from GOP consultants and operatives galore. The former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan was caught on a live microphone on MSNBC saying of McCain's decision, "I think they went for this, excuse me, political bulls.h.i.+t about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that-because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at-they blow it." Mike Murphy, one of McCain's key strategists in 2000, chimed in, "The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."

McCain was upset about Murphy's remark. "Why would he say that? Why would he say that?" he asked his aides lamentingly.

But McCain himself did Palin no favors in an interview with ABC News's Charlie Gibson in St. Paul. "Can you look the country straight in the eye and say Sarah Palin has the qualities and has enough experience to be commander in chief?" Gibson asked.

"Oh, absolutely," McCain said-and then cited Palin's largely ceremonial role as commander of the Alaska National Guard, an argument his own campaign had rejected as ludicrous.

On the eve of Palin's Wednesday night convention speech, her nomination was struggling to achieve liftoff. "This is the worst mishandling of a VP choice since McGovern tapped Eagleton," a prominent GOP strategist said darkly to a reporter. "I'll bet she is off the ticket inside of ten days."

CLOISTERED IN A SUITE on the twenty-third floor of the Hilton, Sarah Palin barely noticed the storm raging outside. Not that the atmosphere of anarchy didn't penetrate her quarters. Quite the contrary. The place was a freaking madhouse, a Grand Central rush hour of aides, kids, and minions. But Palin had to concentrate. There was so little time and so much to do, so much to learn, so much to change. She was having an Eliza Doolittle moment, and it was keeping her mighty busy.

Take that Tuesday afternoon. Palin was sitting there in her suite, getting ready to go shoot some footage that the admen could use in the new spots and videos they were cooking up now that she was on the ticket. Boxes of Manolo Blahniks were piled up four feet high and stretching twenty feet along one wall of the living room. Neiman Marcus bags were everywhere, along with several rolling garment racks loaded with suits and dresses-maybe sixty outfits, beautiful threads, purchased by a New York personal shopper whom Nicolle Wallace had found for her. A fleet of Hollywoodish stylists in tight black jeans and high heels were hovering and strutting. In the corner, an elderly African American seamstress was hunched over a sewing machine.

Palin was in her robe, seated at a desk. Wallace was there coaching her on the p.r.o.nunciation of the proper names in the text of her address, repeating them over and over like a speech therapist. Every so often, they would pause so that Palin could model a new outfit. If they liked it, fine; if not, they would often suggest an alteration. Lose the lapel! It would be better sleeveless! And the seamstress would go to work.

When Fred Davis, McCain's media guy, walked into the suite, a couple of the stylists were applying some kind of hot-iron contraption to Palin's hair. There was steam coming off the top of her head that looked to Davis like smoke. For a moment he thought, Oh my G.o.d, her hair's on fire! Oh my G.o.d, her hair's on fire!

Palin greeted Davis, whom she knew slightly from some work he had done on her gubernatorial race. She wanted his opinion on a matter of no small importance.

"My brand is hair up, isn't it?" she asked.

Yes, it is, Davis said.

In the first forty-eight hours in St. Paul, Palin's existence was a political version of Extreme Makeover Extreme Makeover-and the clothes were only part of it. To Schmidt's way of thinking, Palin faced three big hurdles. The first was her convention speech on Wednesday night. The second was her inaugural national interview, which would take place ten days hence with Charlie Gibson. And the third was Palin's debate in early October with Joe Biden. In Schmidt's view, they had no time to waste. For Gibson (and other future interviews), and especially for Biden, Palin needed to get on top of international affairs.

The trouble was, the outside world kept intruding. The McCain people knew so little about Palin that every time a press controversy erupted, someone had to race to the suite and find out directly from her what was true and what was false. Palin had barely settled in on Sunday night before she had to deal with drafting the statement concerning Bristol's pregnancy. Palin called her daughter in Alaska to tell her the revelation was coming-I love you, she rea.s.sured Bristol, you're a good person-then turned to her fledgling team and said, all business, "Where were we?"

By and large, Palin's reaction to the parade of controversies traipsing through her suite was a blend of equanimity, steely focus, and naivete. Watching cable, she would point to some famous personality spouting one of the stories about her and say, "Who is this person?" (Palin meant it both sarcastically and literally; she was green enough to the national scene that she couldn't tell the players without a scorecard.) Of all the tales she reb.u.t.ted that week, only one shattered her aplomb. After Schmidt told her about the Enquirers Enquirers accusations of infidelity, she briefly lost her composure while rehearsing her speech. accusations of infidelity, she briefly lost her composure while rehearsing her speech.

It was amid this bedlam that Schmidt's desired policy tutoring took place. Schooling Palin were Steve Biegun, a longtime Republican foreign-policy hand, and Randy Scheunemann, a McCain national security adviser. In the days since the pick, Schmidt had spent enough time with Palin to get a sense of how much instruction she would need. "You guys have a lot of work to do," he warned Scheunemann. "She doesn't know anything."

Scheunemann and Biegun took Schmidt at his word. They sat Palin down at a table in the suite, spread out a map of the world, and proceeded to give her a potted history of foreign policy. They started with the Spanish Civil War, then moved on to World War I, World War II, the cold war, and what Scheunemann liked to call the "the three wars" of today-Iraq, Afghanistan, and the global war on terror. The tutorial took up most of Monday, starting early and going late. When the teachers suggested breaking for lunch or dinner, the student resisted. "No, no, no, no, let's keep going," Palin said. "This is awesome."

Palin was particular about her study aids. Early on, she told her team that she absorbed information best from five-by-seven index cards. With Scheunemann and Biegun, she became obsessive, wanting to put every pertinent piece of information, including the names of world leaders, on separate cards. Soon enough, she had multiple towering stacks of cards, which she referred to constantly, sitting quietly and poring over them, lugging them back to her room to memorize late at night. It quickly became a running joke on Team Palin: Don't get between Sarah and her cards!

Tuesday night and all of Wednesday were given over to Palin's speech, which was written by Matthew Scully, a former Bush White House wordsmith. A speech coach was imported from New York to help Palin convey her personality through the text. Wallace taught her to say "NEW-clear," not "NUKE-u-lar," writing out the letters for good measure: N-E-W-C-L-E-A-R. N-E-W-C-L-E-A-R. Palin worked tirelessly on her address, pounding out more than a dozen run-throughs. Palin worked tirelessly on her address, pounding out more than a dozen run-throughs.

Tucker Eskew watched the rehearsals carefully. She was good, he could see, and she would be even better from the stage. She's a red-light-on performer She's a red-light-on performer, he thought-kind of like Obama. But McCain aides were still nervous as the moment of truth arrived. Palin hadn't spoken that often from TelePrompTers in her career, and she certainly had never experienced anything like this kind of pressure, a situation in which the stakes were so high, where everyone was watching. As Palin strode out onstage, the heebie-jeebies even overcame Eskew. What if it's a bomb? What if it's a bomb? he thought. he thought.

THE ROAR OF APPROVAL inside the hall was deafening. The faithful were resentful of a media they believed had treated the VP nominee unfairly, turning at one point toward the press seats and chanting, "Shame on you!" They wanted to be wowed by Palin. And they were.

In a shantung Valentino jacket and black skirt, Sarah was glamorous, homespun, s.p.u.n.ky, and snarky. She bragged that when she became governor, she shed the office of its luxury jet: "I put it on eBay." She said she "told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' for that Bridge to Nowhere." She described herself as "just your average hockey mom," and threw in an ad lib that she'd used before but wasn't in her text. "You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?" she said. "Lipstick!"

What was less expected was the delight that Palin took in baring her fangs, and sinking them into Obama. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," she quipped. She said, "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco." She called Obama an elitist, an egotist, a taxer, a spender, an appeaser, and an accomplishment-free zone. By the end, it was clear why that barracuda moniker had stuck.

Watching on a television in a room backstage, McCain went from pacing fretfully, to murmuring, "She's really good," to enthusing, "She's incredible," to grabbing Wallace and exulting, "Oh, my G.o.d, great job, she did a great job!"

Then Wallace told McCain that Palin's achievement was even greater than he knew: her prompter had been malfunctioning throughout the speech; the text hadn't paused during periods of applause, so a couple of lines were always missing from the screen when she resumed.

"If that happens to me tomorrow night," McCain replied, "we're f.u.c.ked."

No one, besides maybe Salter, had high expectations for McCain's speech. But for all its shortcomings, it reflected clearly the consensus in McCainworld that reviving the candidate's independent, cross-partisan image was essential. The only time that McCain uttered the surname Bush was when he was referring to Laura. Only thrice did he use the word "Republican," once in relation to Palin and twice in the context of decrying corruption.

But McCain's speech didn't matter; the only story line out of St. Paul was Palinmania. Some armchair GOP psychologists had surmised initially that the reason McCain picked Palin was that he didn't want to be overshadowed by his running mate. But for the next week, as the two of them campaigned together across the country, they were greeted by ma.s.sive, beaming crowds who were there mainly to see her-and McCain loved it. Everywhere they went, Palin described McCain as "the one great man in the race," as he grinned from ear to ear. "Change is coming, my friends!" McCain crowed over and over.

Donations and volunteers spiked up. Cable and radio could talk of little else but Sarah. The Palin pick deprived Obama of his post-convention b.u.mp; the weekend after the GOP convention, McCain was trailing him by a trifling two points. And according to an ABC News/Was.h.i.+ngton Post News/Was.h.i.+ngton Post poll, McCain's standing among white women had improved by a net twenty points (from 5042 behind Obama to 5341 ahead) in the blink of an eye. poll, McCain's standing among white women had improved by a net twenty points (from 5042 behind Obama to 5341 ahead) in the blink of an eye.

On September 10, McCain and Palin appeared together in Fairfax, Virginia, a few miles from the campaign's headquarters. Fifteen thousand people swarmed into Van d.y.k.e Park-little girls wearing "STRONG WOMEN VOTE MCCAIN-PALIN" T-s.h.i.+rts, their mothers chanting, "Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!" Later that afternoon, Palin would board a flight to Alaska for her interview with Gibson. At the moment, though, she stood there on stage, perched atop a pair of ruby-red heels, looking less like Eliza Doolittle than Dorothy: the girl swept up in the cyclone, lifted out of her black-and-white world and deposited in a Technicolor Oz.

OBAMA AND HIS PEOPLE certainly felt as though a house had been dropped on their heads. Since the moment Palin's selection was announced, they had been struggling to calibrate a response to her and the variables she injected into the campaign. In Palin, the Obamans were confronting something with which they had no experience, a phenomenon so new and fascinating to the press and public that it eclipsed even their boss. For the first time, they understood how the Hillarylanders felt during much of the Democratic nomination fight-helpless, flummoxed, unable to break through.

In the hours after the announcement, Team Obama turned to Hillary herself for help, asking her to put out a tough statement criticizing the pick as a transparent ploy that female voters would see right through. Clinton not only declined to do that, but she did the opposite, calling Palin's nomination "historic" and saying that Palin would "add an important new voice to the debate."

Hillary had no intention of a.s.sisting in the tras.h.i.+ng of Palin; she thought it would annoy her supporters. She also believed the pick might prove to be smart politics, and in this, she was seconded by her husband. When Democratic elites initially scoffed at Palin, ridiculing her outre tastes-the pa.s.sion for weaponry, the hankering for moose-burgers-Bill Clinton went into Bubba mode, cautioning them not to underestimate her appeal. Don't be so sure of yourselves, he said. Good old boys, they can relate to her.

The reaction of the Democratic Establishment to Palin was wildly schizophrenic. In the days just after she burst on the scene, she was discounted as just a pretty face, and McCain was mocked for having squandered his only argument against Obama-experience-and for disqualifying himself with a nakedly political pick. But as Palinmania built over the week following the Republican convention, panic spread through the Democratic ranks. The Obamans were swamped with phone calls and email from donors, operatives, and members of Congress demanding that Palin be taken down, slamming the campaign for being too soft and pa.s.sive, urging them to do . . . something!

Team Obama was split over how to handle the Palin perplex. On one side were advisers convinced she would inevitably self-destruct. On the other were those who shared what Plouffe described as the "bed-wetting" tendencies of much of the Establishment. (One member of the campaign's media team, Steve Murphy, referred to Palin as a Republican female Barack Obama.) In focus groups, voters were split roughly into thirds: those who dismissed her out of hand, those who weren't sure what to think, and those who found her a breath of fresh air. "She is the change that Barack Obama talks about," said one voter in the latter camp.

Obama attempted to retain his balance through the outbreak of Palinmania. When his team's first instinct was to criticize Palin's selection, he dialed them back. He counseled them repeatedly to keep their eyes (and train their fire) on the top of the ticket. When Jarrett informed him of a series of meetings she'd had in New York with frantic Democrats in that first week after the conventions, Obama said, "Just tell them to calm down."

A couple of days later, Jarrett received a viral email that pictured Obama staring forward sternly and pointing in the direction of the camera. Above his head were the words "EVERYONE CHILL THE f.u.c.k OUT," and below that, the message "I GOT THIS!" She forwarded it to Obama.

"That's what I was trying to tell you!" Obama replied.

Yet Palinmania and the media dynamics it unleashed were a quantum force that even the Democratic nominee could not resist entirely. The day before Palin set off back to Alaska, Obama was in Virginia, too, and he offered an observation about McCain's new message of change. "I guess his whole angle is, 'Watch out, George Bush-except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics-we're really going to shake things up in Was.h.i.+ngton,' " he said at a rally. "That's not change. That's just calling something [that's] the same thing something different. You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

The McCain campaign was perfectly aware that Obama was making no allusion to Palin's lipstick-on-a-pit-bull convention line; the lipstick-on-a-pig phrase was common parlance, particularly in politics. But the team saw a "Celeb"-like chance to clog up the cable airwaves, harness the right-wing freak show to its advantage, and keep Obama and his people on defense. Within hours, McCainworld accused Obama of referring to Palin as a pig and demanded an apology, and the story exploded as planned.

Obama's frustration with the media was intense, but the next day, he felt he had no choice but to respond-by calling for an end to the absurdity, even as he fueled both it and the dominance of Palin in the campaign discourse for another day.

All through the campaign, in moments of annoyance at its triviality, Obama would tell Axelrod that when it was over he planned to write a book ent.i.tled This Is Ridiculous. This Is Ridiculous. And the lipstick-on-a-pig imbroglio was definitely that. But there was no denying one brute reality: a week after the conventions, McCain had pulled even in the polls again. Some even had him a little bit ahead. Obama smirked and reprised for Axelrod another of his favorite sayings: "This s.h.i.+t would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it." And the lipstick-on-a-pig imbroglio was definitely that. But there was no denying one brute reality: a week after the conventions, McCain had pulled even in the polls again. Some even had him a little bit ahead. Obama smirked and reprised for Axelrod another of his favorite sayings: "This s.h.i.+t would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it."

Chapter Twenty-One.

September Surprise.

OBAMA SH OWE D UP AT Axelrod's office wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and his White Sox cap. It was September 14, a rainy Sunday afternoon in Chicago, and Axelrod had called a small circle-the-wagons meeting to talk about how to turn things around after ten solid days of pounding. The candidate wasn't supposed to be there, but when he heard about the meeting, Obama decided to hijack it. He had just gotten word that the apocalypse was nigh.

He began by letting his people know that he wasn't entirely happy. Since the Republican convention, his campaign had been too much on its back foot, was playing subpar ball. The ads, the messaging, the strategy, the tactics-all of it needed to be stronger. The first of his three debates with McCain was less than two weeks away, in Oxford, Mississippi. "I've got to perform," he said. "But we've all got to sharpen our message."