The making (and remaking and remaking) of McCain
By Robert Draper The New York Times
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
This article will appear in this Sunday's Times Magazine.
On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 24, John McCain convened a meeting in his suite
at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Among the handful of campaign officials
in attendance were McCain's chief campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, and his
other two top advisers: Rick Davis, the campaign manager; and Mark Salter, McCain's
longtime speechwriter. The senator's ears were already throbbing with bad news
from economic advisers and from House Republican leaders who had told him that only
a small handful in their ranks were willing to support the $700 billion bailout
of the banking industry proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The meeting
was to focus on how McCain should respond to the crisis ? but also, as one participant
later told me, "to try to see this as a big-picture, leadership thing."
As this participant recalled: "We presented McCain with three options. Continue
offering principles from afar. A middle ground of engaging while still campaigning.
Then the third option, of going all in. The consensus was that we could stay out
or go in ? but that if we're going in, we should go in all the way. So the thinking
was, do you man up and try to affect the outcome, or do you hold it at arm's
length? And no, it was not an easy call."
Discussion carried on into the afternoon at the Morgan Library and Museum as McCain
prepared for the first presidential debate. Schmidt pushed for going all in: suspending
the campaign, recommending that the first debate be postponed, parachuting into
Washington and forging a legislative solution to the financial crisis for which
McCain could then claim credit. Exactly how McCain could convincingly play a sober
bipartisan problem-solver after spending the previous few weeks garbed as a populist
truth teller was anything but clear. But Schmidt and others convinced McCain that
it was worth the gamble.
Schmidt in particular was a believer in these kinds of defining moments. The smartest
bit of political wisdom he ever heard was dispensed by George W. Bush one spring
day at the White House residence in 2004, at a time when his re-election effort
was not going especially well. The strategists at the meeting ? including Schmidt,
who was directing the Bush campaign's rapid-response unit ? fretted over their
candidate's sagging approval ratings and the grim headlines about the war in
Iraq. Only Bush appeared thoroughly unworried. He explained to them why, polls notwithstanding,
voters would ultimately prefer him over his opponent, John Kerry.
There's an accidental genius to the way Americans pick a president, Schmidt
remembers Bush saying that day. By the end of it all, a candidate's true character
is revealed to the American people.
Had Schmidt been working for his present client back in 2000, he might have disputed
Bush's premise. After all, in McCain's first run for the presidency, "true
character" was the one thing the Vietnam hero and campaign-finance-reform crusader
seemed to have going for him eight years ago in the Republican primaries. Bush had
everything else, and he buried McCain. What campaigns peddle is not simply character
but character as defined by story ? a tale of opposing forces that in its telling
will memorably establish what a given election is about. In 2000, the McCain effort
played like that of a smart and plucky independent film that ultimately could not
compete for audiences against the Bush campaign's summer blockbuster. Four years
later, in the race against John Kerry, Schmidt and the other Bush strategists had
perfected their trade craft. With a major studio's brutal efficiency, they distilled
the campaign into a megabudget melodrama pitting an unwavering commander in chief
a
gainst a flip-flopper, set in a post-9/11 world where there could be no room for
error or equivocation.
Schmidt has been in charge of strategy for the McCain campaign since early this
summer, and his effort to prevail in the battle of competing story lines has been
considerably more problematic. The selling of a presidential "narrative"
the reigning buzz word of this election cycle has taken on outsize significance
in an age in which a rush of visuals and catch words can cripple public images overnight.
Mitt Romney, it is said, lost because he could not get his story straight. Hillary
Clinton found her I'm-a-fighter leitmotif too late to save her candidacy. By
contrast, the narrative of Barack Obama has seemed to converge harmonically with
the shifting demographics and surging discontent of the electorate. It may well
be, as his detractors suggest, that Obama is among the least-experienced presidential
nominees in our nation's history. But to voters starved for change, the 47-year-old
biracial first-term Democratic senator clearly qualifies. That, in any event, is
his story, an
d he has stuck to it.
John McCain's biography has been the stuff of legend for nearly a decade. And
yet Schmidt and his fellow strategists have had difficulty explaining how America
will be better off for electing (as opposed to simply admiring) a stubborn patriot.
In seeking to do so, the McCain campaign has changed its narrative over and over.
Sometimes with McCain's initial resistance but always with his eventual approval,
Schmidt has proffered a candidate who is variously a fighter, a conciliator, an
experienced leader and a shake-'em-up rebel. "The trick is that all of
these are McCain," Matt McDonald, a senior adviser, told me. But in constantly
alternating among story lines in order to respond to changing events and to gain
traction with voters, the "true character" of a once-crisply-defined political
figure has become increasingly murky.
Schmidt evidently saw the financial crisis as a "true character" moment
that would advance his candidate's narrative. But the story line did not go
as scripted. "This has to be solved by Monday," Schmidt told reporters
that Wednesday afternoon in late September, just after McCain concluded his lengthy
meeting with his advisers and subsequently announced his decision to suspend his
campaign and go to Washington. Belying a crisis situation, however, McCain didn't
leave New York immediately. He spent Thursday morning at an event for the Clinton
Global Initiative, the nonprofit foundation run by former President Bill Clinton.
As McCain headed for Washington later that morning, he was sufficiently concerned
about the situation that Schmidt felt compelled to reassure him. "Remember
what President Clinton told you," Schmidt said, referring to advice Clinton
had dispensed that morning: "If you do the right thing, it might be painful
for a few days. But in the long run it will work ou
t in your favor."
After arriving on Capitol Hill nearly 24 hours after his announcement, McCain huddled
with three of his closest political allies: fellow senators Lindsey Graham, Joe
Lieberman and John Kyl. Later that day at a White House meeting convened by Bush
and also attended by congressional leaders of both parties as well as both candidates,
McCain said almost nothing, even when House Republicans declared that they were
not yet willing to sign onto the administration's $700 billion proposal. Despite
the fact that the deal maker had produced no deal, McCain announced the next day
that his campaign would resume ? "optimistic that there has been significant
progress towards a bipartisan agreement," as a campaign statement put it ?
and traveled to Mississippi that Friday afternoon to debate Obama. On Sunday morning,
Schmidt went on "Meet the Press" to insist that his boss's foray had
been crucial in bringing "all of the parties to the table," with the result
that "there appears to be a fra
mework completed." The next day ? Monday, Sept. 29, the day by which Schmidt
had earlier warned the crisis "has to be solved" ? the House Republicans
played the key role in defeating the bailout legislation.
Scene by scene, McCain failed to deliver the performance that had been promised.
Of course, this was no mere movie. America was in crisis. Perhaps with the Bush
theory in mind, Steve Schmidt had advised McCain to "go in all the way"
on the financial crisis so as to reveal his candidate's true character. But
given a chance to show what kind of president he might be, McCain came off more
like a stymied bystander than a leader who could make a difference. Judging by the
polls, the McCain campaign has yet to recover.
In reporting on the campaign's vicissitudes, I spoke with a half-dozen of McCain's
senior-most advisers ? most of them more than once and some of them repeatedly ?
over a period that began in early August. I spoke as well to several other midlevel
advisers and to a number of former senior aides. Virtually all of these individuals
had spoken with me for previous articles concerning McCain. Their insights and recollections
enabled me to piece together conversations and events. My repeated requests to interview
McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, were denied, and with only a couple of
exceptions those who spoke to me did so with the stipulation that most or all of
their comments not be attributed to them.
Despite their leeriness of being quoted, McCain's senior advisers remained palpably
confident of victory ? at least until very recently. By October, the succession
of backfiring narratives would compel some to reappraise not only McCain's chances
but also the decisions made by Schmidt, who only a short time ago was hailed as
the savior who brought discipline and unrepentant toughness to a listing campaign.
"For better or for worse, our campaign has been fought from tactic to tactic,"
one senior adviser glumly acknowledged to me in early October, just after Schmidt
received authorization from McCain to unleash a new wave of ads attacking Obama's
character. "So this is the new tactic."
NARRATIVE 1: The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitters
Steve Schmidt is 38, bald and brawny, with a nasal, deadpan voice and a relentless
stare. He is also a devoted husband and father of two young children, introspective
and boyishly vulnerable for someone of such imposing stature. On mornings, he can
be seen standing outside the McCain campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia,
smoking a cigarette while he scowls at his BlackBerry. After campaign events in
the evening, he often hangs out at a hotel bar drinking beer with fellow campaign
workers and members of the media. Whenever possible, he flies back to California
to spend the weekend with his family. He is not a hothead and tends to hesitate
for several beats before offering a well-tailored, often wry answer to a question.
Though commonly described in the press as a Karl Rove prot?g?, Schmidt was a Republican
operative for a dozen years before he ever worked for Rove. When Bush returned to
the White House, Schmidt was not among those from the 2004 re-election effort who
w
ere rewarded with plum jobs, despite his well-regarded work overseeing the campaign's
rapid-response unit. After spending the first half of 2005 heading up the press
office for Vice President Dick Cheney, Schmidt was sent to Baghdad to improve the
administration's anemic communications strategy in Iraq. He also orchestrated
the Senate confirmation hearings of the Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and
Samuel Alito and their presentation to the outside world. Along the way, Schmidt
never really developed the personal relationship with Bush that would have enabled
him to advance in accordance with his talents. In early 2006, when an opportunity
came to jump ship, Schmidt took it, departing the Bush administration to spearhead
the successful re-election campaign of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.
He still lives outside Sacramento, far from Washington. Though Schmidt often brandishes
his geographical remove from the Beltway and his lack of interest in another Whit
e House job as proof of his equanimity, you get the sense th!
at a McC
ain victory would bring him no small measure of personal vindication.
For a man who seems to relish Rove-like alley fighting, Schmidt is not an ideologue
and claims he harbors no ambition of delivering the Republican Party to a state
of lasting supremacy. He also displays great nuance in office politics. Until Schmidt
consolidated his power this summer, McCain, it's fair to say, was not a big
believer in organization. The important decisions were all made by him, with various
confidants of ambiguous portfolio orbiting around him and often colliding with one
another (and often staying in the picture well after their departure ? as was the
case of Mike Murphy, a strategist from the 2000 campaign, who remained close enough
to McCain that rumors of his return persisted until fairly recently).
A year earlier, in the summer of 2007, the McCain campaign all but collapsed under
the weight of financial woes, vicious infighting and the conservative base's
fury over his moderate stance on immigration. Among the senior staff members who
walked out were McCain's longtime political guru John Weaver and several alumni
of the well-oiled 2004 Bush campaign. Schmidt ? who until that point was not particularly
influential ? decided to stick around, even without pay. He began to earn McCain's
trust while also befriending the senator's two closest advisers, who happened
not to care for each other.
One was Rick Davis, a charming Southern lobbyist and Republican jack-of-all-trades
who had assumed control of the campaign's day-to-day operations. McCain and
Davis have for years called each other a half-dozen times a day, but Davis has also
cultivated a close bond with Cindy McCain, who once when talking to Katie Couric
referred to Davis as "our best friend." The other adviser was 53-year-old
Mark Salter, a brilliant, pugnacious writer who has composed all of McCain's
books and major speeches and in a more encompassing sense is McCain's definer,
looking after what Salter himself calls the "metanarrative" of McCain's
transformation from a reckless flyboy and POW to a courageous patriot. The complicated
interdependence between McCain and Salter could be glimpsed during the candidate's
acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Salter sat in the front row, dead
center, no more than 15 feet from McCain. I watched as Salter gazed intently at
McCain throughout, making subtle
motions with his hands and face, and when McCain came to the pivotal line in his
POW tale ? "I was no longer my own man; I was my country's" ? its
author leapt to his feet and applauded.
But in the summer of 2007, Salter and McCain's relationship frayed when Salter
and others tried to marginalize Davis, and McCain resisted. While Salter brooded
and Davis spent his hours at headquarters begging donors and volunteers not to jump
ship, Schmidt stepped into the void. There was still more than a year until the
election, he figured. The problem was that McCain was spending his time talking
about Iraq, in distinctly funereal tones. "It's long and it's hard
and it's tough," the senator told one audience in Gilford, New Hampshire,
that summer. "I could recommend books on it that'll make you cry. . . .
I know how frustrated you are. I know the sorrow you experience." Virtually
all of his senior staff members, Schmidt and Davis among them, had been begging
McCain to focus on the economy, health care and tax policy. Anything, really, except
Bush's war. But according to several senior advisers, the candidate felt a deep
sense of responsibility to cheerlead for the troop s
urge, which he believed would turn the tide in Iraq. It began to dawn on Schmidt
that McCain's stubborn patronage of an unpopular war wasn't impeding the
campaign's quest for narrative ? it was the narrative.
"Sir, is the surge working?" he said he asked McCain one day. "Are
we winning?"
"Yes," McCain said.
"That's not what you're saying on the trail."
"It is!"
"No, sir. It's not. You're saying things are getting better. Do you
believe we're actually winning now?"
McCain indicated that he did.
"Well, going forward, that's what you should say," Schmidt replied.
He encouraged McCain to denounce the Democrats for advocating a withdrawal of troops
? a kind of surrender in the face of victory. Thus did Schmidt initiate the No Surrender
Tour late in the summer of 2007, a push through the early primary states that saw
John McCain surrounded by war veterans while he lashed out at weak-kneed war critics.
Employing considerable artistic license, Schmidt linked McCain's stance on Iraq
with his bravery during his years in captivity in Vietnam, something the candidate
had shied away from. Indeed, as McCain told me two years ago, he decided to write
his Vietnam memoir, "Faith of My Fathers," with Salter largely to put
the subject to rest once and for all: "I just got bored telling the same old
story over and over again. . . . After the 3,000th time, you think, Hey, I'd
rather talk about something else."
As one adviser told me two months ago: "It's against his better nature
to be self-aggrandizing. But everybody was telling him, 'This is about the election,
the election's about your character and this stuff goes along with your narrative.'
" Schmidt warned McCain that declining to discuss personal matters like his
POW days and his religious faith would very likely have ramifications at the polls.
The candidate acquiesced. In speeches, debates and advertising, the McCain campaign
made liberal use of his war-hero metanarrative. On March 28, 2008, with the Republican
nomination secured, McCain's first national ad was shown. It concluded with
grainy black-and-white footage of the wounded POW reciting his serial number to
his captors, followed by a spoken line that Schmidt loved and adamantly defended,
even when others inside the campaign argued that it made no sense: "John McCain.
The American president Americans have been waiting for." Thereafter, McCain
seldom wasted an opportu
nity to extol his own patriotism.
NARRATIVE 2: Country-First Deal Maker vs. Nonpartisan Pretender
Schmidt spent this spring futilely trying to broaden the story line. Americans,
he knew, did not share McCain's devotion to the surge in Iraq. Their concerns
lay at home. Accordingly, Schmidt toured McCain through Annapolis, Alexandria and
Jacksonville, the towns of his beginnings (an idea conceived by Karl Rove, according
to a senior adviser), and then made an empathy swing through poor regions of the
country. Both came off as contrivances. McCain's speech in New Orleans on June
3 of this year ? the night Obama effectively clinched the nomination ? was delivered
against a sickly green backdrop, a poorly executed version of an idea Schmidt borrowed
from the eco-friendly 2006 Schwarzenegger campaign. Contrasted with Obama's
ringing articulation of change in St. Paul that very night, McCain's speech
(with its "That's not change we can believe in" refrain) struck even
some Republicans as churlish. McCain was so frustrated by his own, at times, stumbling
performance that he vowed
never to deliver another teleprompter speech again.
The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of
senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain's campaign
headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened
"because we still couldn't answer the question, 'Why elect John McCain?'
" Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not
a good sign.
"We had a narrative problem," Matt McDonald recalls. "Obama had a
story line: 'Bush is the problem. I'm not going to be Bush, and McCain will
be.' Our story line, I argued, had to be that it's not about Bush ? it's
Congress, it's Washington. And Obama would be more about partisanship, while
John McCain would buck the party line and bring people together."
The others could see McDonald's line of reasoning ? and above all, the need
to separate McCain from Bush. But the message seemed antiseptic, impersonal. That
was when the keeper of McCain's biography, Mark Salter, took the floor. There's
a reason McCain bucks his party, McDonald remembers Salter arguing. It's because
he puts his country ahead of party. Then the speechwriter, who is not known for
his dispassion, began to yell: "We're talking about someone who was willing
to die before losing his honor! He would die!"
Salter stalked out of the meeting to have a cigarette and didn't return. But
he had said enough. The metanarrative of Heroic Fighter was now joined with one
that evoked postpartisan statesmanship. The new narrative needed a label. The first
version was "A Love for America." Then "America First." And
finally, the one that stuck: "Country First."
The McCain campaign maintained that in contrast to Obama, their candidate had taken
on his own party while working with Democrats on such issues as immigration and
campaign-finance reform. "Obama pays no price from his party ? never has,"
Salter told me. "My guy has made a career out of it. So, how can you get people
to believe that if you can't get the press to make an honest assessment of it?
You tell a story. 'When it came down to a choice between my very life and my
country, I chose my country.' That's why the story's important. Just
as Obama's story is important to him. I don't gainsay it. You know, tell
your story!"
Salter and Schmidt had hoped that the mainstream press would warm to this new narrative.
But the matter of which candidate had shown more acts of bipartisan daring failed
to become Topic A. The two advisers ? each of whom had friendly relations with the
media but had grown increasingly convinced that Obama was getting a free ride ?
took this as further proof that today's reporters were primarily young, snarky,
blog-obsessed and liberal. To Schmidt's and Salter's minds, John McCain
had always been honest and straightforward with the press, and the press in turn
was not acting in good faith toward their candidate. As such it was now undeserving
of McCain's unfettered "straight talk."
But this rationale for shutting out the press has its limitations. For one, when
McCain's Straight Talk Express first rolled out in 1999, the notion was not
conceived simply out of the sense that being transparent with the media ? and by
extension the voters ? was just the right thing to do. Instead, it was implemented
because the 2000 campaign lacked the money to compete with Bush's ad campaign.
As John Weaver, McCain's former strategist told me, "We needed the coverage."
For another, McCain happened to like passing the time with reporters, whom he would
sometimes refer to as his "base." In addition, talking openly with the
press had some important advantages early on for McCain. According to some of his
aides, McCain's victory in the make-or-break New Hampshire primary in January
of this year might not have transpired had he not spent time talking to and overtly
courting every editorial board in the state for their endorsements.
Regardless, this summer Schmidt sought to convince his voluble candidate that the
press was no longer his friend. By July, a curtain was literally drawn to separate
McCain from the reporters traveling on his plane. He no longer mingled with them,
and press conferences were drastically curtailed. The Bushian concept of message
discipline ? the droning repetition of a single talking point ? that had been so
gleefully mocked by McCain's lieutenants in 2000 now governed the Straight Talk
Express.
NARRATIVE 3: Leader vs. Celebrity
"Gentlemen, let me put a few things on the table for observation and discussion,"
Steve Schmidt said to his fellow strategists while sitting in a conference room
in the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton. "Would anyone here disagree with the premise that
we are not winning this campaign?"
No one disagreed. It was Sunday, July 27, and Obama had just concluded an eight-day
swing through the Middle East and Europe that received practically round-the-clock
media coverage. "Would anyone disagree with the premise," Schmidt went
on, "that Mr. Obama has scored the most successful week in this entire campaign?
I mean, they treated him like he was a head of state! So tell me, gentlemen: how
do we turn this negative into a positive?"
"It's third and nine," Bill McInturff, a pollster, observed. "Time
to start throwing the ball down field."
Eventually, it was Schmidt who blurted out the epiphany concerning Obama. "Face
it, gentlemen," he said. "He's being treated like a celebrity."
The others grasped the concept ? a celebrity like J-Lo! or Britney! ? and exultation
overtook the room.
John and Cindy McCain showed up at the end of the daylong meeting, and Schmidt took
the opportunity to run the celebrity concept by them. The McCains liked it ? though
the candidate was otherwise cranky: he was tired of being overscheduled and always
late and demanded that this change immediately. (It did, according to a senior adviser:
"After that meeting, you will rarely see McCain do an event before 9 in the
morning.")
Three days later, the new ad went up. "He's the biggest celebrity in the
world," a female voice intoned, as images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton
flashed on the screen. "But: is he ready to lead?" In a conference call
with reporters that morning, Schmidt framed the issue with a binary choice straight
out of the 2004 playbook: "Do the American people want to elect the biggest
celebrity or an American hero?"
The idea, McDonald told me, was "to exalt Obama's eloquence. Push it up
to a place where there's no oxygen. Make it an Icarus thing." The notion
of Obama's apparent presumptuousness seemed to grow on viewers. And when Russia
invaded the fledgling republic of Georgia on Aug. 8, McCain's strategists saw
an opportunity for another stark binary choice ? albeit one that abruptly shifted
the story line back to the international arena: combat-ready leader versus unready
celebrity.
The execution of the new narrative left something to be desired, however. Three
days after the invasion, McCain made a statement to reporters in Erie, Pennsylvania,
intended to showcase his mastery of the Russia-Georgia situation. Instead, the candidate
mispronounced the name of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, three times.
The next day, I watched as McCain appeared in York, Pennsylvania, to engage in one
of his free-form town-hall meetings. But he began the event by standing next to
a lectern and reciting Russia-Georgia talking points from prepared notes. Though
no doubt this was intended to avoid his previous flubs, McCain's scripted performance
seemed more like that of a foreign-policy novice than a sure-handed sage.
When I mentioned this episode later to one of McCain's advisers, he winced and
said: "This is part of the Schmidt gotta-have-absolute-message-discipline thing.
That's one of the disagreements. And John can be really resistant. He's
always worried about being put in a box. He's got a very sensitive nerve about
it. A lot of times I would hear him say: 'Don't control me. This is my campaign.'
But I think Steve has convinced him that we've got to do this if we're going
to win."
NARRATIVE 4: Team of Mavericks vs. Old-Style Washington
On Sunday, Aug. 24, Schmidt and a few other senior advisers again convened for a
general strategy meeting at the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton. McInturff, the pollster, brought
somewhat-reassuring new numbers. The Celebrity motif had taken its toll on Obama.
It was no longer third and nine, the pollster said ? meaning, among other things,
that McCain might well be advised to go with a safe pick as his running mate.
Then for a half-hour or so, the group reviewed names that had been bandied about
in the past: Governor Tim Pawlenty (of Minnesota) and Governor Charlie Christ (of
Florida); the former governors Tom Ridge (Pennsylvania) and Mitt Romney (Massachusetts);
Senator Joe Lieberman (Connecticut); and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (New York). From
a branding standpoint, they wondered, what message would each of these candidates
send about John McCain? McInturff's polling data suggested that none of these
candidates brought significantly more to the ticket than any other.
"What about Sarah Palin?" Schmidt asked.
After a moment of silence, Fred Davis, McCain's creative director (and not related
to Rick), said, "I did the ads for her gubernatorial campaign." But Davis
had never once spoken with Palin, the governor of Alaska. Since the Republican Governors
Association had paid for his work, Davis was prohibited by campaign laws from having
any contact with the candidate. All Davis knew was that the RGA folks had viewed
Palin as a talent to keep an eye on. "She'd certainly be a maverick pick,"
he concluded.
The meeting carried on without Schmidt or Rick Davis uttering an opinion about Palin.
Few in the room were aware that the two had been speaking to each other about Palin
for some time now. Davis was with McCain when the two met Palin for the first time,
at a reception at the National Governors Association winter meeting in February,
in the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Washington. It had not escaped McCain's attention
that Palin had blasted through the oleaginous Alaska network dominated by Frank
Murkowski and Ted Stevens, much in the same manner that McCain saw himself doing
when he was a young congressman. Newt Gingrich and others had spoken of Palin as
a rising star. Davis saw something else in Palin ? namely, a way to re-establish
the maverick persona McCain had lost while wedding himself to Bush's war. A
female running mate might also pick off some disaffected Hillary Clinton voters.
After that first brief meeting, Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact
with Palin and her staff ? gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was
doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck
Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Governor Janet Napolitano, the Arizona
Democrat, on "The Charlie Rose Show" that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing
the tape, it didn't concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care
issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field,
she said, "I'm undecided." What he liked was how she stuck to her
pet issues ? energy independence and ethics reform ? and thereby refused to let
Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage.
Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis:
"The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and
you put the pictures
of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best ? that's
your V. P."
Schmidt, to whom Davis quietly supplied the Palin footage, agreed. Neither man apparently
saw her lack of familiarity with major national or international issues as a serious
liability. Instead, well before McCain made his selection, his chief strategist
and his campaign manager both concluded that Sarah Palin would be the most dynamic
pick. Despite McInturff's encouraging new numbers, it remained their conviction
that in this ominous election cycle, a Republican presidential candidate could not
afford to play it safe. Picking Palin would upend the chessboard; it was a maverick
type of move. McCain, the former navy pilot, loved that sort of thing. Then again,
he also loved familiarity ? the swashbuckling camaraderie with his longtime staff
members, the POW band of brothers who frequently rode the bus and popped up at his
campaign events, the Sedona ranch where he unwound and grilled wagonloads of meat.
By contrast, McCain had barely met Palin.
That evening of Aug. 24, Schmidt and Davis, after leaving the Ritz-Carlton meeting,
showed up at McCain's condominium in Phoenix. They informed McCain that in their
view, Palin would be the best pick. "You never know where his head is,"
Davis told me three weeks later. "He doesn't betray a lot. He's a great
poker player. But he picked up the phone." Reached at the Alaska State Fair,
Palin listened as McCain for the first time discussed the possibility of selecting
her as his running mate.
These machinations remained thoroughly sub rosa. McCain's close friend, Lindsey
Graham, the South Carolina senator, continued to argue passionately for Lieberman
? "a McCain-Plus ticket," he would say. McCain, referring to Romney, at
one point said that "Mitt's been awfully helpful with fund-raising,"
according to a senior aide who was present during the discussion. "And he'd
bring us Michigan." Pawlenty's name frequently came up in internal discussions,
says that aide. But as for Palin, says another: "She just wasn't one of
the names. I mean, we heard more about Bloomberg."
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, Schmidt picked up the phone around noon and called Jon Berrier,
an old friend and partner at Schmidt's consulting business in Northern California.
Berrier was asked to get on a plane to Anchorage, check into a hotel, await further
details and tell no one. The next morning, Davis White, who oversaw all of McCain's
travel logistics, met Berrier for breakfast in Anchorage. White informed Berrier
that they would meet Palin at a private airstrip that afternoon, and that White
would fly with Palin to Arizona to meet with Schmidt and Salter that evening ? and
then, the following morning, with McCain. If McCain offered the vice-president slot
to Palin, White told Berrier, then Berrier would surreptitiously fly Palin's
husband, Todd, and their children to Ohio on Thursday evening, and a public announcement
would be made there the next morning. The final decision wasn't to be made until
Thursday morning, but they should proceed as if it was going to happen.
Palin and her assistant, Kris Perry, met Schmidt and Salter on Wednesday evening
in Flagstaff, at the house of Bob Delgado, the chief executive of Hensley &
Company, Cindy McCain's beer distributorship. McCain's speechwriter had
never spoken with Palin before. A senior adviser said: "Salter was always a
big Pawlenty fan ? son of a truck driver, salt of the earth, genuine guy. Just thought
he was a good, honest addition to the McCain brand as opposed to, say, Romney."
That so much momentum had been building in Palin's favor was likely a surprise
to Salter, says one of the few individuals privy to the vice-presidential selection
process: "Mark was new to it, and so it was important to us to make sure that
he was in on the situation that was brewing."
For two hours, Salter and Schmidt asked Palin questions based on the vetting material.
Salter says they discussed her daughter's pregnancy and the pending state investigation
regarding her role in the controversy surrounding the state trooper who had been
married to her sister. The two advisers warned her that nothing was likely to stay
secret during the campaign. Salter says that he was impressed. "The sense you
immediately get is how tough-minded and self-assured she is," he recalled three
weeks after meeting her. "She makes that impression in like 30 seconds."
Now all three of McCain's closest advisers were on board. The next morning was
Thursday, Aug. 28. Salter and Schmidt drove Palin to McCain's ranch. According
to Salter, the senator took the governor down to a place where he usually had his
coffee, beside a creek and a sycamore tree, where a rare breed of hawk seasonally
nested. They spoke for more than an hour. Then the two of them walked about 40 yards
to the deck of the cabin where the McCains slept. Cindy joined them there for about
15 minutes, after which the McCains excused themselves and went for a brief stroll
to discuss the matter. When they returned, McCain asked for some time with Schmidt
and Salter. "And we did our pros and cons on all of them," Salter told
me. "He just listened. Asked a couple of questions. Then said, 'I'm
going to offer it to her.' "
Late that same evening, a McCain spokeswoman, Nicolle Wallace, and the deputy speechwriter,
Matthew Scully, were ferried to the Manchester Inn in Middleton, Ohio. Schmidt instructed
them to turn off their cellphones and BlackBerrys. Then he opened the door of Room
508 and introduced them to McCain's running mate. The two aides were surprised.
Palin and Scully spoke for about 45 minutes, and the governor handed him a copy
of the speech she had intended to give as one of the Republican convention's
many guest speakers. With this scant information in hand, Scully began his all-night
drafting of Palin's first speech to a national audience.
During the evening, Scully also traded e-mail messages with Matt McDonald, who had
just gotten the news from Schmidt that the vice-presidential pick was someone who
did not quite fit the campaign's current emphasis on "readiness."
The story line, Schmidt informed McDonald, was now Change. The two of them, along
with Rick Davis, talked through this rather jolting narrative shift. What they decided
upon was workable, if inelegant. First, define the problem as Washington, not Bush.
Second, posit both McCain and Palin as experienced reformers. And third, define
Obama and his 65-year-old running mate, Senator Joe Biden, as a ticket with no real
record of change. McDonald in turn transmitted this formulation to Scully and Salter,
who was busily drafting McCain's announcement speech.
The spunky hockey mom that America beheld the next morning instantly hijacked Obama's
narrative of newness. ("Change is coming!" McCain hollered, almost seeming
startled himself.) And five days later, in the hours after Palin's stunningly
self-assured acceptance speech at the Republican convention, I watched as the Republicans
in the bar of the Minneapolis Hilton rejoiced as Republicans had not rejoiced since
Inauguration Night three and a half long years ago. Jubilant choruses of "She
knocked it out of the park" and "One of the greatest speeches ever"
were heard throughout the room, and some people gave, yes, Obama-style fist bumps.
When the tall, unassuming figure of Palin's speechwriter, Matthew Scully, shuffled
into the bar, he was treated to the first standing ovation of his life. Nicolle
Wallace confessed to another staff member that she had cried throughout Palin's
speech. Allowing his feelings to burst out of his composed eggshell of a face, Schmidt
bellowed to someon
e, "Game on!"
Just as quickly, he resumed his natural state of arch contemplativeness. "Arguably,
at this stage?" he observed. "She's a bigger celebrity than Obama."
A commotion erupted, followed by outright hysteria. It was 11:45, and the Palins
had entered the bar. Dozens of staff members and delegates flocked to the governor,
cellphone cameras outstretched. Todd and Sarah Palin posed, shook hands and extended
their gracious appreciation for 15 minutes. Then, no doubt realizing that they would
never be able to enjoy a drink in peace, they withdrew for the evening, again to
raucous applause.
While all of this was going on, an elegant middle-aged woman sat alone at the far
end of the bar. She wore beige slacks and a red sweater, and she picked at a salad
while talking incessantly on her cellphone. But for the McCain/Palin button affixed
to her collar and the brief moment that Palin's new chief of staff, Tucker Eskew,
spoke into her ear, she seemed acutely disconnected from the jubilation swelling
around her.
In fact, the woman was here for a reason. Her name was Priscilla Shanks, a New York-based
stage and screen actress of middling success who had found a lucrative second career
as a voice coach. Shanks's work with Sarah Palin was as evident as it was unseen.
Gone, by the evening of her convention speech, was the squeaky register of Palin's
exclamations. Gone (at least for the moment) was the Bushian pronunciation of "nuclear"
as "nook-you-ler." Present for the first time was a leisurely, even playful
cadence that signaled Sarah Palin's inevitability on this grand stage.
In the ensuing two and a half weeks (which surely felt longer to the Obama campaign),
the Palin Effect was manifest and profound. McCain seemed, if not suddenly younger
? after all, the woman standing to his side was nearly the same age as his daughter,
Sidney ? then freshly boisterous as he crowed, "Change is coming, my friends!"
Meanwhile, Palin's gushing references to McCain as "the one great man in
this race" and "exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief"
seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only
weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful.
But just as you could make too much of Shanks's quiet coaching of Palin, you
could also make too little of it. The new narrative ? the Team of Mavericks coming
to lay waste the Beltway power alleys ? now depended on a fairly inexperienced Alaska
politician. The following night, after McCain's speech brought the convention
to a close, one of the campaign's senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton
bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question:
"Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin
is about the issues of the day?"
The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. "No,"
he said quietly. "I don't know."
NARRATIVE 5: John McCain vs. John McCain
In the period before the campaign's decision earlier this month to wage an all-out
assault on Obama's character as the next narrative tactic, McCain was signaling
to aides that it was important to run an honorable campaign. People are hurting
now, McCain said to his convention planners as Hurricane Gustav whirled toward the
Gulf Coast. It's a shame we have to have a convention at all. But because we
have to do this, tone it down. No balloons, nothing over the top. When his media
team suggested running ads that highlighted Obama's connection with the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, McCain reminded them that he pledged months earlier not to exploit
the matter, and John McCain was not about to go back on his word. In such moments,
the man who renounced negative ads during the 2000 campaign because he wanted (as
he told his aghast advisers back then) "to run a campaign my daughter can be
proud of" has been thoroughly recognizable.
But that John McCain had lost. Of the noble but perhaps na?ve decision in 2000 to
unilaterally take down his attack ads, Rick Davis would vow: "That's not
gonna happen a second time. I mean, the old dog can learn a few new tricks."
And yet on this landscape of new tricks ? calling your opponent a liar; allowing
your running mate to imply that the opponent might prefer terrorists over Americans
? McCain sometimes seemed to be running against not only Barack Obama but an earlier
version of himself.
The flipside to John McCain's metanarrative of personal valor has always been
palpable self-righteousness. In this campaign, his sense of integrity has been doubly
offended. First, an adviser said, "He just really thinks the media is completely
in the tank for Obama and doesn't feel like he's getting a fair shake at
all." And second, another said, "I don't think John likes people who
try to do jobs they're not qualified for" ? referring, in this case, to
Barack Obama.
In June, McCain formally proposed that he and his Democratic opponent campaign together
across America in a series of town-hall-style meetings. He had in fact suggested
the same thing to Joe Biden three years earlier, Biden told me back then: "He
said: 'Let's make a deal if we end up being the nominees. Let's commit
to do what Goldwater and Kennedy committed to do before Kennedy was shot.' We
agreed that we would campaign together, same plane, get off in the same city and
go to 30 states or whatever together." According to Biden, he and McCain sealed
their agreement with a handshake. When McCain extended the same offer to Obama in
2008, the Democrat said that he found the notion "appealing" but then
did little to make it happen. Since that time, McCain has repeatedly told aides
what he has also said in public ? that had Obama truly showed a determination to
have a series of joint appearances, the campaign would not have degenerated to its
current sorry state.
But to McCain, that Obama failed to do so carries a deeper significance. Authenticity
means everything to a man like McCain who, says Salter, "has an affinity for
heroes, for men of honor." Conversely, he reserves special contempt for those
he regards as arrogant phonies. A year after Barack Obama was sworn into the Senate,
Salter recalls McCain saying, "He's got a future, I'll reach out to
him" ? as McCain had to Russ Feingold and John Edwards, and as the liberal
Arizona congressman Mo Udall had reached out to McCain as a freshman. McCain invited
Obama to attend a bipartisan meeting on ethics reform. Obama gratefully accepted
?but then wrote McCain a letter urging him to instead follow a legislative path
recommended by Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate. Feeling double-crossed,
McCain ordered Salter to "send him a letter, brush him back a little."
Since that experience, says a Republican who has known McCain for a long time, "there
was certainly disdain and disl
ike of Obama."
A senior adviser to McCain said: "The town halls, the ethics bill, immigration
reform ? all are examples. I think McCain finds it galling that Obama gets credit
for his impressive talk about bipartisanship without ever having to bear the risk
that is a part of that. It is so much harder to walk the walk in the Senate than
to talk the talk." By extension, then, if the McCain campaign's conduct
would appear to be at odds with the man's "true character," it is
only because the combination of a dishonorable opponent and a biased media has forced
his hand. Or so goes the rationale for what by this month was an increasingly ugly
campaign.
The worry among his aides had long been that McCain would let his indignation show.
Going into the debates, an adviser expressed that very concern to me: "If he
keeps the debates on substance, he's very good. If it moves to the personal,
then I think it's a disaster." Accordingly, Salter advised McCain before
the first debate to maintain, one person privy to the sessions put it, "a very
generous patience with Obama ? in terms of, 'I'm sure if he understood.
. . .' "
"The object wasn't to appear condescending at all ? really, the opposite,"
an adviser said of Salter's tactic, which judging by the postdebate polls seemed
to backfire. "You put a bullet in a gun, figuring it'll get shot once.
We had no idea it would be shot 10 times."
NARRATIVE 6: The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal
Having fallen back on the most clich?d of political story lines ? the devil you
know versus the devil you don't ? only to see the negative tactic boomerang,
Schmidt and his colleagues cobbled together one last narrative with less than a
month to go. Kicking it off at an event in Virginia Beach on Oct. 13, McCain delivered
a speech that did not mention "maverick," or "country first,"
or "no surrender." The new motif was a hybrid of the previous five story
lines, especially the first. Mentioning some version of the word "fight"
19 times, McCain was once again a warrior ? only more upbeat, more respectful of
his opponent, more empathetic to suffering Americans and far more disapproving of
the president. Rick Davis told me in September, "The worst scenario for Obama
is if he winds up running against the McCain of 2000," an authentic independent.
But if this was the McCain that was now emerging, it was awfully late in the game,
and he was encumbered by other versions of McCain gon
e awry.
In the final debate on Oct. 15 at Hofstra University on Long Island, McCain barely
mentioned any version of the word "fight" but performed forcefully, perhaps
even indignantly. By the time Steve Schmidt entered the postdebate spin room, his
Obama counterpart, David Axelrod, had already been holding the floor for 20 minutes.
Schmidt wore a pinstripe suit and his blue eyes carried a victor's gleam. Like
every other McCain aide I encountered that night, he was convinced not only that
the senator had turned in his best performance but that viewers would see him as
the clear winner.
Schmidt vowed that McCain would spend the final days of the campaign focused on
the economy ? and on Joe the plumber, the kind of entrepreneur (so McCain thought
at the time) who would become an endangered species in an Obama administration.
But that did not stop Schmidt from a lengthy monologue questioning Obama's character
and assailing the opposition's "vicious" and "racially divisive"
ads. At a certain point, when a member of the foreign media asked him if all of
this spinning was likely to help McCain, Schmidt allowed himself a small grin and
said: "Well, look. One of the things I always wonder is why we come in here
at the end. . . . It doesn't really matter, to be totally truthful with you.
It's just part of the ritual. Like eating turkey on Thanksgiving."
A few minutes later, his close friend and colleague Nicolle Wallace tugged Schmidt
away from the scrum. They exited the spin room while Axelrod was still holding forth
and flew back to Washington late that night.
McCain and a number of his advisers remained at their hotel on Long Island. At the
hotel bar where many of them lingered into the late hours, I asked one of them whether
the debate could make a difference at this late stage. The adviser maintained that
regardless of the instant-poll numbers, Joe the plumber and other talking points
would likely resonate in the weeks to come.
Then the adviser said with a helpless smile, "Hopefully that'll change
the narrative."
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