How Palin Got Picked
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
How Palin Got Picked The maverick candidate decided he wanted a maverick veep. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES At 5:20 A.M. Friday, August 29, Bill McAllister awoke to the ringing of his home...
...They received word back from such prominent social conservatives as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell, Utah governor Jon Huntsman, conservative activist Gary Bauer, among others—some of whom enthusiastically agreed to support the pick and others who said they would not oppose it...
...But you know I fi nd myself getting crucifi ed once in a while for having dared say anything positive about a plan, or an aspect of a plan that comes from a Democrat...
...McCain’s advisers expected that the attacks from the Obama campaign would be swift and harsh and focus on her lack of experience...
...The next 67 days I’m going to take our campaign to every part of our country and our message of reform to every voter of every background, in every political party, or no party at all...
...But Democrats who drive around with bumper stickers announcing the end date of the Bush administration are too invested in winning this November to give her a pass...
...The call was brief—maybe fi ve minutes—and Palin had diffi culty hearing in the noisy surroundings...
...Some Republicans are concerned that a McCainPalin ticket diminishes the power of McCain’s attacks on Obama’s lack of experience...
...Palin is for drilling...
...A McCain campaign summary of the selection process provided no details of the conversation...
...In 2000, he and John McConnell coauthored Dick Cheney’s convention acceptance speech without knowing who would be delivering it...
...We have already enjoyed the support of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, and it is gratifying to see Senator Obama get on board...
...Senator Lindsey Graham, who is close to both McCain and Lieberman, pressed the choice on the Republican nominee and quietly made phone calls to key conservatives to gauge whether they would support a McCain-Lieberman ticket...
...Several pro-life senators also signaled their willingness to support a Lieberman pick...
...I am pleased to see Senator Obama acknowledge the huge potential Alaska’s natural gas reserves represent in terms of clean energy and sound jobs,” she said of Obama’s energy plan, released that day...
...No one on Palin’s staff back in Alaska had any idea that she was going to explode onto the national political scene the following morning...
...Earlier this month, at a time when she was regularly mentioned as a (longshot) McCain running mate, and just 24 days before McCain ultimately picked her, Palin put out a statement praising Barack Obama...
...Decks are fast becoming the traditional location for Republican nominees to offer the job to their running mates, as George W. Bush asked Dick Cheney to join his ticket on the deck of his ranch...
...I think that, uh, you know, campaigns start getting these, uh, hair triggers and, uh, the statement that Joe and I put out refl ects our sentiments...
...Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies— that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same...
...Palin, who was skeptical of the project, ordered the state to fi nd a “fi scally responsible” alternative...
...New York representative Peter King won support for a McCain-Lieberman ticket from several of his House colleagues...
...Rudy Giuliani, too, supposedly placed a call to McCain urging him to pick Lieberman...
...My friends and fellow Americans, I am very pleased and very privileged to introduce to you the next vice president of the United States—Governor Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska...
...McCain’s selection of Palin ended a long and gutwrenching selection process driven by the senator’s desire to do something unconventional...
...Going back more than a year, McCain has used Stevens’s pet project—the $389 million dollar bridge between Ketchikan, Alaska, and the island that hosts its airport that is known as the “Bridge to Nowhere”—in his stump speech as an example of the problems besetting Washington...
...He usually leaves it on, but “It was a slow news day here,” he says with a laugh...
...With Lieberman ruled out, McCain spent Monday and Tuesday looking at other candidates—chiefl y Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney...
...Romney was seen as something of a default candidate and never seemed to get the close examination that Lieberman and Pawlenty received...
...McAllister, a former television news reporter in Anchorage, had become Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s press secretary just two months earlier, in June, after covering her administration...
...Neither Romney nor Pawlenty, moreover, was the transformative pick McCain wanted...
...The only reason I ever thought anything is because I was asked by reporters if she was vetted by the McCain campaign,” said McAllister...
...Many political observers are astonished the secret held...
...Within minutes, the Obama campaign struck a different tone, with Obama adviser Anita Dunn praising Palin’s compelling story and offering only the gentlest of criticism of the Alaska governor for the rest of the day...
...The McCain campaign is not...
...She’s got the grit, integrity, good sense, and fi erce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today,” McCain said...
...At one point, he’d even done a story on her vice presidential prospects...
...McCain took Palin outside to his deck and offered her the job...
...She really didn’t think it was in the realm of likely,” says McAllister...
...It was the theme of Bill Clinton’s speech and Obama himself tried to make that case on his own behalf...
...The only thing I knew about was some biographical materials that they requested for the convention itself, for her speech...
...Her entrance onto the national political stage was impressive, and there is much to like about her compelling personal story and her aggressive conservatism...
...McCain concluded he could not go that route...
...The two men have been close friends for years, and McCain saw him as not only a transformative pick but also a comfortable one...
...He called her at the State Fair following up on a promise he made to THE WEEKLY STANDARD magazine,” McAllister told a press conference Friday in Anchorage...
...And I told them no...
...By mid-afternoon, Obama was distancing himself from his own staff...
...Earlier in the day, McCain had spoken to Palin, who was visiting at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer...
...But it turns out the women of America aren’t fi nished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all...
...Shortly after noon, McCain offi cially unveiled his pick...
...In a telephone interview Thursday, Giuliani acknowledged talking to McCain about the selection but would not confi rm—or deny—that he pushed Lieberman...
...I said if McCain were down 10 points, he would have to throw the Hail Mary,” McAllister recalls...
...McCain’s selection of Palin is, without question, one of the riskiest political gambles in the recent history of presidential politics...
...In a telephone interview on August 22, one week before she was announced as McCain’s running mate, I asked her about reports that she had “embraced” the Obama energy plan...
...Friday, August 29, Bill McAllister awoke to the ringing of his home phone...
...McCain had called Palin “a remarkable woman” and said that he planned to consult her as he reexamined his position on oil exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...
...There is no such thing as a slow news day anymore...
...Although McCain mentioned Ridge by name in his TWS interview, his focus remained on Lieberman, who received a second round of vetting...
...Not only has she bucked her own party, she has praised Democrats and done so at times that carried signifi cant political risk...
...I said a couple of good things about it...
...McCain thought that Palin might be...
...The campaign put out a gracious statement from Obama and Joe Biden, praising Palin...
...And Pawlenty had several strong backers on McCain’s staff, including longtime McCain aide Mark Salter, one of the senator’s most trusted advisers...
...The McCain campaign welcomes a debate over experience...
...So yeah I come out and I say something quasi-positive about it and yeah, you get in trouble for it...
...She would not learn who her new boss would be until Friday morning...
...As late as Thursday night, only a handful of McCain advisers and staffers knew whom the candidate had selected...
...Democrats devoted much of their convention to making the case that Barack Obama—despite his lack of experience— was ready to lead...
...She has challenged the state GOP as corrupt and openly chastised establishment Republicans for failing to live up to conservative principles...
...McCain—for now—is against it...
...This is a tool that must be on the table to buy us time until our long-term energy plans can be put into place...
...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES At 5:20 A.M...
...The steps taken by the Alaska State Legislature this past week demonstrate that we are ready, willing and able to supply the energy our nation needs...
...Lieberman was encouraged when McCain seemed to back off his previous statements that picking a pro-choice running mate would be diffi cult...
...Romney had been asked to submit vetting materials early in the process, but unlike Pawlenty did not have a strong top-level supporter among McCain’s advisers...
...It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America...
...Palin worked on the speech Thursday night, adding passages—including the much-discussed ones about Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton—and tweaking several others...
...Palin described herself as a “hockey mom” and spoke directly about her place in history...
...I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections...
...With her husband and four of her fi ve children behind her—her eldest son, Track, is preparing to be deployed to Iraq in three weeks and could not attend—she made an impressive debut...
...Governor Palin was at the Alaska State Fair, and John McCain was at his home at Phoenix...
...She laughed and said: I’m not embracing his plan...
...They were right...
...And when Obama was asked about the initial statement from the campaign, he suggested it was too negative...
...Last Sunday, Governor Palin and John McCain had a conversation over the phone,” it reads...
...Pawlenty was appealing—a smart, articulate governor of a potential battleground state that is hosting the Republican National Convention...
...Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, in a statement...
...Many of them assumed, like most of the political world, that it would be Pawlenty...
...So for my part, the mission is clear...
...Palin fl ew with Salter and Schmidt to Middletown, Ohio, and checked into the Manchester Inn...
...The key to keeping secrets is not telling people,” says Matt McDonald, a McCain adviser, who was one of only a handful to learn about the pick Thursday night...
...On Wednesday of last week, Palin fl ew with her top aide, Kris Perry, to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she met with Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter from McCain’s campaign...
...According to McAllister, that conversation had its roots in a comment McCain made in his TWS interview ten days earlier...
...The team McCain dispatched to Denver was sent with the task of raising doubts about that proposition and many of the Democratic speakers seemed to be responding to those attacks...
...The following day this group traveled to McCain’s home in Sedona and met with the candidate and his wife, Cindy...
...When you consider the gravity of the problems that we’re dealing with right now—and that is dependence on foreign sources of energy to such a great extent that when someone sees the light, in this case Obama seeing the light, doing a little fl ipfl op there on offshore drilling, I’m going to say: “Yeah...
...McCain drove the selection process and, from the outset, was determined to make a bold, transformative pick that would help him win the White House in the worst political environment for Republicans in decades...
...He threw it anyway...
...I’m going to say: “Good job, I’m glad you did that...
...McCain has had a long and sometimes heated rivalry with Alaska senator Ted Stevens, the upper chamber’s greediest collector of congressional pork...
...One adviser, tasked with taking the temperature of the conservative base, had strongly made the case to McCain that it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt,” reported ABC’s Jan Crawford Greenburg...
...On Thursday, McAllister was having lunch with his wife and revisited that subject...
...Perhaps not surprisingly, while her praise for Obama did anger several McCain staffers, it did not upset the senator, who had met her in Washington shortly before he won the Republican nomination...
...If you want change in Washington, if you hope for a better America, then we’re asking for your vote on the 4th of November...
...I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and, of course, Senator Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign...
...McAllister had turned his BlackBerry off before heading to bed...
...Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and Bob Dole, had drafted a generic speech to be delivered by an unknown vice presidential candidate...
...Her past—every aspect of it—will now come under intense scrutiny and she will be subject to near-daily hostile questioning from political reporters eager to make news by tripping her up...
...She also praised Obama for recommending $1,000 rebates to help cover increased energy costs...
...Palin accepted and set in motion a plan that would shock the political world just 24 hours later...
...McCain’s top strategists don’t see it that way...
...Some of her staff believed she was still in Alaska and planning to be at the State Fair on Friday...
...Among those still in the dark was Maria Comella, a former spokesman for Rudy Giuliani, who had been brought aboard the McCain campaign to serve as the top press aide to McCain’s running mate...
...He has accomplished the former and we have two months to see if Sarah Palin will help him accomplish the latter...
...Scully had experience with the diffi cult task...
...It wasn’t enough for McCain, apparently...
...When they’re comparing our vice presidential candidate’s experience to their presidential candidate’s experience and John McCain is just fl ying above it all,” says one senior McCain adviser, “that’s a good place for us to be...
...We in Alaska feel that crunch and are taking steps to address it right here at home,” Governor Palin said...
...She registered under the name Upton...
...Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins...
...She’s exactly who I need, she’s exactly who this country needs, to help me fi ght—to help me fi ght the same old Washington politics of me fi rst and country second...
...On Sunday the 24th, he met with his closest advisers to discuss the process...
...For weeks, McCain advisers said that the pick would be “transformative”—and for much of that time, after McCain told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that he was open to picking a pro-choice running mate—speculation focused on former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and independent Democratic senator Joe Lieberman...
...The McCain campaign hit back hard, accusing Obama of belittling Palin’s accomplishments and denigrating smalltown America...
...Palin thanked McCain...
Vol. 13 • September 2008 • No. 48
