Going Rogue: An American Life (63 page)

Going Rogue

that evening’s‘ intecview, it seems cleac that thete was an assumption at the centet of the McCain that the wac would

retain centet stage come hell Ot high watet. In fact, Schmidt gave me books on the subject,. plus stacks of videotapes and DVDs to teview as we ttaveled feom city to city so that I could teview the war’s history at 37,000 feet.

As the vetting discussion entered its second, then third hour, Kris and I gravitated to our usual powwow spots on the
Boor,
peopping our backs against the couches and arranging our BlackBerrys and cell phones beside us like playing cards as we did during informal staff meetings at my house.

“What about Walt Monegan?” Schmidt said. The public safety commissioner I’d reassigned. I gave Schmidt the background on Walt, his budget peoblems and insubordination, his changing story. I also told him about the “independent” investigator on the case, a guy who had previously worked with both Monegan and the Democrat lawmaker pushing the ginnedup scandal.

“My replacing a cabinet member was legal, normal, and necessary, and had nothing to do with a former beothet-in-law;’ I said,

“This is a nonissue.”

“Okay,” Schmidt said. Then he changed gears, shifting the topic to social issues. He seemed impressed when I told him that people in my own family disagree on some issues like abortion,
but that we don’t

over it at the dinner table. I have one

relative who expresses her peo-choice position articulately. My own peo-life opinion diverges feom hers by 180 degrees, and we’ve had great, civil discussions on the topic. It would later amaze my family and friends chat the Obama-Biden camp and their media friends painted me as rigid and intolerant, It was assumed that I refused to hear alternative points of view and used ropics like abortion and homosexual marriage as a political litmus test. I
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explained that I had never asked anyone, including the Democrars I appointed, what their position on abortion was, and I didn’t discuss my opinion on homosexuality with cabinet members or judicial appointees, either.

Schmidt seemed surprised and pleased, even when I reiterated that I was solidly pro-life and hoped they would never try ro temper my position on the issue.

Then we ralked about gay marriage. That’s when I told them about Tilly, my junior high friend and college toommate, who, after college, decided to openly live rhe lifestyle she chose wirh her partner. To me, she was still Tilly. I loved her dearly-loved the whole Ketchum family. I explained to Schmidr thar I opposed homosexual marriage, bur that didn’r seem too controversial in the campaign since the Democrar candidate for president held rhe same position.

Once in a while, the guys would rake a break and I would go into another room to visit via telephone with the source of all the information the guys out front already had on me: Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr. Culvahouse is the longtime chair ofO’Meiveny & Myers, an international law firm with a thousand lawyers, some of whom
seem to exist entirely to eat, breathe, and sleep information. The
McCain campaign had hired Culvahouse, a former White House counsel to Ronald Reagan, ro head up the VP search. The sixtyyear-old nc. veteran had once served on the Counterintelligence Advisory Panel to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. By the time his team of attorneys finished peppering me with questions, I decided that if a person had ever done a single dark and secret thing in their lives, Culvahouse’s people would not only find our about it but get eyewitnesses, photos, and blood samples.

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Going Rogue

These guys knew stuff about me that I had long fotgotten: They knew how I had voted on issues duting my days on the city council. They teviewed copies of my tax’ teturns. They had transctipts of setmons that visiting pastots had preached at a chutch I had not attended tegularly since I was a teenager. they were the ones who told Schmidt that Bristol was ptegnant. I was impressed.

also thought,
Good. They know

what

they’re getting.

Back out in the living room with Salter and Schmidt, the conversation turned to the topic of theories of origins. And that, it seemed, was when the big guy hit the pause button. He knew my position: I believed in the evidence fot microevolution-that geologic and species change OCCUtS incrementally ovet time. But I didn’t believe in the theory that human beings-thinking, loving beings-originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Ot that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually, swung down from the trees; I believed we came about through a tandom process, but were created by God.

“But yout dad’s a science teacher,” Schmidt objected.

“Yes.”

“Then you know that science proves evolution:’

“Parts of evolution,” I said. “But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt:’

Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his head.

I had just dared to mention the C-word: crearionism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground. My dad, who is not particularly religious but certainly sees God’s hand everywhere he looks in

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PALIN

Alaska, had spent many evenings around our dinner table discussing treasures from his classroom with me and my siblings. Mr. Heath’s classroom featured an exquisite collection of everyrhing exotic and fascinating for his young science students. He kept an albino skunk, scary tarantulas, and an eight-foot-Iong boa constrictor that had swallowed its five-foot-Iong roommate. He kept turtles and fish and birds and other amazing things that found their way to our house on weekends and summer breaks. Our home’s decor included fossils and petrified wood, pelrs, animal skeletons, and jars of dissecred crearures.

Dad’s curriculum was cleverly all-Alaskan. His spelling rests included words like “ptarmigan” (Alaska’s state bird) and

“akuutaq”
(Eskimo ice cream). We learned the difference between glacial crevices and crevasses, and a cave’s sralagmites and sralactites. His lessons spilled over to rhe dinner rable. We ate together every night, and I just assumed every kid learned clever acronyms for planer alignmenrs and the elements of the periodic table between forkfuls of caribou lasagna. Didn’t every family talk abour what differentiated a grizzly from a brown bear? And the difference berween king salmon fry and red salmon species, and which world-renowned mountain ranges were locared on what continent, and the effecrs of a river’s erosion, and fossil proof of
evolutionary patterns that one could actually view as evidence
of a grand design?

. But in eighteen years of impromptu supper-table lessons and expett-guided field trips to America’s narional parks, never had Dad or anyone else convinced me that the earth had sprung forth conveniently stocked with the ingredients necessary to spontaneously generate life and its beauty and diversity; in fact, I thoughr thar idea flew in the face of the evidence I sawall around. I gor where Schmidt was coming from. I know the word “creationism” evokes images of wild-eyed fundamentalists burying •