Going Rogue: An American Life (65 page)

Going Rogue

like to have to make payroll and take care of employees. We know what

like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition. We know what

like to work union jobs, to be blue-collar, white-collar, to have our kids in public schools. We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into -Washington, D.C.

As the sun crept higher, I became increasingly aware that I was dressed for the North, wearing one of the, three practical black Ann Taylor suirs I always use to travel. Still, the desert air felt good as John began discussing his independence and how much he, too, was irritated with time wasted on games within the political world. We had that in common, and agreed that not being beholden to anyone gave us strength and the freedom to do what was right. No political establishment had propelled me to where I was-in fact, I had reached the governor’s office in
direct oppOJition
to rhe political establishment.

I looked up to see Cindy walking down from the house to join us. She is one of the most striking women I’ve ever seen, and that day she reminded me of one of those perfect, elegant moms on a 1950s TV show: a sleeveless dress, a litrle sweater, not a hair out of place. So petite and pretty, with those intense blue eyes. I remember her clothes because I was rhere in my ler”s-discussthe-issues suit while she breezed across the lawn like a walking summer day.

Cindy is sometimes painted as an ice queen, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, she can be guarded. But who can blame her?

no wonder that people like Cindy, who are

unfairly clobbered in the press with lies about them and their family, appear to say, “Forget it, I’m here to help, but I’m not

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SARAH

PALIN

going to offer myself up anymore.” I’ve been there. After a while, some of the giddy gets knocked right out of you.

In
Cindy’s case, the press had been pretty merciless over the years. Because of her upmarket elegance, she’d almost been ostracized from working-class people, but I loved her life story, which began with her dad starting out poor. He’d pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and made a great life for his family. Cindy grew up wealthy but with a heart for those in need.
In
the 1980s she founded the American Voluntary Medical Team and has since led dozens of medical missions providing emergency surgery and supplies ro impoverished children in third-world and war-rom countries. She even brought one of those children home to become part of her family.

More power to her!
I thought.

When Cindy met us on the lawn at the ranch, she had just returned from the country of Georgia, which had been under military siege by the Russian army. She gave us an update on what she’d seen there, then she and John went for a quick stroll while I walked up ro the deck of the main cabin ro speak with Looking out across the lawn a few minutes later, I saw that Schmidt and Salter had joined John by the creek. The three men had their heads together and were deep in conversation. A few minutes after rhat, John walked up the lawn, climbed the steps, and offered me the job.

3

The tunnel thundered with’ ten thousand voices, and the air inside felt electric. I stood behind John and Cindy as he waited for the cue ro srep onstage at the Ervin J. Nutter Center in Dayron, Ohio. It was August 29, John’s birthday, and we were pretty sure we’d pulled ir off, managing, under the unblinking eyes of thousands •

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Going Rogue

of news cameras, to whisk me and then my family secretly from Wasilla, Alaska, to this moment.

I was so humbled and honored, so thankful, and so ready to get on the trail with the campaign. Now the crowd’s roar poured backstage like a powerful locomotive. An electric guitar whined under the steady drum of thousands of stomping feet. I glanced at Todd, beside me, in a handsome blue suit, his ice blue eyes twinkling in the I whispered to him, “You look

sharp! Ate you ready fat this?” Four of our five kids crowded in just behind us; Bristol, seventeen; Willow, fourteen; Piper, seven; and four-month-old Trig, who cuddled sleepily as he was passed gently from sister to sister. I glanced down at Piper, who’d grown up with small crowds and campaign glitz, but in the grassroots fashion of Alaskan politics-nothing like this. She grinned up at me. There’s always something in her eyes that says she’s ready to get it done, but she’s determined to have fun doing it. My big girls took deep breaths, smiled, and felt the energy of an anxious country waiting to see what was next for John McCain.

We passed a whisper between us; “Say a prayer!” Glancing out through the end of the tunnel, I could see the crowd, and flashes of red, white, and blue. John’s blue-and-gold posters, emblazoned with his campaign message, “Country First,” rippled in the stands.

I was proud of the senator.
He is so bold, so out of the box,
I thought.

He didn’t go with a conventional, safer pick. John believed in change, the power of independent and committed individuals, the power of women. He thought it was time to shake things up. Cheers, whisrles, foot stomping punched through the music echoing through the hall as the crowd waited to see John. I thought back to the greenroom, whete, only a few minutes before, •

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SARAH

PALIN

we’d greered rhe McCains. He’d clapped his hands and rubbed rhem rogerher. “This is gonna be fun!” he said, eyes sparkling.

“Ler’s have fun! You’re gonna do great.” The kids were awestruck. They’d seen John on television before and knew a bit about his heroic srory.

”Are you excired?” John asked Willow.

“Yeah, sroked!” Willow said.

John was sroked too, and as he bounded up onto the stage, the noise in the tunnel became a deafening roar.

‘Tm very happy, very happy roday ro spend my birthday with you and to make an hisroric announcement in Dayton, a city built on hard, honest work of good people.”

Cheers and applause rolled through the arena in giant waves.

“Like the entire industrial Midwest, Dayton has contributed much to the prosperity and progress of America,” John continued.

”And now in these tough, changing times, after all you’ve done for our country, you want your government ro understand what you’re going through, ro stand on your side and fight for you. And that’s what I intend ro do. That’s why I’m running for president, ro fight for you, ro make government stand on your side, not in your way!” It was moving to hear this man who had given so much for his country offer himself up ro serve it again. As the crowd quieted, John explained his search for a vice presidential candidate.

“I found someone with an outsranding reputation for standing up ro special interests and entrenched bureaucracies. Someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past. Someone who sropped government fcom wasting taxpayers’

money on things they don’t want or need, and put it back to work for the people … someone who grew up in a decent, hardworking middle-class family, whose father was an elementary school teacher and mother worked first as a lunch lady, and later as a school secretary.”

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