Going Rogue: An American Life (70 page)

Going Rogue

nomination on

29, calling me a book bannet in a
Time

magazine accicle:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books;’ he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriare language in them.

“The librarian was aghast.”

That set off a firestorm. Suddenly I was the book-burning evangelical extremist sweeping down from

Notth on her

broomstick. Reporters didn’t bother to find out the facts and print the truth.

The book-banning stoty Bared quickly and didn’t completely fizzle out even aftet lists of books 1’d supposedly wanted to ban circulated on the Internet. The list included books that hadn’t even been published at the time. It was one lie after anotherfrom tape kits to Btidges Nowhere. All easy enough to disptove if the press had done its job. The campaign was immediately overwhelmed, though, and the Alaska GOP (still run by Randy Ruedtich) had apparently decided to sit this one out. The Bristol story was a different mattet. After news broke of her pregnancy, the media train jumped the truth track in record time. The tone some reporters (and many bloggers) seemed to want to set was one of “hypocrisy.” I was amazed at how many liberal pundits seemed Boored by a pregnant teenager, as if overnight they’d all snuck out and had traditional-values transplants. The calking heads began to patrot one line: “If Sarah Palin can’t control her own daughter, how can she serve as vice president?”

Some reporters insisted I favored abstinence-only sex education in public schools.

see?” they said. “It didn’t even work for her own daughter.”

•

SARAH

PALIN

The media got that wrong too. The only time I had commented on sex education was in an answer to a gubernatorial candidate question asking whethet I supported abstinence education versus “explicit” sex education in public schools-what some call the “slip a condom on a banana” show-and-tell curticulum. Given the choice, I answered that I would suPPOtt abstinence education over “explicit” sex ed. I never said I didn’t support contraception; I did. I also explained about being a longtime subscriber to the philosophy of Feminists for Life, a group of pro-life feminists who do not oppose contraception.

At about the same time as the pregnancy story broke, another bullcrap story entered the wider media bloodstream: “Who Is Trig’s Real Mom?” Formerly reputable outlets like the
Atlantic
ran with the loony conspiracy theory that I was not Trig’s motherperhaps it was Bristol or Willow, they suggested. Even
Anchorage Daily News
reporters, who knew better, couldn’t get enough of the story. That, too, would have been almost funny had it not been damaging to McCain and a hassle for my doctot, who was continually harassed by reporters to repeat her response that, yes, indeed, I had given birth to Ttig. Even to this day, the “Trig-truthets” won’t let go of their bizarre, through-the-looking-glass fantasy. Another one of these stories that surfaced early on was that I had been invited to visit Wasilla Assembly of God church to speak to graduates of a missionary program. I asked the congregation to “pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, fot this country, that our national leaders are sending [U.S. soldiers} out on a task thar is from God.” The
Huffington Post
ludicrously described this as: “Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.” In realiry, I was invoking Abraham Lincoln’s admonition that we should pray rhar we are on God’s side-not rhat He is on ours.

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Going Rogue

These baseless and frankly insulting stories dominated the news. for cycle after cycle after cycle. Tabloids and mainstream publications ran their ugly headlines until people couldn’t tell truth from fiction. Back home in Wasilla, Bristol could barely stand to look at the television as, commentators statted suggesting that her pregnancy might change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. My sister Molly was furious. “It’s outrageous!” she rold me.

“It’s so unfair to put that on a seventeen-year-old girl. Why aren’t they talking about presidential issues? What’s going on in our country?”

I told Molly

for the next couple of months, maybe our

family would do well to rerurn to the Chuck Heath strategy of our childhood: keep the boob rube off

6

Writing my convention speech was really a team effort, and the caprain of the team was an ace speechwriter named Matthew Scully. Scully had worked for Bush 43, Dick Cheney, and John McCain. He is, to use author Rod Dreher’s term, a “crunchy con:’

A political conservative, he is a bunny-hugging vegan and gentle, green soul who I think would throw himself in the path of a semitruck to save a squirrel.

He reminded me of the classic absentminded professor. Intellectually brilliant, he walked around looking up at the sky a lot, as if there were ideas up there he was pulling down, jotting them on the loose slips of paper that always peeked out of his pockets. Somehow all this blends into Scully’s special gift for writing. Throughout the campaign, the speeches he handed me were like poetry, so smooth, such amazing flow. But the convention speech he wrote was in a league of its own. We worked on it .

•

SARAH

PALIN

togethet, and he was vety generous about letting me add my own wotds,

I ptacticed the speech with a telepromptet in a downstaits room at the hotel, which I found kind of peculiat because I didn’t think anyone would ptactice fot hours with a teleptomptet, My expetience was that eithet you knew yout speech and deliveted it with notes, ot you used a telepromptet because you didn’t know YOUt When I was governot, we used a teleprompter only a handful of times in from of a crowd. At the convention, my experience giving a speech the old-fashioned way, speaking from the heatt, turned out to be a good thing,

During rehearsals, thete was one part of the speech I thought I might not make it through gracefully. Evety time I got to the section about one of McCain’s fellow paws, a man named Tom Moe, I’d choke up, I just couldn’t get thtough the mental imagety of a broken John McCain encouraging his fellow soldiers in a torturous POW camp. So, during the live speech, I planned to just pinch myself and grit my teeth when I came to that part, Just befote I left the hotel room to hit the convention stage, on the evening of September 3, I noticed that Ttig needed changing. I also noticed that we had run out of diapers, Aftet a frantic, hotel-wide search, someone found a stack, and the last thing I did before heading down to give the biggest speech of my life was to change the baby.

It’s the kind of thing that keeps you grounded,

The excitement at the convention centet was ovetwhelming. The noise was deafening-ten times what it had been in Ohio, I knew we’d have a great time that night,

When it quieted enough so that I could speak, I began.

Going Rogue

“I am honored ro be considered for the nomination for vice president of the United States. 1 accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America. 1 accept the challenge of a tough fight in rhis election against confident opponents at a crucial hour for our country. And 1 accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions … and met far graver challenges and knows how tough fights are won-the next president of the United States, John S. McCain!”

1 reminded Americans that it hadn’t been so long ago that the polls and pundits had written John off. He had been all but out of the primary race. But, 1 said, “They overlooked the caliber of the man himself-the determination, resolve, and sheer guts of Senator John McCain … Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by.” I reminded America of John’s military heroism, something he’d been reticent to talk about. Then I mentioned how proud I was of
all
our military men and women-the Armed Forces were a and equalizing entity in America, and we had a son and a nephew following in the tradition of millions of military families,