Going Rogue: An American Life (77 page)

Going Rogue

Virginia! We on the B Team just looked at each other, humbled and astonished and ready fot more!

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In selecting the slogan “Country First,” the McCain team had hoped to make national security the central theme of the campaign and differentiate itself

whar always sounded like

the other side’s “Blame America First” impulse. This seemed especially important after Michelle Obama’s statement during the Democrat primary in February 2008 that she felt proud of her country “for the first time in her adult lifetime.” To me that was an incomprehensible statement.

campaign also hoped to

position John, a legitimate war hero, as the best candidate to lead a nation currently fighting two wars.

But even with our American troops still dying abroad, by eatly September the nation’s financial meltdown had pushed Iraq and Afghanistan below the fold. The housing market was already in the tank, with the number of foreclosures hitting record highs. Major financial giants had declared bankruptcy eatlier in the year, sending shock waves through the markets. Then, on September 7, the feds seized control of the mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A week later, the Wall Street heavyweight Lehman Brothers collapsed. In the same week, news broke that the insurance giant AIG was on the verge of bankruptcy.

John briefly suspended his campaign in order to attend an emergency economic summit in Washington. The VP half of the ticket didn’t know the strategy on that one; most of us the announcement in the news. There was initially some doubt as to whether the first presidential debate would even go on as scheduled. So we scrambled to make plans either to take John’s
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place at his scheduled events or to travel back to Alaska to catch up on my gubernatorial duties. But it soon became obvious that there were no quick fixes to the economic crash, and the campaign resumed the next day. It was an odd strategic call on someone’s part, but we all learned lessons along the trail. The debate went on as planned, and John did great. The postgame analysis in the media, though, was that the coolheaded Obama had won the night, displaying a firm grasp of the facts, while John, they tried to convince voters, had seemed irritable and condescending. Granted, 90 percent of the newspeople covering the debate were liberal.

Three days later, the House of Representatives rejected a Bushbacked economic bailout plan in a vote in which two-thirds of Republicans voted no. The impression this made on the electorate was not helpful to our cause. Millions of Americans were poised to go bankrupt or lose their savings, and the perception was that Republicans had failed to respond.

On September 24, rhe day John announced he was setting politics aside to deal with the financial crisis, we were four points ahead in the polls. By September 29, the day of the bailout vote, we had fallen behind. That bracket of time also included my seemingly endless serial chat with the lowest-rated news anchor
in network television, CBS’s Katie Couric.

As it turned our, ABC’s Charles Gibson did the first major interview, connecting with us up North while I was back in Alaska to speak at the Army troop deployment cetemony. There we stopped along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to discuss substantive issues that I dealt with as governor. He didn’t seem as interested as I thought he would be.

At one point we jumped out of the van to film in front of the pipeline when a ttuck full of hunters swung in on their way to a tnoose camp up the highway. They asked for a picture, and I was

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Going Rogue

delighted. Charlie straightened his collar, bur the guys in their hunting gear and camo vests jusr handed their camera to Charlie and asked him ro take snapshots of me sranding with them by their truck.

Then we headed to Wasilla, where Charlie wanted to interview me inside myoid high school gym. Same thing happened. Some reachers and students stopped us, handed Charlie the camera, and he patiently snapped the picrures of me in Warrior rerritory. They seemed nor to recognize him-or maybe rhey jusr figured, hey, he’s rhe media guy, ler
him
take the picture. Charlie was a great sport and appeared to take it in stride, but he did seem a grumpy during the later segment filmed at my home in Wasilla, where he peered skeptically at me over his bifocals like a high school principal.

As for Katie Couric-where do I begin? If all you know of me comes from that interview, then you don’t know me. Needless ro say, I have had better interviews. Out of the many, many hours of tape, I had bad moments just like everyone else. I choked on a couple of responses, and in the harried pace of the campaign, I mistakenly let myself become annoyed and frustrated with many of her repetitive, biased questions. What I didn’t know was that those few moments would come ro define the interviews; they were repeated and mocked so often that everything else has seemingly-been forgotten. And that is unfortunate. The campaign scheduled Katie during that last week in September. The prep was minimal. The team of people who usually husrled information before these types of things wasn’t very involved in this one. But I was told this was to be a pretty mellow interview, short and sweet, about balancing motherhood and my life as governor. I waS also led to believe this interview would be the only one, but if things went well, we could consider adding
more.

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The first stop was a segment at a hotel near the United Nations, which then turned into a walk-and-talk in front of the UN

itself It didn’t go well. I readily admit I did what no politician should ever do-let her annoyance show. I was anxious to get this interview over with and you could tell, which was my mistake. Ironically, as all this was going through my head, when the walk-and-talk ended and the cameras clicked off, one of the CBS

producers, a nice New Yorker with a big presence and a loud voice, walked up to me and started singing my praises. “You did
great,
Governor, just great! I mean, you just got better and better as you
went!”

Then Nicolle walked ovet. “That was great! Now, for tomorrow what we’re going to-“

“There’s going to be a ‘tomorrow’?” I asked.

“Yeah, there’s another segment-you were really good’today.” I thought,
Dear Lord, if

what you call a good interview, then

I don’t know what a bad one is.

As I

away, I glanced back and saw Nicolle and Katie

share a friendly hug. Then they posed for pictures. I couldn’t have known it then, bur what transpired during the series of interviews and what CBS actually aired were two different breeds of cat. Camera crews shot hours of footage acroSS

the U.S.; Katie and her producers decided on which fraction America would see-and let’s just say the emphasis was on my worst moments. Editing footage is nothing new, of course; I created video packages when I worked as a sports reporter. But responsible editing means you keep

and context, and

trim out fat. When I saw the final cut, it was clear that CBS

had sought out the bad moments, and systematically sliced out material that would accurately convey my message. The sin of omission was glaring.

For example, when John and I sat down with Katie for a segment

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