Going Rogue: An American Life (79 page)

SARAH

PALIN

spiring, raucous rally and working a packed rope line. We were over-rhe-top energized! We were pumped! I was also sweating like crazy and ready for a minute to breathe’ and drink an icy Diet Dr Pepper. But when I finished with the rope line and Bexie opened the curtain to let me backstage, there was Katie. Again. With microphone in hand.

I tried really hard to smile, but wondered again about a media strategy rhat involved ignoring objective journalists and continuing with a reporrer who clearly had a parrisan agenda. In a siruation like this, I’d have thought expert political strategists would realize that you don’t drown by falling in rhe water; you drown by staying there. But that’s what we did.

Katie began her

“When it comes to establishing your worldview,” she asked with a cock of her head, “I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to sray informed and to understand rhe world?” Trying to ignore the heavy dose of condescension, I replied marter-of-factly, “I’ve read most of rhem, again with a great appreciation for the press.”

“Whar ones specifically, I’m curious …” of rhem, Any of them that have been in fronr of me all
these years.”

Ir wasn’r that I didn’t wanr to-or as some have ludicrously suggested,
couldn’t-answer
her question; ir was that her condescension irritated me. It was as though she had suddenly srumbled on a primirive newcomer from an undiscovered rribe. But I should not have let my irritation show. Doing so was disrespectful to viewers who had tuned in to the inretview to decide how to
cast their votes.

She asked me a third rime, and I raid her rhar I gor my news from a variery of sources.

.

Going Rogue

Over rhe past several months, especially as AGIA news broke, I had been interviewed on energy and security issues by numerous national media outlets, including her hometown newspaper, the
New York Times,
for whom I had also penned an op-ed earlier in the year on another Had she
read
those, I wondered?

This interview ended only to immediately give way to another segment, this time on the campaign bus. Nicolle had said we wouldn’t spend more time with this crew if things weren’t going well, and I knew that moment had long passed. How was this moving our campaign forward?

On the bus, the topic turned to social issues. Katie asked me if I thought it was

to “pray away gay”-to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality through prayer.
Hmmm,
I thought.
Odd
question.
I don’t think she really wanted to hear my answer because she intertupted me five times as I tried to give it.
The badgering
begun. This is really annoying me,
I thought. Then she asked me about abortion and the morning-after pill twelve times.
Twelve
different times.

I answered as graciously and as patiently as I could. Each time, I reiterated my pro-life, pro-woman, pro-adoption position. But no matter how many ways I tried to say it, Katie responded by asking her question again in a slightly different way. I began
tb
feel like I was in the movie
Groundhog Day.

The line of questioning began, of course, with an extreme, horrific example: “If a fifteen-year-old is raped by her father, you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion. Why?” I answered there were good people on both sides of the abortion debate, but that I was unapologetically pto-life, and that I would counsel someone to choose life. I also said that we should build a culture of life in which we help women in difficult situations, encourage adoption, and support foster and adoptivefumilies. Katie jumped in, “But, ideally, you think it should be illegal…”

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SARAH

PALIN

“If you …”

“… for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an
abortion?”

I answered again: I would personally counsel such a girl to choose life, despire rhese horrific circumstances, but I absolurely didn’t rhink anyone should end up in jail for having an aborrion. Katie included that but didn’t include anorher important part of my answer: that we should supporr women in these difficult circumstances and give them the resources necessary to give their children life. And thar rhe real exrremism came from those who supported partial-birth abortion, those who didn’t believe parents should have a say in whether their minor daughters underwent abortions, and those, like Barack Obama, who opposed laws that would prorect babies born alive after botched abortions. But that wasn’t enough. Katie asked ir again. And again. And again. I had been our of journalism for a long rime, and ir was prerty obvious the rules had changed. I felr sick about the deprhs to which some in the press had apparently sunk, nor because ir was to me and John, bur because ir was unfair to rhe

American electorate.

Afterward, a sraffer nored rhat Katie had been much more forgiving during an interview with Joe Biden around rhe same
time, not even asking a follow-up question when Biden let loose
wirh a real clunker: “When rhe srock marker crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelr gor on rhe relevision and didn’r jusr ralk abour, you know, rhe princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”