Going Rogue: An American Life (89 page)

I read those notes and kept them with me. They inspired me, helping ro strip away all the sound bites and the slick, orchestrated political theater, and reminded me whom we were fighting for. Sometimes, supporters would jot their e-mail address, and I could stop right then and tap them a note. There are some families that Todd and I still keep in rouch with-like Charlie Walling, a very confident and handsome young man who had scored an extra chromosome too. We met him in Florida, and he asked me not ro call him”darling” because that wasn’t “rough.” And Joshua Wold, another precious child we met in Minnesota. Todd has his picture on his cell phone-Josh snowmachines with his dad!

.

3 02

•

Going Rogue

The Providential appointments we experienced on the trail were many, and they kept us going wirh good attitudes and the righr perspective.

In late September, Todd and Cindy traveled ro Los Angeles for a campaign event, Todd enjoyed meeting comedian and radio host Dennis Miller there, along with actors Gary Sinise, Kelsey

·Grammer, and John Ratzenberger. Another special guy Todd met was a young war veteran who was wearing his buddy’s memorial bracelet. “My friend was killed in action four years ago and I haven’t taken off this bracelet since,” the combat veteran said. He slipped. the

metal band off his wrist and handed it to

Todd. “But now I want you to give it to your wife.” When Todd returned to Arizona and handed me the bracelet, it was an overwhelming moment. I put this precious memento on and wore it for the rest of the campaign. Not long after that, we hit Orange County, California, for another rally, and I heard a voice behind me in the crowd calling out, “That’s my btacelet!

That’s my bracelet!”

I turned around to see a fit, dark-haired young man waving furiously a few rows up in the bleachers. After the rally, I hustled over to meet him-and thank him. We still have his buddy’s memorial bracelet, a cherished reminder of things that really
matter.

All of those elements-.-the stickers and signs, the proud parents, the enthused, curious, attentive folks showing up at events by the thousands-suggested an idea: in addition to meeting with movers and shakers in towns on the trail, and doing obligatory face time with big-money donors who were going to vote for John anyway, why couldn’t we focus more attention on the everyday folks who attended our rallies?

.

•

SARAH

PALIN

This occurred to us after the umpteenth time we rolled into a town on the campaign bus to pick up a group of supporters who were already solidly in John’s camp. We’d spend hours chatting with them and posing for pictures. (“Okay, now, 1 want one with you, Sarah-pretend like we’re talking. Now 1 want one with Trig. Okay, now, you and Trig. Now, Todd, you get out of this one. Okay, Piper, you next. Here’s my cell phone, could you call my mother? “) 1 enjoyed these friends of the campaign immensely, and 1 know how important donors are. 1 sincerely appreciated everyone of them. But with such a short timeline and as we were trailing in the polls, 1 thought, instead of putting me on a bus with ten

“friends ofJohn” for hours, put me with ten friends of nobody in particular and I’ll sit with them and convince them to vote for John.

Three days before the final presidential debate, a man named Joe Wurzelbacher was out in his front yard playing football with his son when Barack Obama walked past his driveway. The Democrat candidate for president had made a campaign stop in Holland, Ohio, to visit with residents and take questions. Joe had a question about his plan to buy a company that makes $250,000

to $280,000 a year.

He said to Obama, “Your new tax plan’s going to tax me more,
isn’t it?”

The Illinois senator’s short answer was yes, and he finished with this revealing comment: “I think when you spread the around, it’s good for everybody.”

An ABC cameraman recorded the exchange, and on October 12, 2008, “Joe the Plumber” was born. Our campaign quickly realized that Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber by trade, typified the

. ,3°4

•

Going Rogue

everyday American laborer who had worked hard to make his own way, was trying to improve his economic lor, and oughr nor to be punished by oppressive tax policies. Joe the Plumber reminded me personally of those Country Kitchen guys I’d sat with on Friday mornings in Wasilla when I was mayor. I liked him. In the presidential debate three days later, both candidates made references to Joe the Plumber as a symbol of the American worker. Immediately, at all our rallies, we began seeing a whole new crop of signs: I’M RAY THE PRINCIPAL; JOSE THE HAIRDRESSER; PEGGY THE NURSE; and BOB THE COP. Then
National Review
ran an article about the Joe the Plumber phenomenon in which writer Byron York noted that regular workaday Americans were disgusted at how quickly the media tore Joe apart when he told a reporter that Obama’s idea of “spreading the wealth around” sounded a lot like socialism to him.

One workaday American who was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore was Tito Munoz, a Colombian-born U.S. citizen. Dressed in a yellow hard hat and orange reflective vest and carrying a sign that said CONSTRUCTION WORKER, Munoz-the owner of a small construction company-pulled no punches when he told reporters why he’d come to an event. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said about the press, speaking English with a thick Hispanic accent. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me … I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.” A leftwing reporter from the magazine
Mother Jones
told Tito he didn’t see anything wrong with the press coverage. But Tito and a feisty African American woman in the crowd hit back.

“Tell me,” the woman said to the reporter, “why is it you can

•

•

SARAH

PALIN

go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayets? Why? Why could you not tell uS’that? Joe the Plumbet is me!”

“[ am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”

“Wait a second,” the teporter said. “Do you pay your

“Yes, I pay my taxes,” the woman said.

“Then you’re bettet than Joe the Plumber.” That set off a general free-for-all. ‘Tm going to tell you something,” Munoz yelled at the reporter. ‘Tm better than Obama!

Why? Because I’m not associated with terrorists!” Tito the Builder sounded like the kind ofguy who wasn’t going to be told to sit down and shut up, something I’d basically been told to do when I spoke on the trail about Obama’s associarions wirh quesrionable characters, including Obama’s long association wirh Bill Ayers.

A srudent radical and member of the Weather Underground, Ayers had helped bomb New York Ciry police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. When Ayers’s memoir,
Fugitive Days,
was published in 2001, he told the
New York Times,
“I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’r do enough.”

In a horrible irony, rhar
Times
interview with Ayers hit newsstands on rhe morning ofSeprember 11, 2001. Disgustingly, Ayers posed in the arricle stomping on our American flag. In relation to the breaking news about the friendship between the unrepentant domestic terrorist and the Democrat candidate for ptesident of the United States, headquarters issued an approved sound bite about Obama “palling around with terrotists,” and I was happy to be the one to deliver it. As more information was made public concerning Obama’s associations and the fact that he had kicked off his political career in Ayers’s living room, the • 3 06