Going Rogue: An American Life (92 page)

SARAH

PALIN

“Hey, Lome. Hey, Tina,” Alec says. “Lome, I need to talk to you. You can’t let Tina go out there with rhat woman. She goes against everything we stand for. I mean, good Lord, Lome, they call her … what’s that name they call her? Cari … Cari … What do they call her again, Tina?”

“That’d be Caribou Barbie,” I said.

“Caribou Barbie. Thank you, Tina. I mean, this is the most important election in our nation’s history. And you want her-our Tina-to go out there and stand there with that horrible woman?

What do you have to say for yourself?”

Lome rurned from Alec to me and back again. ”Alec, this is Governor Palin.”

“Hi there…” I said. “I must say thar your brother Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother.”

Then I stepped onto the famous set and got to say the words that have become a permanent part of Americah culrure:
“Live
Irom New York, it’s Saturday Night!”

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The first wardrobe story hit on October 22: “RNC Shells Out

$150K for Palin Fashion.” The headline was highly misleading,
as was the article

which said that according to campaign

financial disclosures, the McCain campaign had spent $150,000

“to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family.”

I never asked the New York srylists to purchase clothes, many of the irems were never worn, many others were intended for the use of other people, and in the end the wardtobe items were returned. It certainly wasn’t true that I or my family had been on any kind of “big-time shopping trips.” A
Los Angeles Times
fashion critic referred to me as a “pampered princess” and suggested
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Going Rogue

that I had personally spent the money in a “onewoman economic stimulus plan.” Katie Couric even weighed in on the trumpedup “controversy,” writing: “There aren’t a lot ofJoe Six-packs out there who can drop six figures on a new wardrobe, so Gov. Sarah Palin’s $150,000 shopping spree seems excessive to some people.” This was especially ironic coming ftom Katie, whose own stylist, the B Team was told, was part of the team the campaign hited to do the convention shopping before I even arrived. I didn’t care so much about the petty potshots because I knew they weten’t true, and people who knew me laughed out loud when they read the “diva” accusations. But my family was made to look like a herd of hillbillies who had come to the big city and started living high on the hog, and that hurt me for them. My family is frugal. We clip coupons We shop at Costco. We buy diapets in bulk and generic peanut butter. We don’t have fulltime nannies or housekeepers Ot drivers. So the portrayal of my family as wasting orher people’s money on clorhes was a false one. And many wondered at the same time why no other candidates or their spouses being asked a thing about their hair, makeup,

or clothes.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck had a theory. In late Octoher, the bold and talented
View
cohost joined us for a bus tour, in Florida. I had met her at the GOP convention and found out we had a mutual friend from Wasilla. Elisabeth joined us at a huge rally in Tampa that took place right after the ridiculous wardrobe story hit the
news.

“Now, with everything going on in the world, this seems a bit odd,” Hasselbeck said from the podium before a crowd of thousands. “But let me tell you, this is deliberately sexist:’

The crowd went crazy. Then she joked that the thing, that impressed her most about my wardrobe were my accessories-my American flag pin and the blue star military pin I wore in honor

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SARAH

PALIN

of Track. The pundits peddling the stoty that I was this bigspending clotheshotse “didn’t list that accessoty,” Elisabeth said,

“because they know it’s priceless!”

I was thinking,
Amen, sister!

It was also ironic that at the Tampa rally that day, I was wearing a Dolce & Gabbana jacket that I had personally purchased-used-at an Anchorage consignment store months before the campaign. And earlier that day I was wearing a pair of my own Paige jeans, designed by the talented Paige Adams Geller, a Wasilla native who has’ made it big as fashion

designer in L.A.

The fact was, I would have been happy to wear my own clothes for the whole campaign. But I had a humbling experience while we were back in Wasilla for the Charlie Gibson interview in September. While the crews turned my kitchen into a relevision srudio, I took Nicolle into my bedroom and showed her what I thought I should pack for the trail. She flipped through my robe with raised eyebrows.

“No … no … no;’ she said as she slid each garment on

its, hanger. But I did manage to sneak that pink Dolce & jacket plus other pieces onto the trail with me.

After Elisabeth introduced me in Tampa, I decided to take the wardrobe story by the horns. But it would just be a quick rion, a candid quote to set the record straight.

“I’m glad now that Elisabeth brought it up because it gives me an opportunity without the filter of the media to tell you the whole clothes thing;’ I told the cheering crowd. “Those clothes, they are not my property. Just like the lighting and staging and like everything else the RNC purchases. I’m not taking them with me. I’m wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska.” There, simple, it was over, and it was truthful.

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Going Rogue

Word quickly came back from headquarters that I’d done it again-I’d gone rogue. What I had actually done was speak up to defend my ethics and my family, but still, the hammer came down.

Now, my friends and family sure knew the truth about the clothes. And the campaign folks, especially those who had vetted and chosen me, also knew the truth. But as the story grew legs, they didn’t lift a finger to correct the record. I couldn’t understand why until I realized that by the end of the campaign, the wardrobe fairy tale had become convenient. By then, with Obama soaring and our own ticket in free fall, one or two of the campaign’s big dogs were already packing their parachutes. By late October, with our numbers bad and some gears inside the campaign definitely out of whack, Nicolle sent around an e-mail suggesting that staffers all get on a conference call to discuss how to improve things. One thing we B Teamers thought was really off kilter was that the campaign wasn’t telling voters everything they needed to know about the other ticket’s records, past associations, and furure plans. Nor was it holding the press accountable for biased reporting.