Going Rogue: An American Life (93 page)

You could feel it-voters were ‘clamoring for us to take the gloves off, yet the B Team was reprimanded for trying to shed
light on some of these important questions.

I later learned from Randy Scheunemann that complaints were voiced against me, my family, and most of the B Team by a few folks on McCain’s senior staff. They were angry that anyone in my family or group of Alaska friends had tried to set the record straight in rhe media without consulting with the campaign first. And they were still furious with me for speaking candidly on the Michigan withdrawal and the clothes issue.

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SARAH

PALIN

To this day, Randy-evet the gentleman-won’t tell me everything that was said about the B Team. But a couple of examples tell the story. “They’re screwing up,” Schmidt told Randy one day in Schmidt’s office. “And the governor’s not doing serious homework.” Schmidt told Randy he thought I might be suffeting from postpartum depression.

“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Randy told Steve.

“What do you mean?”

“I really don’t understand. I’ve had significant interactions with the governor during the campaign-at the convention, in New York, all rhe days of debate ptep under tough conditions, I’m with her a lot-you are not,” Randy said. “The Sarah Palin I’ve seen is not the one you’re describing, and I don’t understand how you’re claiming that she’s behaving this way
except
when I’m around. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Randy and others told me after the campaign that it appeared a couple of the paid operatives were building up a stock of halftruths and innuendoes concerning not just me, but
each other
to ensute that in the case of defeat, blame could be laid at somebody else’s feet. Randy wasn’t the only one who thought so. At around the same time, the Internet site
Politico
ran a story that claimed that Schmidt and his operatives had already put into motion a
plan to destroy my reputation in order to save their own. He at-
tributed his story to an “unnamed source” inside the McCain campaign. Other media outlets started reporting the same thing. Then, somewhere high inside the campaign, gloves came

off. Randy, I later learned, walked into a communications meeting in the campaign office and found about eight comm people sitting around a V-shaped table, all buzzing over something big. One of the guys pointed to a computer screen and said, “Read this.”

It was a CNN story, byline Dana Bash:

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Going Rogue

PALIN’S OFF-SCRIPT COMMENTS IRK McCAIN AIDES

Several McCain advisers suggested that they have become incteasingly frustrated with what one aide desctibed as Palin

“going rogue.” A Palin

howevet, said the candidate

is simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder wherher the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls-recorded messages often used to attack a candidate’s opponent-“irritating” even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed ro her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign’s decision to pull out of Michigan. Bash went on to note that “tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butring heads with the top of the ticket.”

Randy finished reading the story. “I don’t believe this!” he yelled. “Those guys have gone too far this time!” It may not be unusual for major-ticket advisers to struggle internally over who calls the shots, or to offer only tepid public’

support to

half of the ticket or the other, Randy later

told me. But it is unheard of for campaign staffers to brazenly rhrow a candidate under the media bus with sleazy anonymous
comments.

Randy stormed toward Schmidt’s office and confronted his secretary. “Where is he? I want his cell number
right now.”
The door to Schmidt’s office opened, and suddenly he was standing there.

Randy glared at him. “We’ve got to talk.”

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SARAH

PALIN

They stepped inside. Randy slammed the doot and cold Schmidt what he teally thought. “It is unbelievable that
advisers-senior advisers-are
calling the press and telling them the vice presidential candidate is a diva! This is unprecedented!

Ie’s unacceptable!”

Schmidt looked at Randy, poker-faced. “Who do you think it is? The leak?”

“Is it Mark or Nicolle?”

“No,

not,” Schmidt said.

“Who the hell else is it? You guys have all been criticizing the governor like crazy!”

“Well, what about the
Politico
scory?” Schmidt was referring CO

the piece in which an anonymous staffer had warned that McCain insiders were going CO stan taking me apan.

“You rhink I was the source for that?”

“No;’ Schmidt said.

“Well, I wasn’t. But that’s minor. Now you’ve got these lies all overCNN.”

“It wasn’t Nicolle,” Schmidt said.

Randy laid out a very simple case: “Picking a running mate was John’s most important decision, and being loyal CO John means being loyal CO his pick. That makes what’s going on abso
lutelyatrocious!”
Schmidt started in again, telling Randy what an awful pick I was-the “postpartum” problems, the wardrobe “scandal,” “legal exposure” for Todd on Troopergate, whatever he meant by that. Somehow the Palins were responsible for all of the campaign’s problems.

“This is absolutely outrageous!” Randy said. He started to walk out of the office but Schmidt scopped him.

Then, Randy says, Schmidt issued a threat that was veiled enough for deniability but as clear as day if you were on the re
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