BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN BEHIND THE CURTAIN (17 page)

Bush’s internal poll numbers continued to improve after his Leno interview, and by Thursday, November 2, he was ahead by five points according to Joe Allbaugh, a Bush strategist. This was a definitive lead five days before the election. But then a story broke later that day that would change the course of the election.

It seems Bush had been convicted of a DUI infraction in 1976. While the Texas governor had been open about his past drinking problems, he had not publicly acknowledged the DUI because he didn’t want his eighteen-year-old twin daughters to know. As a result, Bush’s lead vanished almost overnight, and the campaign was once again a horse race.

I had witnessed both campaigns fashioning their battle plans based on the anticipated close outcome in Florida, but I was truly shocked, along with everyone else, at just how close the vote would be. When Bush was declared the winner, the Democrats responded with legal challenges until the US Supreme Court stepped in and decided in Bush’s favor.

After the election, a political science professor offered to do a research project with me on the enormous impact Jay had on this historic election. I declined because I was too busy working on other
Tonight Show
projects, but I regret that decision.

In the next presidential election in 2004, President Bush faced off against Senator John Kerry. During the Democratic primary, Kerry reluctantly agreed to do our show after his campaign was in deep trouble. He was running a distant second to Howard Dean and was facing a growing image problem, as both the press and his political opponents were describing him as indecisive and elitist.

During our pre-interview, Senator Kerry
frequently used four-letter words, which seemed odd. I wasn’t aware he swore that much. Inconsistent behavior always raised a red flag for me. I couldn’t help but think:
Was a major presidential candidate actually trying to impress me by being a potty mouth?

Kerry said he wanted his segment to be really different, something that would result in a water-cooler moment for viewers the next morning. When I asked him what he had in mind, he told me he wasn’t sure but welcomed my suggestions. While this may sound good, it was actually a bad sign.

Many guests said they wanted to reinvent Jay’s show, but not one ever suggested how. They all said that was my job. These guests all shared a common trait: instead of looking within, they blamed
The Tonight Show
for being inadequate.

I recommended to Kerry, as I had to the actors, that the best thing he could do during his appearance was to be himself, and I would help him by suggesting topics. That would show people he was a person with three dimensions, not a black-and-white newspaper article or a sound bite on a newscast. But, like some actors, he rejected the idea.

One of our writers—a former Democratic strategist—suggested that Kerry make his entrance onto the stage riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He loved the idea, which he thought addressed his wishy-washy image by showing he was a blue-collar guy. On the day of his appearance Senator Kerry put on a leather jacket, a denim shirt, jeans, and a helmet. Then he climbed aboard the Harley, dramatically rode it through the audience and up a ramp onto the stage, where he was greeted by Jay.

I’ll admit it was a pretty good stunt that required some skill, and it would have been effective as a comedy bit had it ended there. But Kerry still had an interview to do, which included questions about health care, recent campaign staff resignations, and his strategy to beat Governor Dean. These were all serious topics, which he answered—while wearing his motorcycle jacket. For a guy so concerned about his image, he was certainly projecting a confusing one.

To make matters worse, he was preceded at the panel by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a puppet that was voiced and operated by a sarcastic comedian named Robert Smigel, who said, “The poop I made in the dressing room had more heat than John Kerry.”

I believe Kerry’s segment was the worst appearance ever made by a political guest. Jay was also unimpressed. Years after the Kerry guest spot, Jay told David Gregory on
Meet the Press
that Kerry was “pushing a little too hard. . . . He rode up a ramp on a bike, you know, and had the leather jacket—he’s a regular guy, by golly.”

Despite his
Tonight Show
fiasco, Kerry would go on to win the Democratic presidential nomination but would lose the general election to President Bush, largely because of a clever campaign ad inspired by a
Tonight Show
writer, Michael Jann. The ad featured video of Mr. Kerry windsurfing and compared it to his positions on Iraq, education, and health care, which shift “whichever way the wind blows.”

He had come up with the original idea for Jay’s monologue after seeing news footage of Kerry windsurfing, which struck him as the perfect metaphor for Kerry’s tendency to change his positions. So he wrote this joke: “Can you believe John Kerry? Even his hobby depends on which way the wind blows.”

Two days after the joke aired, the Bush campaign released the ad. Jann, a Bush supporter, never objected to his material being lifted. He had already been supplying jokes to the campaign, just as some of our other writers were sending jokes to the Kerry campaign. (I also have provided material to politicos.) This was routinely done in all the presidential campaigns during the Leno years. Jay himself sent jokes to selected candidates from both parties.

Hillary Clinton appeared as a presidential candidate on Leno in April 2008. She was in the middle of a hard-fought race against Barack Obama to be the standard bearer for the Democrats, which Mr. Obama would win a few months later. Unlike Mr. Gore, Mrs. Clinton rarely shied away from discussing touchy subjects during her visits with Jay, including a story that she falsely claimed she had been the target of sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. When she came on the show, she told Jay: “I was so worried I wasn’t going to make it. I was pinned down by sniper fire.”

The only subject she refused to discuss with Jay was baseball. She had always claimed to be a Chicago Cubs fan and even threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field in 1994. But in 1999 she professed her loyalty to the New York Yankees while planning a run for the US Senate in New York. This caused a huge backlash against her in both New York and Illinois.

She made her first on-air visit with Jay in 2000 during her Senate campaign. She brought along her own version of Jaywalking, in which she asked people on the street if she should go on Jay’s show despite his “mean” remarks about her husband, then President Bill Clinton. “Hillary Walking” was a clever way of using humor to get around all those awkward Monica Lewinsky jokes Jay had been telling.

In a 2003 appearance, she dealt with her husband’s dalliances by turning to comedy once again. A tabloid newspaper,
Weekly World News,
published a satirical article purportedly written by an alien named P’Lod that claimed he was having an affair with Mrs. Clinton. She brought the article to my attention, suggesting that Jay might want to bring it up. When he did, she played along, saying the press was blowing the story out of proportion. She insisted that P’Lod, an important official in the Intergalactic Council, had simply accompanied her to an official function at her request. Now he was being held up to undeserved ridicule, and she felt compelled to publicly defend his honor.

In the early years, most of our political guests were presidential candidates, but we made an exception for then GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who had a reputation in the press as a firebrand. I began making him weekly offers in 1995, which he consistently declined. About a year later, I learned he was planning to visit the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. Turns out he had always wanted to be a zoologist. Who would’ve thunk? So I invited him to come on the show with some animals. He quickly accepted.

We planned to have him on for two segments. The first would be a typical guest interview. The second would feature Newt as an animal expert along with a newt (naturally), a Sicilian donkey, and two Yorkshire piglets, one for Jay and one for Newt. Before he arrived, we did a rehearsal with the animals so the director could plan for the best camera angles. I stood in for Newt at the rehearsal, which went fairly smoothly except that Jay’s piglet squealed whenever he picked it up. He told the animal handler to make sure Newt got that piglet. Then he winked, meaning, “Don’t tell Newt about this.”

When we did the show, Newt’s piglet began squealing as if on cue while Jay’s piglet remained calm. “It thinks you’re going to eat him, Newt,” Jay said. Then Jay exchanged piglets with Newt, just to show the audience that the pig was a squealer by nature and that the Speaker wasn’t hurting it. But the little porker calmed down as soon as he got into Jay’s arms. The pig wasn’t coached to do that. It could have just been a coincidence, or maybe Jay just had a way with animals. Whatever it was, the audience loved it, and Newt appeared to take it in good stride. Besides his overall segment was excellent, and Jay invited him back.

About a year later, the Speaker returned to the show. Much news had happened in the interim and Newt was at the center of it, including an unprecedented balanced budget and an attempted Republican overthrow of Newt as the Speaker. Jay had a lot of questions for him and was very excited he was there. When I welcomed the Speaker back to the show, I had forgotten about the piglets. Unfortunately for me, Newt hadn’t. He looked me straight in the eye and bluntly said, “You sabotaged me.” I had no idea what he was talking about until he reminded me: “You deliberately gave me that squealing pig,” he said.

I was stunned that he knew he had been set up—and that he cared. So I came clean and admitted we swapped the pigs but insisted we had done it to protect him. I told him Jay’s pig had relieved itself several times during the rehearsal and I didn’t want Newt’s suit to be soiled, so I made sure Newt didn’t get that pig. I wasn’t worried about Jay’s suit because the wardrobe department had plenty of back-ups. I made up the story on the spot, and Newt called me out on it: “Do you think I don’t have a back-up suit?” he asked, sarcastically.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: never try to beat one of the most politically astute men in the world at his own game. Much to my surprise, I noticed Newt wasn’t really upset. He was just letting me know that no one puts one over on Newt Gingrich. After our exchange, he never brought up the pig incident again during subsequent appearances.

Newt’s brusqueness often resulted in unflattering press, but he wasn’t the most controversial political guest to come on
The Tonight Show
. That honor belongs exclusively to former vice president Dick Cheney, who was often compared to Darth Vader. When he left office, he wrote a major tome about his eight years in the Bush administration, serving as the country’s “most powerful and controversial Vice President.” All the major news shows were clamoring to book him, but he told his publisher his first choice was Jay Leno, who he watched every night.

But the show wasn’t interested in Cheney at first. Some producers were hesitant to book “the most hated man in the world.” But in the end they couldn’t resist an exclusive late-night interview with the contentious former vice president who said he was willing to do or discuss anything with Jay. There were no conditions.

For his appearance, Cheney was in a comedy sketch dressed as Darth Vader. Later in his interview, he talked about his checkerboard background while growing up in Wyoming. He had been kicked out of Yale twice for low grades and bad behavior brought on by excessive drinking. He then went to work as an electrical transmission lineman, which he enjoyed. He also liked drinking with his work buddies every night and was arrested twice for driving while intoxicated. He only stopped drinking after his girlfriend and future wife Lynne threatened to leave him. Not exactly the Dick Cheney most people had come to know and despise.

Jay then moved on to more serious topics, such as waterboarding. But now he was no longer talking to the evil Dick Cheney but rather to a guy who had dealt with hardships in his life just like everyone else.

Sarah Palin is also one of the most embattled political figures in modern times. Unlike Cheney, she was never vice president, although she did seek the office as John McCain’s running mate. I first learned about Palin while cruising the Inside Passage in Alaska in the summer of 2008.

I was watching the local news in Anchorage when I happened to see a story about “Governor Sarah.” I was fascinated that the newscasters didn’t even use the last name of this attractive governor. I did a little research and found that polls showed she was unbelievably popular, with approval ratings in the 90s. Some articles referred to her as “the most popular governor in America.”
Who is this Governor Sarah
, and why haven’t I ever heard of her?
I thought.

I had a good working relationship with people at both presidential campaigns, and I called my contacts at the McCain camp to tell them about her. They had not yet picked a running mate, and I thought they might appreciate a report from the field. I’m sure my call didn’t make any difference, but about a month later the campaign selected Palin.

I made numerous unsuccessful calls to the McCain campaign to secure Palin as a guest. I found out later that the campaign had been restricting press access to their candidate after her disastrous interview with Katie Couric on
CBS Evening News
, which I thought at the time was a foolish idea. Katie had been floundering as the anchor at
CBS Evening News
and needed a big opportunity, like a “gotcha” interview with Palin. This should have been obvious to any political professional. But it seems the McCain aide responsible for the booking, Nicole Wallace, was good friends with Katie. She denied it, but after the campaign Wallace was hired as a political consultant at
CBS News.

Throughout the campaign, I never stopped trying to bring in Palin because I thought she had a magnetic appeal to many people. The Democrats also found her irresistible. They loved going after her verbal mistakes, which every politician makes on the campaign trail; but even they couldn’t deny Palin held her own against her Democratic opponent Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debate. Biden graciously acknowledged that in an appearance on Leno: “You’ve got to admit, she has really captivated a large part of the American public. So, you know, I was just a bit player in that debate.”