Game Change (41 page)

“Hey, you gotta do me one favor,” Grisolano said.

“What’s that?”

“Tell him not to change a thing.”

OBAMA SHARED THAT ASSESSMENT as he watched Bill Clinton up on stage. Clinton did more than a dazzling job with his oratory. He did more than blow the room away with his charm. He said, with clear premeditation, precisely the words that Democrats in the hall and around the country wanted, needed, to hear from him: “Everything I learned in my eight years as president, and in the work I have done since in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job . . . Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States.” Whether or not Clinton believed those words was, in a way, immaterial—as Obama understood. When it was over, Obama remarked to one of his aides, He went out there and did something that was really hard for him.

With all the Clinton-related commotion in the first three days of the convention, there were few other moments that broke through. Ted Kennedy’s speech on Monday night was an exception. The senator, who had been diagnosed with a lethal brain tumor three months before, hauled himself to Denver and delivered what would be (and what everyone in the hall knew would be) his last convention speech—on behalf of the young senator to whom his endorsement had meant so much.

The other exception, on the same night, was Michelle Obama’s speech. Ever since “proud of my country,” Michelle’s public image had been in a bad way. In the campaign’s focus groups, voters volunteered their misgivings: that she was unpatriotic, seemed entitled or angry. (The
New Yorker
had captured the caricature on its cover that summer with a sketch portraying her as a gun-toting radical with an Angela Davis afro.) The Obamans knew this was their last best chance to rescue her from becoming a toxic spouse in the vein of Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Stealing a page from the Clinton playbook of 1992, they set out to use the convention stage to humanize her; to portray Michelle as the loving mother, sister, and daughter that she was, and one reared not in privilege but in a blue-collar home. Working with Hillary’s former speechwriter, Sarah Hurwitz, and the speech coach, Sheehan, Michelle revised and rehearsed for more than a month. The payoff was worth it. Her performance, slightly nervous but winningly sincere and at times bracingly direct (“I love this country”), wowed the crowd and sent her approval ratings soaring, never to return to earth.

Obama’s speech on Thursday night was, of course, the convention’s culmination, and another of those big-game moments that the candidate seemed to live for. Obama had amped up expectations by deciding to mimic John Kennedy’s I960 acceptance at the Los Angeles Coliseum, delivering his before nearly one hundred thousand people at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos. That Obama would be stirring and poised was not in question. Of course he would. The question was whether he would be effective—making the case for himself and against McCain in terms more concrete and compelling than he had so far.

After taking the outdoor stage amid the starbursty sparkle of thousands of camera flashes, Obama worked his way through an oration less thrilling than some of his best, but more strategic. He did biography, invoking his mother, his grandfather, and his grandmother, citing the last’s rise from the secretarial pool to middle management “despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman” as a nod to Clinton’s voters. He strafed McCain as a Bush clone who was clueless about the economy: “I don’t believe Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know.” He hinted at McCain’s hotheadedness, questioning whether he had the “temperament” to be commander in chief. And he deconstructed the negative campaign his rival had been running against him. “I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he bellowed. “We all put our country first.”

Obama happened to be speaking on the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have Dream” address on the Washington Mall, and he closed with a graceful reference to the “young preacher from Georgia” who said, “We cannot walk alone. . . . We cannot turn back.” Axelrod and Gibbs, watching from the wings, were in tears. For them, the speech was one of the rare moments, in the midst of the campaign’s bustle and insanity, when the magnitude of what they had accomplished sank in.

As the convention closed, Axelrod was well pleased. After the lost weeks of July and August, in which McCainworld had stolen a march on the Obamans, the Democrats had recaptured the flag.

The chattering classes agreed with Axelrod. The convention had been a triumph. The Democrats had found their way to peace and unity. Barack and Michelle had killed. And the Clintons had piled aboard the bandwagon—at least publicly. Hillary and Bill were still bruised and still mopey. But as they flew back east from Denver, one thing had changed. They both were starting to believe that Obama was probably going to win.

Obama believed it, too. The next morning, he rode out to the airport and boarded his campaign jet. He was headed to Pennsylvania with Biden to begin the fall campaign in earnest. The Republican convention was scheduled to start the following Monday. McCain was due to announce his running mate any minute now. The Democratic ticketmates wondered who it would be—and then, like that, Axelrod appeared in the forward cabin and broke the news.

“Wow,” said Obama, picking his jaw up off the floor. “Well, I guess she’s change.”

But Biden looked confused. Swiveling his head, speaking for millions, he blurted out, “Who’s Sarah Palin?”

THE PLAN WAS ALWAYS for McCain to shock the world with his vice-presidential pick. For weeks his top advisers had been dreaming and scheming, touching bases and laying groundwork, secretly readying an announcement at once unconventional, unexpected, and unprecedented, which would throw the press and both parties for a loop and redraw the political map. The surprise that McCainworld intended to spring was a running mate named Joe Lieberman. But then something happened on the way to the Republican convention in St. Paul—and, presto chango, there was Palin.

McCainworld’s core conviction was that McCain’s VP choice had to be a game changer. The campaign assumed the progress it had made with “Celeb” was a temporary blip. That Obama’s financial advantages would continue to create a crushing imbalance. That the three quarters of the electorate who were telling pollsters the country was on the wrong track and blaming the GOP would punish McCain at the polls. If McCain’s running mate selection didn’t fundamentally alter the dynamics of the race, it would be lights out.

From thirty thousand feet, the process by which McCain sought his number two looked altogether normal for many months. He’d begun back in April, with about as much time at his disposal to make his choice as any nominee in history. A tight circle of his aides, with his input, produced a long list of possibilities. A prominent Washington attorney with a reputation for probity and discretion—A. B. Culvahouse of O’Melveny and Myers—was retained to head the vetting team. As the list was winnowed, Culvahouse and Co. conducted extensive research on the surviving finalists, preparing a lengthy and intrusive questionnaire and arranging face-to-face interviews with A.B. The customary premium was placed on keeping the pick a surprise, and a plan was developed to maximize its impact: announcing the selection soon after the Democratic convention, ideally the very next day, to stop Obama’s momentum cold.

Yet three of the five short-listers produced by this seemingly rigorous process failed to meet its chief goal. Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist, and Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty all had their virtues, but game changers they were not. The fourth, New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, qualified for the label—but he also was a divorced, pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun, Jewish plutocrat who had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to independent as nonchalantly if as he’d been changing his loafers. Not one of them generated much enthusiasm in McCainworld, or, more important, in McCain. But, for reasons both personal and political, the fifth man did.

McCain’s affection for Lieberman had only grown since the Democratic senator from Connecticut endorsed him in December. Joe became a fixture on the Straight Talk Express, traveling all over during the nomination fight, even to locales where his presence made McCain’s advisers skittish. When McCain suggested that Lieberman campaign with him in South Carolina, Davis thought,
God, what are we doing? A liberal, Jewish Democrat—who was Gore’s running mate—in South Carolina for the Republican primary?
But McCain wasn’t remotely fazed. “Don’t worry about it,” he told Davis. “It won’t be a problem.”

Lieberman was chummy, too, with McCain’s other regular sidekick on the road, Lindsey Graham; the trio was dubbed the Three Amigos. Between Lieberman’s Shecky Greene humor and Graham’s tall tales about falling asleep during meetings with foreign leaders, McCain was in stitches much of the time when his pals were around. A favorite pastime of the amigos was watching that funny YouTube video of John Edwards fixing his hair. “Let’s look at it again!” McCain would command, and soon they’d all be clutching their sides, emitting peals.

The political case for picking Lieberman as VP was straightforward, if audacious. McCain’s lieutenants maintained that it was essential that their candidate distance himself from Bush and reclaim the reformer’s mantle. Nothing would do that better, went the argument, than presenting the country with a kind of national unity ticket, a pairing that literally embodied bipartisanship. Lieberman’s support for the Iraq War made him reasonably popular among Republicans. His long tenure in Washington would reinforce the campaign’s message of experience and drive the perception that McCain had made his choice with governing, not politics, in mind. The pick would fairly shout McCain’s slogan, “Country First.”

Many of McCain’s most influential advisers—Schmidt, Graham, the former Bush White House communications director Nicolle Wallace—were strongly in favor of the Lieberman option. The worst-case scenario, Wallace contended, was that Lieberman’s pro-choice stance would cause a walk-out of social conservatives from the convention, and even that would have its benefits, sending a message of independence. Astonishingly, no one among the senior staff objected to Lieberman on ideological grounds. Most of them, in fact, saw his selection as the campaign’s best chance to win, assuming they could get Lieberman approved at the convention.

In mid-July, Davis called Lieberman and asked if he’d be willing to be put on the short list and vetted. “Gee, this really surprises me,” Lieberman said. “John doesn’t have to do this to thank me for supporting him.”

“No, no. He’s not doing it to thank you. He’s very serious about this.”

“Honestly, Rick, I don’t intuitively see how this could happen,” Lieberman said. “Well, if he’s serious, it’s an honor. I’m happy to go forward.”

For Lieberman, endorsing McCain had moved him further away than ever from the Democratic Party. And he had already taken another step in that direction by agreeing to speak at the GOP convention. His decision to be considered for the VP slot was driven in part by one thought:
Am I ever going to have another opportunity at this?
Yet, given the political climate, Lieberman couldn’t also help but wonder,
Am I going to have the unique honor to be the only person in history to lose twice as vice president on two different tickets?

As July turned to August, Lieberman received from Graham encouraging reports about his prospects. “Schmidt gets this,” Lindsey said. “He did Schwarzenegger’s campaign. He knows we have to get independents.” Graham added, “Cindy is for you.”

Lieberman still couldn’t quite see how the McCain forces could get him through the convention, given his liberal views on almost every issue save national security. “If he chooses me, do you think I’d get nominated?” he asked Graham.

“Of course, you’d be nominated,” Lindsey said. “Some minority of the convention would walk out. But I think that’s not so bad for John.”

McCainworld had a two-pronged plan for minimizing the negative convention fallout. First, the pick had to be a complete surprise, sprung at the last minute, before the opposition had time to coalesce, so Lieberman could be defined on the campaign’s terms. And second, McCain would agree to take the one-term pledge he’d abandoned in the final hours before his announcement in the spring of 2007, thus eliminating the risk that he would die in office during his second term and leave a Democrat in charge. McCain, once again, balked at the pledge, but his advisers assured him it would be necessary if he went with Joe. Grudgingly, McCain seemed to assent, while Lieberman readily agreed.

For much of August, McCainworld pursued the Lieberman option with singular focus. Davis and his deputies began calling delegates, state chairmen, and other party leaders around the country, feeling out their level of resistance to a pro-choice pick (without mentioning any names). Davis crafted a convention strategy to see Lieberman through—everything from a whip operation, to a sophisticated communications rollout, to a lunch with conservative grandees that Charlie Black would attend the Friday beforehand to explain the rationale and rally them to the cause.

No one was more gung ho about all this than Graham. He couldn’t stop talking about it with McCain, hectoring him about why Lieberman was his only hope. With the Mormon thing, you can’t pick Romney; you’ll lose by eight, Graham contended. You can’t pick Pawlenty—he’s a nice guy, but nobody’s ever heard of him; you’ll lose by six.

McCain played his cards close to his chest. I hear you, he said. I gotcha.

But Graham’s eager advocacy, and his Biden-like loose lips, wound up sinking the Lieberman option. On August 13, while Graham was traveling with McCain on a campaign swing, he floated the idea of a pro-choice running mate to a group of wary social conservatives in Michigan, asking which they would prefer: a running mate who opposed abortion but caused the GOP to lose or one who supported abortion rights and carried the party to victory?

Within days, the indiscretion had leaked, flooding the mainstream press and the Web with speculation about Lieberman and Republican pro-choice former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, sparking a flaming tizzy in the rightmost precincts of GOP Nation. “If the McCain camp does that,” bellowed Rush Limbaugh, “they will have effectively destroyed the Republican Party and put the conservative movement in the bleachers.”

Anticipating this kind of reaction from the right, McCain’s advisers had been quietly trying to recruit a conservative counter-chorus to sing Lieberman’s praises. When they approached Karl Rove, he not only declined but told them that picking Lieberman was a terrible idea. If you nominate him, he’ll probably get through the convention, Rove argued, but the battle will be bloody. The vote will be close, the story line will be bad, McCain will leave St. Paul with a split party—and no time to put it back together.

That Sunday, August 24, Rove took his concerns to Lieberman directly, pleading with the senator by phone to turn down the VP slot if McCain extended his hand.

“You know him,” Rove said. “He’s so stubborn he may simply get this in his mind and carry it to you. And you may be the only person who can save McCain from himself.”

Lieberman listened politely and said, “I hear you. I’ll think about it,” and then hung up, turned to his wife, and marveled at the fantastic strangeness of the situation.

Lieberman had no intention of taking Rove’s advice. But, as it happened, McCainworld was in the process of rendering the question moot. That same day, out in Arizona, McCain’s senior advisers were meeting again at the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Rove was right. In a pair of meetings, one with McCain present, pollster Bill McInturff informed the group that research data he’d been studying indicated that a pro-choice pick would cost McCain votes among Republicans and gain him few, if any, among independents. With a lot of work and elbow grease, we can get Joe through the convention, Black added. But then we’re going to have to spend September healing the party instead of concentrating on swing voters and Obama.

The depth and severity of the problems raised by picking Lieberman finally hit home with McCain. “I understand,” he said in a tone of resignation—and from that point on, Joe’s name was never seriously raised again.

That night, Schmidt and Davis drove over to McCain’s Phoenix condo for dinner. The Republican convention was a week away, and they were nowhere. In the meetings earlier that day, there was no support for Romney, Crist, or Bloomberg. That left Pawlenty.

“Here’s my view of the politics of it,” Schmidt told McCain as they feasted on deep-fried burritos. “In any normal year, Tim Pawlenty’s a great pick, a no-brainer. But this isn’t a normal year. We need to have a transformative, electrifying moment in this campaign.”

Schmidt and Davis then placed a new option on the table: Sarah Palin.

Palin’s name had been on the longest of the long lists, but that was it. Davis told McCain that if he wanted to consider the governor of Alaska, he needed to phone her that night and ask her if she’d be willing to be vetted—and arrange to meet with her, pronto.

McCain was impassive, but agreeable.

“I’ll call her,” he said. “Let’s call her.”

A few minutes later, McCain reached Palin on her cell phone at the Alaska State Fair. Fifteen minutes after that, McCain hung up. And Palin was on her way.

SHE WAS FORTY-FOUR YEARS old, had occupied the Alaska statehouse for twenty months, and had an 80 percent approval rating, making her, as Schmidt pointed out, “the most popular governor in America.” She’d attended five colleges and been a beauty queen, a sportscaster, and the two-term mayor of Wasilla, the tiny town where she lived with her snowmobiling husband, Todd, and five children. She was pro-life, anti-stem cell research, pro-gun, and pro-states rights. She had captured the governorship by running as a reformer, pledging to clean up the corrupt clubhouse politics of Juneau, and she was often at odds with Alaska’s regnant Republican kingpin, Senator Ted Stevens. Her nickname from her high school basketball days was “Sarah Barracuda.” She was intensely competitive, apparently fearless, and endlessly watchable.

McCain had met Palin in February, at the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington. She was part of a small group of western-state governors whom McCain had convened to talk about energy policy. Later that day, he and Palin spoke again, for ten minutes or so, at a reception; two nights later, they shared a table at a fund-raising dinner and chatted a bit more. Afterward, McCain told Black that he liked the cut of Palin’s jib. She’s damn impressive, he said.

It was six months later when Schmidt and Davis came to the same conclusion, almost by accident. In July, Davis, who was in charge of McCain’s VP process, was casting about for unconventional possibilities and sat down one day in front of his computer with a list of names of female Republican officeholders. When he stumbled upon a video of Palin appearing on
Charlie Rose
, Davis was bowled over. And so was Schmidt, who screened the clip and proclaimed, She’s a star!

As the Lieberman option became more and more imperiled at the end of August, Schmidt and Davis—afraid that this new VP idea would leak, too—kept talking furtively between themselves about Palin. She seemed to be the answer to their prayers. In a way, she was the anti-Lieberman, hard right and totally fresh. Davis considered her a triple threat: a governor, a conservative, and a would-be historic pick. Schmidt upped the ante, saying that Palin was the only candidate who might achieve all four objectives he saw as critical for McCain: excite the GOP base, rouse women voters, create space between him and Bush, and help him recapture the maverick label.