Game Change (45 page)

In the early afternoon, with no final decision made, Team McCain headed to the Morgan Library and Museum on Madison Avenue for McCain’s debate prep session. His maiden face-off with Obama was set to take place two days later, but this was to be McCain’s first full dress rehearsal. The campaign had built a mock-up stage and had camera crews in place to document the proceedings. Former Ohio congressman Rob Portman was on hand to play Obama.

McCain was grouchy about the prep session from the get-go. When his aides tried to do a formal introduction of the candidates, McCain snapped, “We don’t need to worry about that crap. It’s just bullshit. I’m here at the podium, let’s just do the debate.”

But they didn’t get too far—the interruptions were ceaseless, as McCain’s aides scrambled to figure out the details of how the campaign suspension might work. Finally, Schmidt interrupted and told McCain that they needed to decide. Are we doing this? he asked.

Charlie Black and Brett O’Donnell, McCain’s debate coach, had doubts about pulling out of the showdown in Oxford. If you say you’re not going to do the debate and then end up doing it, they argued, you’re going to look like a fool. But McCain brushed them off. Convinced that the gamble was worth it, he was all in.

McCain set off back to the Hilton. In the car he called Bush and informed him of his decision, and asked if the president would host a meeting at the White House for him, Obama, and congressional leaders to discuss the bailout bill. Bush feared such a meeting would inject a destabilizing dose of politics into a fragile situation. He told McCain that his intercession would undercut Paulson and wasn’t likely to help solve the problem. After hanging up, Bush instructed his aides, Find out what’s going on here. But before they had a chance, McCain was on TV, standing at a lectern at the Hilton, announcing the suspension and calling on Bush to convene a conclave.

McCain also phoned Obama before making his announcement, finally returning his rival’s call from six hours earlier. Obama, in Florida doing his own debate prep, told McCain he thought that, in the spirit of bipartisanship, the two of them should release a joint statement of principles concerning the bailout. McCain replied that they should go further: get off the campaign trail and head to Washington to mediate. Obama was noncommittal, but believed that McCain had agreed to the joint statement. A few minutes later, he learned otherwise when McCain popped up on TV. “Man, that was quick,” Obama said to Axelrod in disbelief.

McCain had one more crucial call to place, to David Letterman. McCain had been on the
Late Show
a dozen times. He considered Dave a pal. But, though McCain was staying overnight in New York to keep his commitment to Bill Clinton’s CGI, he decided it would be in poor taste to be yukking it up in the midst of a crisis. Letterman did not take the news of the last-minute cancellation well. “He’s pissed,” McCain told his aides. “We’ll make up.”

By the late afternoon, McCain finally got some good news. Bush had agreed to host the meeting. The president called Obama to extend an invitation for the following day. Obama sensed reluctance in Bush’s voice, but, like the president, he felt he had no real choice but to accede to McCain’s wishes.

The news of McCain’s suspension drew gales of derision from the press. No one was willing to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt—as McCain and his people felt the media surely would have lent Obama—that his motivations were anything less than craven. Pundits said he was using the economic meltdown as an excuse to delay debating Obama. Democrats were instantaneous in criticizing McCain for disrupting the negotiations over the bill. Reid, who a day earlier had called for McCain to make his voice heard on the financial rescue, issued a statement (which he read by phone to McCain) that said, “We need leadership; not a campaign photo op.”

McCainworld had assumed that the suspension would be viewed as an authentic, characteristic act of putting country first. But after “Celeb,” the selection of Palin, and lipstick-on-a-pig, combined with the pratfalls of the week of the fifteenth, McCain was now seen as a typical, and faintly desperate, politician—and his campaign a campaign of stunts. The return to Washington might have escaped ridicule. The combination of the suspension and the move to postpone the debate was a gimmick too far.

The weasely image of McCain was reinforced that night, when Letterman exacted his revenge. In the midst of acidly mocking McCain, the host discovered that he was still in New York—not racing to a plane, but preparing for an interview with CBS News’s Katie Couric. Tapping into a live feed of McCain having his makeup applied on set, Letterman said, “Hey, John, I got a question. You need a ride to the airport?”

AS ANY GOOD STUNTMAN will attest, it’s all in the execution—and in staging his return to Washington on September 25, McCain left a great deal to be desired. There was no careful coordination with House Republicans or the White House. There was no media strategy, no plan for a press conference. Nothing. McCain just showed up in his Senate office that morning and said, Okay, let’s see what I can do to get something moving here.

The optics of the day were especially poorly managed. A series of meetings was hastily arranged, but they were private; so rather than images of McCain conferring with conservatives, there were shots of him wandering the halls of Congress, as he moved from room to room, looking like a gypsy. He showed up in Boehner’s office, where a gathering was already under way with a handful of Republican House leaders. After listening to two and a half minutes of discussion about their concerns regarding the bill, McCain said he was on their side if it would get a deal done. Boehner and his colleagues were happy to have an ally, but they were also bemused. If House Republicans had been asked to vote for their least favorite senator (in either party), McCain would likely have won in a landslide; and he in turn had always considered them a bunch of yahoos. McCain had only just shown up and knew next to nothing about the issues in play around the bailout. And he said not a word about how he planned to approach the meeting with the president later that day.

Davis asked Boehner’s chief of staff if there was anyone in his office who could staff McCain at the White House; his campaign aides were legally prohibited from doing so. A young aide named Mike Sommers, who had been in the thick of the fight over the Paulson plan, was assigned the task.

Sommers rode with the nominee to the meeting, prepared to provide McCain with more detail on what House Republicans were looking for. McCain, after all, was now their de facto champion—and he was headed for the high-stakes gathering he’d requested. But McCain spent the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue talking on the phone to Cindy. I’m on my way to the White House, he said. What are we doing for dinner tonight?

When they arrived at their destination, McCain and Sommers hopped out of the car beside the West Portico. As they walked toward the door, McCain suddenly stopped and looked at Sommers blankly.

“What do I need to know about this meeting?” he asked.

Obama, meanwhile, had strategized extensively with Reid and Pelosi, who agreed to defer to him. Obama had no agenda to push; he was annoyed at having to be there rather than preparing for the debate. (He’d resolved to show up in Oxford whether McCain did or not.)
They’re driving this, so let’s hear what they have to say
, Obama thought.

Just before the meeting, Bush was briefed by his adviser Ed Gillespie.

“What’s McCain going to say?” Bush asked.

“We have no idea,” Gillespie said.

The meeting took place in the Cabinet Room. When the Democrats showed up en masse, Obama worked the room as if he were mayor of the White House, introducing himself and shaking hands with all the staff. McCain stood off to the side and said little.

The nominees and congressional leaders took their places around the oblong mahogany table. After asking Paulson for a rundown of the situation, Bush talked about how the credit market couldn’t be fixed until the political market was appeased. The president didn’t care what the rescue plan looked like. If Hank says it will work, I’m for it, he said.

“Madame Speaker?” Bush said, turning the floor over by protocol to Pelosi.

“Mr. President, Senator Obama is going to speak for us today,” Pelosi replied.

“Harry,” Bush said to Reid, “is Senator Obama speaking for the Senate Democrats as well?”

“Yes, Mr. President, he speaks for all of us here today.”

Obama took the floor and held forth for five or six minutes. I appreciate the urgency here, he said, and mentioned his regular conversations with Paulson. Obama ticked off four items central to the bill: executive compensation, golden parachutes, oversight, and flexibility. “I think just about everyone has agreed on these,” he said, then added a sly dig at the House Republicans. “I understand there are some who may not be as far along as the rest of us.

“We can argue about how we got here, but that’s not the issue,” Obama went on. “The issue is how to solve the problem.”

Boehner spoke next, airing his caucus’s complaints with the Paulson plan and putting forward a smaller, less intrusive alternative.

“This is interesting,” Reid said, “because John Boehner seemed like he was a socialist last week, and suddenly he’s finding free-market principles.”

Pelosi and House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank piled on Boehner. “I can’t invent votes,” Boehner said, defending himself. “I have a problem on my own hands.” Others chimed in. The pace was rapid-fire, though the volume was low.

At that point, Obama more or less took over. House and Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans are ready to make this deal, Obama said. We can’t be going forward and creating a new one. (One Republican in the room mused silently,
If you closed your eyes and changed everyone’s voices, you would have thought Obama was the president of the United States
.)

The meeting was now more than forty minutes old. McCain had yet to contribute.

“Can I hear from Senator McCain?” Obama asked, as if he really were running the session, although he first went back to Paulson with a question. When Paulson finished, the treasury secretary told McCain that he’d like to hear from him, too.

McCain thanked the president for hosting the gathering, then thanked Paulson. He said the situation was dire. He noted that progress had been made, but that House Republicans had concerns, which he listed. His comments sounded like introductory talking points, presented as if the first forty-five minutes of the meeting hadn’t happened.

All hell broke loose. Frank, Pelosi, and Republican senators Richard Shelby and Mitch McConnell started loudly squabbling. Frank, agitated, turned on McCain.

“John, what do you think?” Frank asked sharply.

“I think the House Republicans have a right to their position,” replied McCain.

“Fine. You agree with that position?”

“No, I just think they have a right to their position.”

Bush had heard enough. “You ready to end this?” he said to Reid, who signaled his assent.

“All right, I think we understand where we are,” said Bush. “We have work to do, and all I’m asking you is to make sure we go forward.” Placing his hands on the table for emphasis, he stressed how important it was that some kind of deal happen quickly.

“We can’t let this sucker fail,” Bush said, and, with that, the meeting was over.

Bush was dumbfounded by McCain’s behavior. He’d forced Bush to hold a meeting that the president saw as pointless—and then sat there like a bump on a log.
Unconstructive
, thought Bush.
Unclear. Ineffectual.

McCain told his aides the reason he was silent was that, from the moment the Democrats deferred to Obama, he knew that the meeting would accomplish nothing. Their disruptive behavior at the end had only confirmed his opinion.

To whatever extent McCain’s chagrin was sincere, it reflected another bedrock miscalculation in his decision to suspend his campaign. The premise of the strategy was that McCain could return to the capital and play the above-the-fray bipartisan dealmaker. But in any election year, the fray is boundless. The idea that the opposition party would let McCain waltz back into Washington and stage-manage a triumph with November 4 only forty days away was folly. Yet in the face of a determined Democratic resistance, McCain had failed even to wire the outcome on the Republican side. By the night of the White House meeting, the costs of those mistakes were apparent on every TV screen in the land, as Democrats lustily tore McCain limb from limb and Republicans were mute.

“If you’re going to come riding into Washington on a white horse to slay a dragon, you better have the dragon tied up and tranquilized and ready to die,” a longtime friend of McCain’s concluded. “You don’t come in and not slay the dragon and walk out with a whimper.”

A BEVY OF OBAMANS were waiting in Mississippi, wondering when they might next see their man—and if he was going to end up on stage tangling with McCain or talking to himself. The next morning, less than twelve hours before the debate was scheduled to begin, the answer remained a mystery. And then, just like that, McCain’s campaign issued a statement that the candidate was suddenly “optimistic that there has been significant progress towards a bipartisan agreement” and was therefore suspending his suspension. The jousting match was on.

The topic of the first debate was supposed to have been domestic policy, per the decree of the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. But over the summer, when the two campaigns met to negotiate details, Obama’s team, led by Emanuel, had proposed a switcheroo to foreign policy. For press consumption, Axelrod explained that the change reflected Obama’s confidence on the topic—and that was half true. The other half, however, was that Obama believed that McCain’s foreign-policy strength was vastly overstated. He doesn’t know as much as everyone thinks he does, Obama told his advisers. The surge? Check. Wasteful weapons systems? Check. Everything else? Whiff.

Obama’s preparation for the debates had been extensive. He was aware that his performances against Clinton had not been among his most shining moments, and he was still smarting from his one onstage encounter with McCain, in August. Invited to a joint forum on social and religious issues at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, Obama had prepared little—
Prepare? For Pastor Rick? I know this stuff
—and been creamed. (His answer that deciding when a fetus was entitled to human rights was “above my pay grade” was widely ridiculed.) In the past, Axelrod had run Obama’s debate prep, and it had been, like the strategist himself, disorganized and loose-limbed. For his debates with McCain, Obama had given authority to veteran Democratic strategists Tom Donilon and Ron Klain and forensics specialist Michael Sheehan, who put him through his paces with repeated dress rehearsals, DVDs of himself to study, and meticulous briefing books.