Game Change (49 page)

The truth was, the McCain people did fail Palin. They had, as promised, made her one of the most famous people in the world overnight. But they allowed her no time to plant her feet to absorb such a seismic shift. They were unprepared when they picked her, which made her look even more unready than she was. They banked on the force of her magnetism to compensate for their disarray. They amassed polling points and dollars off of her fiery charisma, and then left her to burn up in the inferno of public opinion.

The face-to-face exposure of the campaign’s senior advisers to Palin was minimal in the last month before Election Day. She was on the road; they were at headquarters or with McCain, their paths rarely intersecting. But after witnessing her near-breakdown during debate prep and monitoring her subsequently by phone and email, some in the upper echelons of McCainworld began to believe that Palin was unfit for high office.

McCain was aware that his senior team considered Palin troubled and troubling, but he was shielded from the fullness of their distress. Several of his lieutenants agreed that should McCain’s electoral prospects miraculously improve and winning in November become likely, they would have to confront the nominee as he started to plan how his administration would function. It would be essential, they believed, that Palin be relegated to the largely ceremonial role that premodern vice presidents inhabited. It was inconceivable that Palin undertake the duties of a Gore or a Cheney—or that, if McCain fell ill or died, the country be left in the hands of a President Palin. Some in McCainworld were ridden with guilt over elevating Palin to within striking distance of the White House.

They were hardly alone in such harsh judgments. Obama, who had cautioned his advisers not to jump to conclusions about Palin’s potential when she was first selected, ultimately came to believe that the process used to pick her, the man who did the picking, and the woman who was picked were all suspect. He took to mimicking Palin’s stylized “You betcha!” in front of his campaign team.

In late October, Obama’s focus group maestro, David Binder, was conducting a session with a group of swing voters in a Cleveland suburb. A middle-aged woman let loose with a string of not-unfamiliar broadsides against Obama. He’s a Muslim. He’s soft on terrorism—because he’s a Muslim. He doesn’t put his hand on his heart during patriotic rituals. We’re not even sure he was born in this country.

Binder was confused. This was supposed to be a group of undecided voters. If you think all these terrible things about Obama, he asked the woman, how can you possibly be undecided?

Because if McCain dies, Palin would be president, she said.

THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND SOULS FILLED the sprawling field in Kissimmee, Florida, just outside Orlando. It was nearly midnight on October 29 and the air was shockingly cold, but people didn’t seem to mind. They were there to get a glimpse of history, to feel the magic, to witness the commingling of the Democratic future and the Democratic past. They were there for the one and only joint campaign appearance of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Obama and Clinton came out onstage, clasped hands in the air, and then 42 began to speak. His thirteen-minute talk was amped up to the point of being hyperactive. He flapped his arms, clenched his fists, pointed toward the sky. “Folks, we can’t fool with this,” Clinton said. “Our country is hanging in the balance. This man should be our president!” Obama returned the compliments, singing a song in the key of Clinton, praising his economic record, calling him “a great president, a great statesman, a great supporter,” a “political genius,” and a “beloved” figure “around the world.”

Yet beyond the histrionics and the headline—Barack and Bill, finally side by side—the chemistry between the two still seemed less than stable, the body language awkward. Clinton’s speech was formulaic, lacking a single warm personal anecdote or insight (both trademarks of his). Obama’s expression conveyed no greater satisfaction than if he were being endorsed by the mayor of Kissimmee.

The subject of Clinton campaigning on Obama’s behalf had come up seven weeks earlier, when the two men finally had their much-anticipated tete-a-tete. Obama, who was in New York on September 11 for various memorial events, ventured to Clinton’s Harlem office for lunch. Though he showed deference to Clinton by walking in alone—no staff, no security, no posse—and respect for his stature by asking questions about governance instead of politics, the meeting had a stilted feel. Clinton’s staff and the Obamans had engaged in a tug-of-war over whether to include a Harlem stroll and photo op as part of the visit (with each side ascribing ulterior race-related motives to the other). Obama, who had a vicious stomach bug, spent much of the lunch trying not to puke on Clinton’s shoes.

Clinton offered to hit the trail for or with Obama. But neither party was thrilled by the prospect. Clinton told CNN’s Larry King that he planned to start “after the Jewish holidays,” which he’d never been known to observe. The Obamans, meanwhile, had determined through their polling that Clinton’s presence would help only in a handful of states, mainly with Latinos. (Not only would the Florida event be held in Hispanic-heavy suburban Orlando, but it would also feature actor Jimmy Smits.) Their primary interest in holding a joint event
—one
joint event—was to keep the press from badgering them about doing none.

That Clinton could be of service to Obama in so few places was as much a testament to the latter’s strength as to the former’s weakness. By the start of the last full week of the campaign, an NBC
News/Wall Street Journal
survey had Obama up by ten points; the ABC News/
Washington Post
tracking poll put the number at eleven. He was leading in every state won by Kerry in 2004, and either ahead or within the margin of error in ten states carried by Bush in the previous election: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

The significance of Obama’s financial advantage over McCain was impossible to overstate. Armed with the tens of millions that kept pouring into O-Town over the Web, the campaign was moving cash around the country as if it were Monopoly money. Just before the Kissimmee rally, Obama and Biden had taken part in an unprecedented thirty-minute prime-time infomercial that cost $7 million and ran on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, BET, TV One, and Univision—attracting thirty-three million viewers, nearly twice the number of the top-rated network show,
Dancing with the Stars.

By the end of October, Obama and his team were beginning to face the fact: victory was within their grasp. With Wall Street in flames and the economy falling further into recession, Obama knew that the challenges that awaited him in the White House would be daunting. On the stump, he seized the mantle of FDR, repeating the famous line, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His aides began reading books about Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office—and also, yes,
Team of Rivals.

With such burdens looming, Obama put aside the petty and personal, reconciling with his running mate. The repair of the breach was initiated by Biden, whose close aide Tony Blinken figured out from his sources in the campaign that Obama was still angry over Joe’s failure to apologize for his Seattle remarks. When Blinken explained why it might have gotten under Obama’s skin, Biden said, “Oh, I get that.”

Biden called Obama and came quickly to the point. You know what, I’ve gotta tell you, I was totally remiss, he said. I want you to know I understand that what I did was not only bad for me—it was bad for you and it endangered our common prospects. I never said I was sorry and I want to apologize.

Obama was grateful. Biden felt magnanimous. A warm and lengthy conversation ensued, with more to come. After weeks of distance, a partnership was taking root. Joe was a proud guy. Acts of contrition didn’t come naturally to him. But this one, he admitted, was worth it. And no funny hat was required.

MCCAIN NEVER NEEDED a rapprochement with his running mate. On the upswing and the down, through the nastiest and gnarliest moments, not an ill word escaped his lips regarding Palin. If McCain was disappointed in her or in his own judgment, he hid it from even his closest intimates. He treated Palin chivalrously, inquiring regularly about her well-being and that of her family. We asked a lot of her, McCain said, and he meant it.

McCain blamed Palin’s problems on the press, and on members of his team for feeding the hounds. The leak-fueled stories about her drove him so nuts that he stopped watching cable news. (His staff convinced him that leaving the TV tuned to ESPN would be a boon to his spirits.) Indeed, both John and Cindy held the media responsible for much of what had gone wrong in the homestretch of the campaign—and that was a long list. October had been a month of misery for the McCains.

The second and third debates with Obama had gone no better than the first. In Nashville, Tennessee, on October 7, they’d met in a town hall—style format that should by all rights have worked to McCain’s advantage. Instead, he rattled around the stage looking slightly lost
(Like a crazy uncle in search of a bathroom
, one of his top advisers thought), making hokey jokes that fell flat, flinging edgy barbs, and telling stories that referenced Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Tip O’Neill, and Herbert Hoover, making him seem every bit his age and then some. Eight days later, at Hofstra University, in New York, McCain started strong and got off his best line of all three confrontations: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” But the split-screen format used for the final debate enhanced the focus on McCain’s facial expressions. He smirked, glowered, scowled, rolled his eyes; he looked angry. The insta-polls after each debate told the same story. Viewers judged Obama the winner of both by somewhere between twenty and thirty points.

McCain was frustrated and resentful. The campaign had planned to carpet-bomb Obama with negative ads in October, including some that would have used his own voice from the audio versions of his books. With the economy unraveling, however, McCainworld realized such tactics would seem cheap and hollow—and would be ineffective, to boot.

But now McCain lashed out at his opponent on his own in ways remarkable for their tone and subtext, suggesting that Obama was a dangerous, possibly corrupt, possibly Manchurian unknown. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” McCain said at a New Mexico event two days after the
Times
published its piece on Ayers. “What does he plan for America?” Forty-eight hours later, he referred directly to the former Weatherman. “He wasn’t a guy in the neighborhood. [Obama] launched his political career in his living room.”

Cindy McCain was equally vitriolic, a startling turnabout from a woman who for so long shunned the spotlight. Obama has “waged the dirtiest campaign in American history,” she said one day. The next, she averred about the Democratic nominee’s position on a war-funding measure, “The day that Senator Obama cast a vote not to fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body.” A week later, she reprised her attack on Michelle Obama before a pom-pom-waving crowd in Florida. “Yes,” Cindy said, “I have always been proud of my country.”

As the election barreled toward its conclusion, something dark and frightening was unleashed, freed in part by the words of the McCains and Palin. At rallies across the country, there were jagged outbursts of rage and accusations of sedition hurled at Obama. In Pennsylvania and New Mexico, McCain audience members were captured on video and audio calling the Democrat a “terrorist.” In Wisconsin, Obama was reviled as a “hooligan” and a “socialist.”

With the brutish dynamic apparently on the verge of hurtling out of control, a chagrined McCain attempted to rein it in. In Minnesota, when a man in the crowd said he would be afraid to raise a child in America if Obama were elected, McCain responded, “He is a decent person and not a person you have to be scared of as president.” A few minutes later, he refuted a woman who called Obama “an Arab.”

McCain’s efforts to tamp down the furies were valorous, though they did nothing to erase his role in triggering the reaction in the first place. The civil rights hero John Lewis, whom McCain admired enormously, compared the Republican nominee and his running mate to George Wallace and said they were “playing with fire.”

Another prominent African American was watching with alarm. Colin Powell had been friends with McCain for twenty-five years. The senator had been actively seeking his endorsement (as had Obama) for nearly two years. Powell warned McCain that his greatest reservation was the intolerant tone that seemed to be overtaking the Republican Party. McCain’s selection of Palin bothered Powell because he saw her as polarizing. He was dismayed by McCain’s deployment of Ayers as an issue, perceived it as pandering to the right. And then there were the hate-soaked rallies, which he considered anti-American.
This isn’t what we’re supposed to be
, he thought.

Powell had leaned toward staying neutral, but these outbursts were all too much—and McCain had moved only belatedly to stop them. Obama, by contrast, had displayed terrific judgment during the financial crisis, Powell thought. And his campaign had been run with military precision; the show of overwhelming force struck the general as a political realization of the Powell Doctrine. On October 19, he endorsed Obama on
Meet the Press.

The general’s repudiation was a stinging blow for McCain. Beyond their longtime friendship, Powell represented the same brand of Republicanism as McCain’s. Tough on defense. Fiscally prudent. Pragmatic and nondoctrinaire. McCain had to wonder what had become of him if his current incarnation was repelling someone like Powell. He was startled by the crazies at his rallies. Who were they? Why were they there? And what did they see in him?

In the final two weeks of the race, McCain began to try to salvage something of his reputation. He put away the harshest of the personal invective against Obama and went back to talking about the economy, rash spending, and Iraq.

He seemed ever more resigned in his public comments to a graceful exit. “I’ve had a wonderful life,” McCain told Fox News. “I have to go back and live in Arizona and be in the United States Senate representing them, and with a wonderful family and daughters and sons that I’m so proud of, and a life that’s been blessed.”

He wanted to go out on a high note, to recapture some of the old McCain spark, but it was hard to do. On November 1, he and Cindy appeared on
Saturday Night Live.
In a skit that cast him as a TV huckster, he fell flat. On the same day, he received the most unwanted endorsement in the universe: that of Dick Cheney.

There was no love lost between Cheney and McCain, who’d clashed bitterly over the conduct of the war in Iraq, the performance of Donald Rumsfeld, and interrogation techniques. When Cheney’s friends learned about the endorsement, they laughed. That wasn’t Cheney saluting McCain, they thought. It was him flipping the senator the bird.

The next day, McCain traveled to New Hampshire for one last town hall meeting in the state where his presidential aspirations first took wing. The trip made absolutely no sense politically. The polls had Obama ahead there by double digits. But McCain had been agitating for the Granite State curtain call since a visit there in mid-October. To Mike Dennehy, his top New Hampshire strategist, he said, “I want to go to Peterborough.” Dennehy knew that McCainworld HQ would resist. “Just call them and make it happen,” McCain said.

Peterborough, population 6,100, was the place where McCain first tasted the flavor of a New Hampshire town hall, in 1999. Just nineteen people attended. Months later, the Peterborough Town House was packed on the eve of his galvanizing 2000 primary win, and the scene had repeated itself in January 2008, as he pulled off another—albeit very different—New Hampshire surprise.

And so, in the early evening of November 2, McCain made the hour-long bus trip west from Manchester airport—a lunatic expenditure of time in the final hours of a national campaign, but his superstitions were in full flower. On the bus, he swapped memories with some of his old New Hampshire hands. Dennehy recalled that the first time in Peterborough they had to bribe people with free ice cream to get anyone to come. I’m glad we’re going back, McCain said wistfully. We’ve come full circle.

Standing with Cindy onstage in the Peterborough Town House, dressed in a black jacket with its collar upturned and an open-necked shirt, McCain took questions from the packed hall for half an hour and ended with a flourish:

“My friends, it’s time for all of us to stand up and fight for America. America is in difficulty. We’ve got to fight for America, we’ve got to fight for our children, we’ve got to fight for freedom and justice, we’ve got to fight for the men and women who are serving in the military. We’ve got to fight for America, the things we stand for and believe in. Our best days are ahead of us. America never quits. America never gives up. We will succeed. We will win. Let’s win this election and get our economy and our country going again.”