Sarah Palin may claim to scorn elites, but her new book will ring familiar to its Beltway readership.
Getting even with those who crossed her, praising her allies and generally putting a self-serving sheen on last year’s presidential campaign, “Going Rogue” is typical of the political memoir genre of recent vintage. It’s the sort of book that will send the political class scurrying to bookstores, eager to see how they fared in what’s known as “the Washington read.”
With no index, though, Palin’s book has made that ritual more difficult.
So POLITICO, having obtained a copy of the book before its Tuesday release, has created a reader’s guide to “Going Rogue,” grouping the many characters into three categories, based upon that familiar question insiders are already whispering to those who managed to snag a copy of the book: How did I come out?
FRIENDS:
The construct Palin uses to describe the 2008 presidential campaign pits most of her advisers, the endearingly-named “B Team,” against the dreaded staffers running John McCain’s campaign back in suburban Washington, often simply derided as “headquarters.”
She has especially kind words for the campaign officials she bonded with during the campaign and, in some cases, remains in contact with.
This “B Team” includes such aides as Jason Recher, Chris Edwards, Tracey Schmitt, Jeannie Etchart, Bexie Nobles, Matthew Scully, Randy Scheunemann, Steve Biegun.
All receive generous treatment.
Biegun is even spared by a key omission in the book. Even though it has been reported that he was responsible for the embarrassing prank call Palin took from a pair of French Canadian DJs posing as the President of France, Palin only identifies the aide as “a campaign adviser.”
“I felt bad for him because he was an absolutely stellar professional, so I knew these radio guys had to be really good to get around him,” she writes.
John and Cindy McCain receive fulsome praise throughout the book from Palin, him as a brave American hero and her as a mix of elegant lady and Every Mom.
But the Arizona senator is also portrayed as the final enforcer of the decision not to let Palin speak on Election Night, something that plainly pained her.
She recounts telling McCain in the campaign’s hotel suite in Phoenix on Election Night that she wanted to use her remarks to thank him:
“’No these guys have it covered,’ he said, nodding in [campaign chief Steve] Schmidt’s direction. ‘They’ve got it handled.’”
Palin then writes: “I knew that was that. I thanked John again for everything and walked out of the room.”
McCain’s close friend Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut senator, also won accolades from Palin for soothing her during a stressful debate prep session.
“God is going to see you through this,” Palin recalls Lieberman telling her, noting that she found it “so heartfelt, so genuine, so sincere.”
FOES:
Much of the portion of the book devoted to Palin’s time as vice presidential nominee and her last year in Alaska is filled with her grievances against a handful of McCain campaign aides and the media.
In particular, Palin trains her fire at Steve Schmidt, campaign advisers Mark and Nicolle Wallace and CBS news anchor Katie Couric.
Schmidt, especially, receives the brunt of Palin’s blasts.
She describes him as variously quick-tempered, profane, overweight, threatening and incompetent. Plus, she notes, he was a smoker. (Though she does allow at one point that he can inspire loyalty and manage the press).
Complaining about being muzzled, she writes: “I questioned Schmidt about what headquarters would and would not allow me to say. Schmidt was a busy guy; he didn’t have a lot of time to elaborate, no doubt. He replied coolly, ‘Just stick to the script.’”
Taking issue with what she said was Schmidt’s attempt to get her a nutritionist, Palin observes: “As he lectured, I looked at his rotund physique and noted that he used nicotine to keep his own cognitive connections humming along.”
Schmidt also comes in for rough treatment in an anecdote Palin says took place between the campaign aide and Scheunemann after reports in POLITICO and CNN detailed the tensions between the veep candidate and McCain’s staff.
Citing Scheunemann, who remains a Palin adviser, she writes: “Schmidt issued a threat that was veiled enough for deniability but clear as day if you were on the receiving end: if there were are any more leaks critical of anybody in the handling of Sarah Palin, then a lot more negative stuff would be said about Sarah Palin.”
When Palin got prank-called by the two disc jockeys impersonating the president of France, she again paints Schmidt in a negative light.
“One of the first calls was Schmidt, and the force of his screaming blew my hair back. ‘How can anyone be so stupid?! Why would the president of France call a vice presidential candidate a few days out?
“Good question, I thought. Weren’t you the ones who set this up?
“As Schmidt’s rant blazed on, I pictured cell towers between D.C. and Florida bursting into flame. I held the phone slightly away from my head.”
Schmidt is also singled out on election night as the heavy who told Palin she wouldn’t be able to deliver a speech along with McCain’s own concession.
“Absolutely not,” Schmidt said. “I don’t even know why you wrote a speech. Nobody told you to.
“That set me back on my heels. I was surprised that he was surprised.”
Of Nicolle Wallace, a former top Bush administration official, Palin writes, “I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn’t have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general.”
Palin also casts Nicolle Wallace as something of an insensitive snob, recalling that the campaign adviser informed her that her clothing was inappropriate for a vice-presidential nominee.
“She flipped through my wardrobe with raised eyebrows,” Palin writes of Wallace from a scene in the candidate’s bedroom after she returned to Alaska for her interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson. “No…no…no,” [Wallace] said as she slid each garment aside on its hangar.”
And so as to make unmistakable her disdain for Mark Wallace, Nicolle’s husband, the former Alaska governor includes a picture of the aide holding up his arms at her during a hotel room debate preparation session during a photograph montage otherwise devoted to upbeat images of Palin, her family and supporters.
“This picture says it all,” Palin writes in the caption. “A dark hotel room in Philadelphia and a frustrated Mark Wallace trying to tell me which of his non-answers I should give during debate prep.”
Palin never flatly accuses any of the top McCain advisers as being responsible for the leaks against her, but she comes close in recounting a scene from the hotel pool in Phoenix on the day after the election when the Wallaces stopped to say their good-byes.
“’I think you should know that for the next few days it’s going to get really nasty,’” Palin recalls Nicolle Wallace saying. “’Negative stories in the press. You should just be ready, that’s always how it goes. Hang on your hats!’
“That made no sense to Todd—why would anything ‘get nasty?’ And how could anyone know what would be coming in the media?
“But the Wallaces waved good-bye, and that was that.”
Often, names weren’t necessary to make the point—criticizing the generic “headquarters” sufficed, as in this lament from the last weeks of the campaign: “We asked whether we could expand the message, but by then it seemed, at least according to reports like the New York Times Magazine piece by Robert Draper, that headquarters might have already given up.”
Or from campaign’s end: “Since headquarters had micromanaged everything I did and said for weeks…”
Her home state of Alaska, its denizens and trusted aides like Meg Stapleton get much softer and kinder treatment, but Palin does take after some liberal opponents from back home—and a former colleague as well.
Though not mentioned by name, John Bitney is easily identifiable as the former aide whom Palin writes “turned out to be a BlackBerry games addict who couldn't seem to keep his lunch off his tie."
The policy director on Palin’s gubernatorial campaign, Bitney was her first legislative director in Juneau but is now a critic who is frequently interviewed by reporters.
Yet is CBS news anchor Katie Couric who is singled out for special treatment, emerging among media figures as Palin Enemy Number One.
“As for Katie Couric — where do I begin?” Palin writes, recounting what she concedes was an awful interview with the network anchor.
Though she accepts some culpability for the disastrous interview, Palin accuses Couric of having gone easier on Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, and twice claims that the newswoman’s own clothing stylist was actually part of the team hired by the GOP to outfit the vice-presidential candidate for the campaign. Palin even takes a swipe at Couric’s patriotism.
Palin writes of a National Press Club event where Couric addressed journalists about the news media’s behavior immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to Palin’s account, Couric told her media colleagues: “The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and a little uncomfortable.”
Writes Palin of this assessment: “Unbelievable.”
Among journalists, Couric may have come in for the most personal criticism but Palin also devotes considerable space to bemoaning the press corps in general. When, for example, she details her return to Alaska after the campaign, Palin grumbles about unnamed “pundits and reporters” who criticized her for “not attending the celebrity-packed events we were invited to Outside.”
Disputing some of the analysts who said then-Sen. Barack Obama outperformed McCain at the first presidential debate, Palin writes: “Granted, 90 percent of the newspeople covering the debate were liberal.”
At other times, Palin flatly accuses reporters as stalking and harassing her family.
IN BETWEEN:
Palin seems to spare those individuals who, unlike Schmidt, haven’t criticized her since the campaign or who she doesn’t seem to suspect as leakers who disparaged her, like the Wallaces.
So even though senior campaign aides Mark Salter and Rick Davis played a pivotal role in the campaign—and at “headquarters”—they are largely absent from the book.
Of Salter, she does allow that her first impression was that he seemed “friendlier and quieter than Schmidt” and was a loyal and influential adviser to the senator.
As she does with Biegun and the prank call incident, Palin appears to offer Salter anonymity in recounting the scene on election night when she was told she would not be speaking.
Even though Salter has been identified in other reports as one of the heavies who delivered the news, Palin writes only that a “senior staffer” said: “’You know you won’t be giving a speech.’”
Even though he was a Schmidt friend, her traveling chief of staff, Andrew Smith, isn’t bloodied too badly either.
"It seemed odd that we were being put in the hands of a man who had never run a campaign before, but Andrew seemed like a nice guy, and it wasn't my call,” she said of Smith, a Wall Street veteran.
Another of Palin’s top traveling aides, Tucker Eskew, doesn’t receive the praise that her other “B Team” allies do yet he isn’t scorned like other senior officials.
While calling him a “Southern gentleman,” Palin writes that Eskew stuck to her “like gum on a shoe.”
After events, she recalls, “he’d be waiting for me on the campaign bus steps with an indulgent smile that said, ‘Come over here and let me tell you what you did wrong, bless your heart.’”
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