Dirty Sexy Politics

by Meghan McCain

  We were never urged to join Dad on the campaign trail. He seemed content that his oldest three kids, my half brothers and half sister from his first marriage, lived full lives of their own and had no interest in whistle-stops and waving on stage. When I made it known that I wanted to join the campaign as a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, I had to convince my dad’s advisers, not just my parents, that I was planning to contribute, be responsible for myself, and not get in the way. If I didn’t toe the line and cooperate, my dad had no plans to bail me out.

  Clearly, the Palins didn’t see things the same way. Maybe I’m not being sympathetic enough to working moms, or to little Piper, who seemed to enjoy wandering to the back of the bus or plane to butter up the media. Sarah Palin was the campaign’s secret weapon—on the surface, anyway. Supporters were going nuts for her, and Middle America, and far Right donors, too. Women appeared to be almost obsessed with her—thousands of them, cheering and even crying at her events. Record-breaking crowds turned out for her events; it was amazing and beautiful. We finally had Obama-sized appeal.

  Dad was thrilled with her—and appreciated what she could do, and all the attention and energy that she brought to the campaign. He told his advisers that he loved doing events with her—“We’re so much better together than we are apart!”—but the Groomsmen convinced him that it made more sense to split them up. That way, they could cover twice as much ground, and do twice as many events, in a day.

  The media was falling for her too. Sarah was a beauty, seemed kind of groovy, and had sex appeal, too. Ratings went up when she came onscreen. But my father’s advisers, as happy as they were by the excitement over their VP pick, were a little spooked by the fascination and popularity that Sarah drew to her. The big gamble they’d made by choosing her was causing a whole lot of stress. I called her “the Time Bomb.” I was waiting for her to explode. There was a fine line between genius and insanity, they say, and choosing her as the running mate was starting to seem like the definition of that line.

  The brighter the spotlight, the more difficult a mistake would be to handle. Dad’s advisers wanted Sarah to look prepared and worldly—and from what I could tell, there was a massive effort to outfit and educate her. I sympathized with how difficult she must have found this Pygmalion process, and dealing with Steve Schmidt—ugh—couldn’t have been fun. He didn’t seem to have a gentle side or a soft touch.

  I had never felt comfortable complaining about Steve to my parents. I’m sure Sarah didn’t either.

  I’D BEEN IN CALIFORNIA FOR A WEEK WITH MY BLOG staff when the campaign finally made its mind up about me: Don’t come back. I was a distraction, too controversial, and not playing well with others. The blog could go away too, for all they cared. It just caused complaints. My personal stock had sunk so low, staffers didn’t want their pictures on it anymore.

  I was given a choice. It wasn’t a nice one, either.

  I could quit and go home or else I would be effectively banished to the heartland on an extended tour of regional McCain campaign headquarters for five weeks. It didn’t take a genius to do the simple arithmetic: They wanted me out of their hair until a few days before the election, when they would trot me out again, like a circus animal in a suit. Stand. Wave. Smile.

  The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here I’d been ruminating about how the Palins weren’t “ready for prime time” when, in fact, it was me all along. I was such a prodigal daughter-of that nobody wanted me around.

  Home.

  It was starting to sound pretty nice.

  Home.

  I could barely imagine it.

  No more tyranny from the Groomsmen. No more seating assignments from the Bus Nazi. No more having to watch the antics of the media circus and its gaga behavior over the Obamas and strange lust for the Palins.

  I could live in my jammies and UGG boots, watch TV and YouTube videos all day, and eat healthy food. I could go for days without worrying about my hair, or even washing it. What if I stopped brushing it altogether?

  I would be free to be me, say whatever, and drop F-bombs all over the house. I could swim in the pool, pork out on Mexican food, and hang with my Scottsdale girlfriends who didn’t care about politics.

  Or, I could have my own bus.

  Are you serious?

  My own bus for six weeks? And it was going to be one of the nice buses with comfy seats and clean upholstery, a new bathroom where there weren’t cigarette burns on the toilet seat, and AC that didn’t blow out pure mold.

  I could fill the mini-fridge with Diet Pepsi and Starbucks frappuccinos. I could fill the drawers and cabinets with M&M’s and Luna Bars, Swedish fish and Doritos.

  I could lead as many tours of the bus as I wanted, play any music I liked, sing as loudly as possible, and express myself as colorfully as I could—even if every other word would have been inappropriate for Piper.

  The road was calling.

  And I answered.

  Chapter 16

  How I Started Faking It

  I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t incredibly hurt when the campaign fired me. I kept coming up with words for what had happened, and trying to find a way to accept it. Was it a promotion or a demotion? Was I fired—or just excused? What should I say on the blog?

  Heather came up with a brilliant idea right away. It was time for niceness, good cheer, bubbly behavior. A Little Miss Sunshine strategy.

  “Don’t let anybody see that you’re upset,” Heather said. “We’re all going to act like we’re having the time of our lives.”

  “What?”

  “Fake it ’til you make it.”

  Usually I don’t go in for strategies, but in this case, I decided to follow Heather’s advice. On the blog, I was upbeat and cheery about venturing out on my own. In photographs, I am smiling and laughing—happily meeting and greeting people.

  All the effort that had gone into the blog, and reaching out to young voters and moderates like me, seemed to have added up to nothing. I had tried so hard, and cared so much about every tiny detail. But now, faced with Obama, a pop culture icon who had Jay-Z on his iPod, our campaign pretty much gave up on the youth vote. There was no point chasing it. Moderates had fallen for him too. So we were sticking to the old Bush strategy from 2000 and 2004 and honing in on the dependable Republican base—old people and the right-wing.

  It was like a game of poker. You had to play your hand. But looking ahead, at 2012 and 2016, I wondered what would happen to the party when the old people died off and the base consisted entirely of the Christian Right. Evangelicals are a well-organized group, and I have to admire their passion and resilience. But this country was founded on religious freedom, not religious constraints.

  My mom was amazing during this time. She called, and kept in touch, and was supportive in every possible way. “You are going to be great on the road,” she kept saying. “You’re a natural.” I would have felt impossibly bad, I think, without her love and encouragement. Sometimes you still need your mom to tell you everything’s going to be okay. The ground under my feet was solid. I had to keep remembering that.

  “Just be grateful for everything you have,” she said. “And don’t dwell on the things you don’t.”

  So I kept it together and tried to be super-appreciative when Claire Merkel at campaign headquarters began designing a bus tour of the heartland for me. The basic concept was that I would meet supporters and voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and Florida—key swing states in the general election. Claire was lining up biker rallies, receptions with state party chairmen, and visits to college campuses. I would have to give speeches, autograph books, address crowds, and give pep talks—the sort of campaigning that I had never done.

  Shannon, Heather, and I would continue the blog, chronicling our days on the road with posts and pictures—as though nothing had happened. Would any of our readers really notice that I wasn’t on the main campaign, following my dad around, or care?

  I felt better when
I heard Melissa Shuffield would be coming along to do press and scheduling, and Frank LaRose—a former Green Beret and fantastic guy—would be doing advance. Best of all, we’d have the most incredible driver, Jay Frye, whenever my dad didn’t need him. With the campaign’s permission, I convinced Josh Rupley, an amazing hairstylist in LA, to leave his salon and keep me looking good until election day. Josh is always upbeat and has the most sincere self-deprecating humor, which made me belly-laugh. He was just what I needed in the trenches.

  I fantasized about that day in the future, after November, when I would never brush my hair again. But until then, there was no doubt that I was supposed to look a certain way or pay the consequences when the blogosphere went wild with cruel remarks—which just caused more headaches for the campaign. I was determined to be a help now, not a distraction.

  Being your own person was honorable. But being a member of a team—and being willing to tone yourself down, play nice, and fit in—was part of politics and public life. Looking back on my year-plus on the campaign, this had been my biggest struggle. I didn’t fit in easily, and part of me didn’t want to. I may be passionately pro-life, and in favor of a strong defense and the war in Iraq, but there were all kinds of things about me that rattled the stereotype. But somehow, the party wanted everything black or white. And I was gray.

  Even my education, which I was so proud of, had been ridiculed on the campaign for being “Ivy League,” words that the campaign now used to brand Obama as an “elitist.” My dad had started making cracks about my alma mater, Columbia, in his stump speech. It was a running joke that I’d gone to a “socialist” school and had had a “ridiculous major” like art history.

  I knew my dad was only kidding. He was proud of me—and had my graduation picture on the main wallpaper of his cellphone. I think if I ever told him that the jokes about Columbia bothered me, he would have stopped. But I thought, hey, go ahead and make a joke out of me if it helps. I will take one for the team—no big deal. But when it ended up being a joke everywhere, I started getting self-conscious. I heard it on the bus and the plane and even among the press corps. Here comes the art history major. Ha, ha.

  “She went to Columbia, where the President of Iran just spoke. Can you believe that?”

  “How did you do it, Meghan?”

  Why did I have to fit into a tidy little box of a person, just to become acceptable to the Republican Party? Why did anybody? Why couldn’t an individual—with her own unique tastes and proclivities, philosophy and leanings—be accepted? And how come if you went to one of the most demanding schools in the country, it meant that you were a socialist? I knew how much my generation delighted in its freedoms and disliked being boxed in. My college friends were proud of how hard they’d worked to get into Columbia and of the education they’d gotten there. Why would a political party want to turn off all these smart people with demands that didn’t matter? More importantly, how could it win elections?

  And why were the young doomed to become Democrats just because they weren’t accepted elsewhere?

  ONE OF OUR FIRST EVENTS IN OHIO WAS A BIKER RALLY. Have you ever spent a day around hundreds of spirited bikers? The feeling in the air was so free, and fun, and vibrant, the main campaign seemed like a distant memory.

  Ohio was a beautiful state for cruising around in our bus. We sped through rolling green hills and spectacular farmland. Along the way, the people we met were friendly and down-to-earth and the small towns were vibrant and innocent.

  I fell in love with Columbus, a gorgeous city. I heard it called “the San Francisco of the Midwest,” because of its large gay population—and it was there that I met for the first time with a group of Log Cabin Republicans. If there was ever a talented, committed slice of America that was eager to play an active role in politics, and the Republican Party, but didn’t feel accepted or wanted, they were it. My gripes about not fitting in felt pretty pathetic by comparison.

  We discussed gay marriage—it was my first serious conversation about this issue—and why the party of limitless freedom, self-reliance, and the individual couldn’t wrap its mind around supporting it. This one meeting sparked a passion in me that continues today. I regard marriage equality as this generation’s civil rights call to arms. How can we claim this country is truly free when there are still citizens who are separate and not equal?

  With each event and new day, campaigning on my own became a little easier. I enjoyed seeing new faces and having direct contact with supporters. They were so much happier than the campaign staff!! And maybe it helped that I had watched my father do “meet and greets” my entire life. He loved them so much—and made it look like such fun. When I gave my first speech, I was so nervous, though—on the verge of meltdown. But I did okay, thanks to lots of coaching from Shannon, Heather, and Melissa.

  More than anything, I started to look forward to visiting the offices of McCain volunteers. They believed to their very core in what we were doing and were so happy to meet me. I think it made them feel more connected to my dad. Taking them on a tour of the inside of our bus was the most fun of all. It seemed like such a small thing, letting somebody see part of the Straight Talk Express, where my dad had spent so much time in the last year. People would freak out and go crazy because it was a little piece of the election, a little piece of history.

  It was a piece of my dad, too, and I saw how much he meant to people by the way they treated me—and the things they said. It’s not such a bad thing to be reminded, like that, of how loved your dad is.

  Giving a pep talk to an office of volunteers—or even just one person—came naturally to me. My mom was right about that. I always told volunteers that I was so appreciative of them, and of the chance to meet them.

  And the more I said it, the more I was.

  The following week, in Pennsylvania, I signed books, shook hands, kissed babies. The whole bit. If anybody had told me just a month before that I would enjoy this—or find it easy and natural—I wouldn’t have believed them. But it was true.

  “You have so much of your dad in you,” my mom had said. I was now seeing that—so clearly. It was almost as if his personality had been literally injected into my veins.

  Chapter 17

  What’s Up, Nashville?!

  The first presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi, had been declared a draw by many pundits. So the second debate in Nashville, just eleven days later, had a lot riding on it. Polls were also showing a widening gap between my dad and Obama, with my dad trailing by as much as nine points.

  I had never believed in polls. We had proved them wrong so many times in the last year. If the polls were right, we wouldn’t have won in New Hampshire. But now, with the general election just a month away, it was hard to not be distracted by them. We were really in the final throes of the campaign.

  Walking into the auditorium at Belmont University, where the debate was held, I knew instantly that things had changed—and the stakes had gone up. Unlike the hometown and almost intimate feeling of the debates during the primaries, all of which I had attended, the Curb Event Center was crawling with Secret Service agents, campaign staff and advisers, famous members of the press, and everything else that you imagine. It felt like the Olympics or a prizefight.

  It was Dad versus Obama. I was excited to see Dad in a town hall–style debate format and I knew he’d do well. But the way the media was spinning it, there wasn’t anything my dad could do that was exciting anymore. He was just an old white guy going up against a young handsome superstar, the smartest and coolest man ever to walk the earth.

  MY MOM AND I WALKED WITH LINDSEY GRAHAM, ONE of my favorite senators and a close family friend, into the Curb Event Center—where the debate was being held—and made our way through a traffic jam of bodies. I had chosen to wear a pair of way-too-high heels and remember thinking that all I needed to do was make it to my seat without stumbling or falling flat on my face. If I could do that, I’d be happy.

  But it was really hard
to walk—much less keep up with the flow of bodies. My mom and Lindsey and I passed through an incredibly long hallway and finally pushed our way inside the Curb Center. A few photographers were waiting to take pictures of my mom and me. After a few snaps, they quickly moved on.

  Sitting down in my assigned seat, I relaxed, but not for long. The room was freezing—truly, uncomfortably and horribly freezing. Earlier, the campaign advance team had come to inspect the site and returned to report that the venue was especially cold—air-conditioned to the point of refrigerated. A small space heater was put where my mom was sitting, but it didn’t quite reach to me.

  From my arctic zone, my teeth chattering, I watched the entrance of Michelle Obama into the center. She was swarmed by dozens of photographers—literally swarmed—flashbulbs flashing, paparazzi style.

  Nothing like that had happened for Mom, I have to say. It was just a couple polite snaps and the photographers were gone. But the swarm around Michelle Obama became so intense that, eventually, her staff had to shoo the media away.

  I know that a polite lie is appropriate here and I should be mature and say that I wasn’t bothered by this. But of course I was. The Obamas are mega-stars and had won the beauty contest, clearly, but wasn’t the media supposed to appear to be neutral? Isn’t some restraint in order? I’m not even sure Michelle Obama was enjoying the fuss.

  Seeing Michelle Obama in person for the first time, I couldn’t help but notice how striking she is. I had seen her on TV and in photographs. But now, it was painfully obvious that along with being more popular with the media than my mom, she is as tall as a supermodel and her clothes looked incredible.

  That’s when my mood started to sink.

  Great, I remember thinking. Let’s get this damn night over with.

  Pundits later said that my dad lost. Others said he won. To others, it was a draw. Depending on which network you watched, the outcome was reported differently. It didn’t matter how hard these outlets tried, but it seemed impossible for reporters and pundits and TV show producers to keep their personal hopes and dreams inside, and not cloud their impressions.