The Restless Wave

by John McCain

  All the choices had some downside. Had I asked Governor Romney to join the ticket, the Democrats would have greeted the decision by reminding voters of the attacks and recriminations we had exchanged during the primaries. That’s standard practice when the nominee asks a rival to join the ticket. It’s annoying, but it’s fair, and it’s a surmountable problem. Tim Pawlenty didn’t have much national name identification, which was fine. He would have been a fresh face. He had widespread appeal in Minnesota, and I liked him and his wife, Mary, a lot. He would be viewed as a safe, conventional choice, solid on the merits, but not an outsider or a credible change agent. Mike Bloomberg would be viewed as a change. He had an impressive record of accomplishment in New York, but one not always admired by conservatives, nor were his views on guns, abortion, and other social issues. Conservatives didn’t consider Mike to be a moderate Republican or RINO (Republican in Name Only), an epithet often hurled at me. They viewed him as a liberal, along the lines of John Lindsay, a species of Republican that hasn’t existed in any numbers for quite a while. They viewed his affiliation with the Republican Party as weak and opportunistic. Mike is smart, shrewd, and not given to posturing. When we informed him he was on the short list and asked if he would agree to be fully vetted, he responded with, “Are you sure about this?”

  I had met with several prospects under consideration and read vetting summaries for others. In May, I had invited a few of them to our place in Northern Arizona for the weekend in the hope that a relaxed social setting among our family and friends would give me a better sense of their personalities. I didn’t like the idea of conducting formal interviews, and I left routine issue and background questions to the lawyers and staff. I did want to know, if I didn’t already, what issues were their priorities, and I wanted to be confident they would share mine. I admired many of the candidates, and I enjoyed the company of most of them.

  By late June, I had mentally culled a shorter list from the short list, consisting of three or four names. Each had appeal, and I liked them all. But I kept coming back to one name, one name that would have certainly represented change, although that wasn’t the principal reason I wanted to pick him. Joe Lieberman and I shared the same worldview and concerns, and we were the best of friends. I trusted him completely, and valued his counsel. He was no longer formally a Democrat, having won his last reelection as an Independent. But he caucused with Senate Democrats, and he had been the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000. He had endorsed me in December when I wasn’t the presumptive nominee or the favorite to win, when there was no advantage for him to risk his relationships with Democrats. Were Joe to join the ticket it would send a clear message of change. It would be an emphatic statement that I intended to govern collaboratively with an emphasis on problem solving not politics, which in 2008 would have been very good politics. The more I thought about asking Joe, the more the idea felt right to me.

  By the end of July, I had decided. I would ask Joe to join what I hoped would be seen as a national unity ticket pledged to avoid partisan excesses in the hope of overcoming Washington gridlock. I shared the decision with my closest advisors, including Lindsey Graham, who enthusiastically endorsed the idea. We agreed to keep my decision a closely held secret while Rick Davis and others began gauging how difficult it would be to get convention delegates to vote for a vice presidential nominee whose views on various social issues, including abortion, were to the left of mine, and far to the left of most of the delegates. Of course, as soon as they began raising the idea with state and national party leaders, speculation ensued about who McCain’s pro-choice pick might be, which in turn aroused the conservative base, and brought private and public recriminations from a broad array of Republicans, some of whose opinions I valued and some I didn’t. Their argument was that a pro-choice pick, whoever it was, might survive the convention but would fatally divide the Republican Party. The reality of Republican politics set in. Even were Joe to give assurances that he would be duty bound to uphold my positions on all issues were he to assume the presidency, it wouldn’t stop the intraparty brawl that would be the only story coming out of the Republican convention, and would dominate coverage of our campaign in the critical first weeks of the fall campaign.

  With the exception of Lindsey, who remained supportive, everyone else I had entrusted with my decision advised me against it. They had liked the idea initially, and thought we could still get Joe through the convention, barely. But they thought we would discourage activists and depress Republican turnout more than we would attract Independents and crossover Democrats. I didn’t agree with the advice, or more accurately, I didn’t like the advice, and I continued to insist on naming Joe my running mate, while the window for making and preparing for another choice was rapidly closing.

  They were giving me their best counsel. It was sound advice that I could reason for myself. But my gut told me to ignore it, and I wish I had. America’s security and standing in the world were my principal concerns and the main reason, other than personal ambition, that I ran for President. Joe and I share those priorities, and on most related issues we agree on how best to serve them. I completely trusted, liked, and worked well with Joe. And I still believe, whatever the effect it would have had in some quarters of the party, that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would have been received by most Americans as a genuine effort to pull the country together for a change. I don’t like not doing what I know in my gut I should do. I made it known that I reluctantly accepted my advisors’ concerns. Then I sulked about it for a little while.

  We were nearly out of time. The Republican convention was a week away, and when Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis raised Sarah Palin with me, I was intrigued. Steve had spent time in Alaska on business in recent months and had been impressed by what he had learned about her. Rick had reviewed what research was immediately available and watched recordings of some of her press interviews. He was impressed as well. Sarah had been among the names on the initial, longer list of VP prospects, most of whom had received a cursory public document vetting before being dropped for other, more serious prospects. I had met her briefly at a recent National Governors Association meeting in Washington, and had been seated at her table at a dinner that night. I had liked her. She had spirit and charisma.

  She had been governor less than two years, but her involvement in state politics had begun a decade and a half before, and she had been active in the local politics of the town where she’d been mayor, Wasilla, since the early 1990s. She was a popular, energetic, and accomplished reformer as mayor, governor, and as a campaigner. She had been appointed by her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, to the state’s oil and gas commission. Her lack of experience with energy issues hadn’t prevented her from recognizing and criticizing ethical breaches committed by a fellow commissioner and other public officials, who had conflicts of interest involving oil and gas companies. She had cooperated with a Democratic legislator to make the case for their removal from office. She ran for governor on an ethics reform platform against the incumbent and most influential Republican in Alaska for the nomination. She beat a former Democratic governor in the general. The underestimated small-town mayor was an underdog and vastly outspent in both races, but she had won. As governor, she passed an ethics reform bill her first year in office and raised taxes on the biggest interest in Alaska, the oil and gas industry, and used the revenues to offset the high fuel prices Alaskans were paying at the time.

  Her profile as a reformer and as someone who managed to get important stuff done without years of experience or deferring to established interests was her main appeal. The fact that she was an accomplished woman succeeding in a male-dominated profession didn’t hurt, either. We felt, and polling confirmed, that there were moderate and conservative Democrats who had voted for Hillary Clinton and might be persuaded to vote for a Republican presidential candidate with a record of working with both sides, and the female chief executive he had picked as his running mate.

  On several issues
, Sarah held more conservative positions than mine, from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to public funding for stem cell research. As my running mate she would be expected to defer to my views, and she did. But the expectation she would excite conservatives who hadn’t reconciled themselves to my nomination, and who were at present unlikely to work hard to turn out Republican voters, was a consideration, too. Not the main one, but not a negligible one. Her reformer credentials, the surprise her selection would be, her gender, and her naturalness as a political personality were what made her so appealing to us.

  I called her and asked if she would agree to a formal vetting, and to come to Arizona to meet with me. Although she had to have been surprised by the call, she answered affirmatively very calmly as if she’d been expecting the call. I told her we would be in touch shortly with the details, and she thanked me for calling. The experience reminded me a little of the time I’d received a call from Bob Dole during the 1996 Republican convention asking me if I would mind putting his name in formal nomination the next night, offering me a prime-time speech a little more than twenty-four hours before it had to be delivered. That’s quite an honor and opportunity for a junior senator, and Bob had made the offer with all the ceremony of someone asking me the time. I had just dangled before Sarah Palin an opportunity to become overnight a nationally known figure, with all that means, good and bad. She had responded as if it had been a routine request, and she was open to the idea.

  A few days later Sarah and an aide flew to Flagstaff, where she interviewed first with Schmidt and Salter, and then with A. B. Culvahouse and his team. If after their conversations, they and Rick Davis agreed she was the wrong pick, they would thank her for her time and arrange for her flight back to Alaska. But if they felt it was worthwhile for me to meet with her, they would bring her to our place an hour from Flagstaff.

  She arrived the next day after spending all night on the phone with the lawyers. We sat next to the creek and talked for an hour. I liked her right away. She spoke with genuine passion about government reform and fighting corruption. She acknowledged our differences, but noted that we shared an independent streak that put the country above party. She is uncannily self-possessed, and has an authentic warmth as a campaigner. I sensed how appealing a performer she would be, and her self-confidence allayed concerns we had that she might not be able to withstand the scrutiny and rigors of a presidential campaign. I walked away from our meeting confident that she could. Whatever stumbles she would have in the blindingly intense experience she was about to enter would be on us, on our judgment, not hers.

  Cindy sat with Sarah after we finished our conversation, and showed her around the place while I talked with Salter and Schmidt. I’d spoken to A. B. earlier, who counseled that she would be a “high risk, high reward” pick. He saw her appeal and potential, and the vulnerabilities that could be exposed by the battering of a national campaign that can test the fortitude of more experienced politicians. Salter worried that Sarah’s scant exposure to national politics, and her self-admitted knowledge deficiency in national security issues, would undermine the experience advantage we had over Obama. He argued for Tim Pawlenty. Schmidt made the case for her, which essentially boiled down to “she could shake up the race and the other candidates can’t.” She was a fresh face, an outspoken reformer, a wife and mother who had fought the special interests and won. She could appeal to conservative Democrats and women voters not yet sold on Obama or me. She was tough and could handle pressure. She was smart, hardworking, and willing to learn. We had three opportunities, he argued, to stop the race from trending inevitably to the challenger in an environment where over 70 percent of voters believed the country was going in the wrong direction: my vice president selection, my convention speech, and the debates. If we failed to use any one of those opportunities to convince voters we would bring change to Washington, we would lose. Sarah was the biggest change message on the list of possible choices. I thought Schmidt made the better argument probably because it echoed my own thoughts about Sarah and the challenges ahead. I walked back to the deck of our house where Cindy and Sarah were sitting, and offered her the nomination. We talked a while longer, then she left with Salter and Schmidt to fly to Dayton, Ohio, where we would announce her the day after the Democratic convention had closed with Obama’s soaring acceptance speech (except for the parts where he blasted me, which didn’t soar as much as they irritated).

  We successfully kept Sarah’s selection secret until we introduced her. She had flown to a private airfield twenty miles from Dayton, and stayed in a nearby hotel under an assumed name. A small group of staff, sworn to silence, spent the night working with her on her speech. Her family arrived later that night.

  The lack of time and our emphasis on secrecy deprived the media of a chance to scrutinize her strengths and weaknesses before the announcement. It also left the rest of the campaign staff unprepared to answer questions about her. Getting up to speed on Sarah Palin for both reporters and staff would happen after her first public appearance. We had left too little time to prepare thoroughly for the announcement, to defend it and get a VP operation staffed and running, especially considering the unconventional choice I had made. Those things would happen in a rush in the days immediately after the announcement, and during our convention. It was chaotic. Again, that was on us, not her.

  When she strode out onto the auditorium stage at Wright State University that morning with her beautiful family, and introduced herself to the fifteen thousand people there and the nation, she was a pitch-perfect performer and the crowd was completely smitten. She conveyed her natural appeal as if she were one of the most practiced political communicators in the country. I was beaming as I watched her. We weren’t the only Americans excited by her selection. The campaign raised more than $7 million in twenty-four hours, a sum greater than any total we had raised in a week’s time.

  Four days later, she delivered her acceptance speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, another bravura performance that had the hall on its feet, fired up the grass roots, captivated a lot of undecided voters, and impressed even reporters who questioned her qualifications for the job.

  You have to have extraordinary strength, confidence, and ability to be suddenly plucked from your life, and in less than a week present your best self to an audience of tens of millions, who are watching and wondering who the hell you are, while you, your family, your friends are furiously scrutinized by hundreds of reporters. She handled it with resolve and grace even when her single daughter’s pregnancy was disclosed, igniting a brief, intense media storm that included ugly speculation that her youngest son, Trig, then an infant, was her daughter’s child. She did what we asked of her and more. She was a concerned mother protecting her children. She was a student cramming for exams. She was a skilled amateur performer asked to appear on Broadway twice a day. She was the Alaska politician struck by a flood of stories coming from her home state with scraps of potentially juicy news about her life as far back as high school. She was the new national figure, who instantly attracted a host of excited supporters, got accustomed to family life with a Secret Service detail and to reporters calling her relatives and friends, while she prepared for interviews with the national press and a debate with my friend Joe Biden. It was a lot to ask of a more experienced politician. She had to be ready to debate Joe just over a month after she had been announced. If you haven’t been a principal in the do-or-die intensity of a presidential or vice presidential debate, where a single mistake can doom your candidacy, you can’t imagine the anxiety it produces. Yet Sarah acquitted herself well in her exchanges with one of the most experienced politicians in the country.

  She stumbled in some interviews, and had a few misjudgments in the glare of the ceaseless spotlight and unblinking cameras. Those missteps, too, are on me. She didn’t put herself on the ticket. I did. I asked her to go through an experience that was wearing me down, that wears every candidate down. I made mistakes and misjudgments, too. I s
aid something wrong or inaccurate or poorly chosen from time to time. So did my opponent and his running mate, mistakes we attributed to the pressure and exhaustion of a national campaign. Ours were often overlooked or viewed less seriously than were Sarah’s because reporters and pundits generally assumed Barack, Joe, and I were better than our screwups. Sarah wasn’t given that allowance.

  There’s no use bitching about how you were treated in a presidential campaign after it’s over, and I’ve always tried to resist doing that. We caught some breaks. We messed up sometimes. We took some lumps we deserved and some we didn’t. On the whole, it was the privilege of a lifetime. I mean it. I’m a very competitive guy. I hate losing. But I knew the moment I had it and even in the moment I lost it that I had an opportunity granted to very few people in this world. I had a fair chance to lead the most important nation on earth. I had a full opportunity to persuade Americans they should trust me with the security and prosperity of our civilization. I didn’t convince them.

  But on the night of September 4, 2008, when I stepped out onstage to accept my party’s nomination, looked out on the crowded arena and into the center teleprompter, I got to make my case. I haven’t Barack Obama’s eloquence, but I can convey how much this country means to me, which I tried very hard to do that night. I love this country. I want to do right by her always. Some critics believe my decisions and statements weren’t always consistent with my “Country First” rhetoric. People draw the conclusions they expect from your mistakes, whether you’ve consciously done something wrong or made an inadvertent error or don’t believe you did anything wrong at all. We all judge people through the lens of our beliefs and associations, and in politics that perspective can find more than disagreement in an opponent’s statements and decisions. It can suspect bad faith. I know I’ve done and said things throughout my public life that I thought were right or at least arguable but others considered offensive. Sometimes they were right. But I have never thought to hurt this country to gain something for myself. Never.