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More Scoop on How Palin Got Picked
Her rise to the ticket was the result of very skillful, behind-the-scenes work by the very Beltway elite that she so happily excoriates.
Following the Daily Beast’s initial report of the final three-way competition that produced McCain’s vice presidential nominee, The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine bring fresh details.
The 2008 presidential campaign has not been kind to pundits. The nation’s best known media masters of the Beltway scene were sure of one thing: John McCain’s choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was a political masterstroke which would reenergize his campaign and put it on course to a victory in November. Except that it wasn’t. As the candidates draw closer to the finish line, the Palin pick increasingly looks like McCain’s most damaging among a series of mistakes.
In a recent joint interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams, the “tenseness” between McCain and Palin was palpable, said NBC political director Chuck Todd, who observed the process first hand. And during the interview, Palin misfired badly, giving an incomprehensible answer when challenged to explain her opposition to talks with foreign leaders without preconditions.
By the time the final pick fell, Sarah Palin wasn’t a household name of course, but she had a large fan club among the conservative establishment in Washington. She was, it seems, “their maverick.”
John McCain no longer seems to be reckoning with a victory celebration on election night, instead announcing his plans to address a small crowd of loyal supporters in Phoenix. And among his key election advisors, the name of the game is what blogger Andrew Sullivan calls “precriminations” - allocating in advance the blame for a coming drubbing at the polls. In that process, responsibility for the selection of Palin is the real hot potato.
Following in the wake of my report in The Daily Beast last week, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and The New York Times Magazine’s Robert Draper have each tapped sources inside the McCain campaign for a recounting of the Palin pick.
Mayer’s story, dubbed “The Insiders,” begins with a choice Palin quotation in which she testifies that she is not one of the “Washington élite.” Mayer then documents how Palin’s rise to the Republican ticket was the result of very skillful, behind-the-scenes work by the very Beltway élite that Palin so happily excoriates. The Mayer recounting, like mine, launches with that fateful Weekly Standard cruise trip. The luncheon that Palin hosted for the Standard writers gets a thorough portrait starting with Palin’s very political grace. Mayer includes the menu (halibut cheeks) and a cameo appearance by Palin’s daughter Piper. Significantly, however, we learn that Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes were joined by a third member, Michael Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist. Gerson has also distinguished himself by stoking the fires for Palin after her nomination was announced. The luncheon was followed by a field trip, as the feisty governor showed the Standard’s top writers around a mine site in Berners Bay, 45 miles from Juneau, making the case that environmental regulations were harming the state’s mining industry. The Beltway Boys obviously loved what they saw. A starburst was born. Gerson called her “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.”
Mayer recounts that the Palin launch was not entirely the making of the Weekly Standard, however. She brings National Review into the mix, noting that their cruise likewise brought a choice catch to the Juneau governor’s mansion: Rich Lowry, Victor Davis Hanson, Jack Fowler, Robert Bork, John Bolton and Fox News’ Dick Morris.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Pleased to see that someone else observed that Palin failed to define precondition when she was asked. I was surprised that no one picked that up. She answered in one of her unintelligible run on sentences which include love of country, our brave soldiers and her possible gratitude for being chosen -- but she thought precondition was having a strategy (strategery?).Couldn't miss it.
Perhaps the media was still recovering from her failure to define Vice President -- clearly an esoteric job description.
Is it possible that the minimum requirement for a job is knowing what it is?
at least Bill Kristol has a beard for the next 4 years, and Jack Welch and dream...
Palin seems to confuse preparation with precondition.
Wow, I just read that New Yorker article. She really is W with lipstick.
She obviously knows how to position herself and appeal to a selected interest to get what she wants. But, I think we already know what happens when individuals don't take the path of rigor on their accent to power. Let's hope the lesson sticks.
Purely selfish on my part since there's so much work to be done on Gov. Palin, but, please, someone, please, tell the poor woman that "and" is only put into a sentence once. As far as being a "rising star"...? They will tar and feather her when she get's back to Alaska. She's done.
Juicy!!
Love this article!
Interestingly, I'm on Bill Kristol's friends list on TimesPeople, and he just recommended the article about the highest-paid person in McCain's campaign in Sept being Palin's makeup person. So maybe he's less of a fan than he used to be.
If Palin hadn't been so "dang purdy" do you think she would have even been considered? Hell no. The Republicans were looking for a vacuous twit who they knew would look good in
$%^& me shoes and skirts a size too tight to get the GOP men all excited. It worked, for awhile. Some of us knew right away something was fishy in Juneau....the other 55% took a little longer to figure it out.
She may be a pretty package, but underneath she is as ugly as Dick Cheney.
Joan of Arc? how about Minnie Pearl? How about the character from My Fair Lady or the Witch in 101 Dalmations.
The Witch in Wizard of OZ is to smart for her so no comparison there.
Notice that the people pushing her were a bunch of paunchy middle-aged white men dazzled by her attractiveness? As Kathleen Parker pointed out in the Wash Post, the choice was based purely on Palin's looks. Her unspoken judgment that a woman would have never been taken in by this dope. It's borne out in the poll numbers; while an overwhelming 70% of women think she's unqualified, the base she ended up appealing to were white, non-college educated working class men.
Sheesh.
Palin was a mail-order candidate , pure and simple. She fit the bill. Problem is, most of the women in this country - are not buying it!!!!
i found myself very upset by the fact that the rupublicans felt that women would be stupid enough to believe that palin was not brought on just because she has breast and would pick up the clinton votes, i am appaled that palin would allow herself to be used in such away. they keeps screaming that obama doesn't have enough experience to be president she has even less, and what is she going to do if someone comes to her with a problem, is she going to say ," don't want to talk about that i want to talk about alaska. could she have looked anymore like a red neck?
i must admit she was very impressive intially, buttttttt,, ten more years experience in the world of government, would have made her more appealing than her looks ever will. nothing can replace the fact that she hasn't 'paid her dues', so to speak.
Wow, why don't you all butcher Sarah Palin!!! It will be interesting to see her rise in the political world. Apparently to succeed in our jaded, crazy society in politics, you have to be a jaded, crazy person. Just because she has the basic values and is not a complicated person, does not mean she's an idiot.
The other day, I told my twenty-one year old daughter that I was having trouble deciding if Palin's candidacy was a comedy or a tragedy. She gave me a look filled with the contempt daughters reserve only for mothers and said, in the tone of one addressing a two year old, "If she loses, it's a comedy. If she wins, THAT'S a tragedy."
It seems to me that a person that has been a mayor of a town of 8400 people and governor for 2 years of a state of 6000,000 people ( less than San Francisco) is qualified to be the second most powerful person in the world. Enough Already.
I look at this election in a worst case scenerio: I am afraid that there is substantial possibility that either candidate will not see the end of their term: McCain because of his age and health history, Obama because of his race and the potential for assasination (sorry to say) and what VP will be their successor. Palin is a self admitted Washington outsider and Alaska cessationist: why would we want her to take on the job of President?
In Palin's world William Ayers is a Terrorist, but Eric Rudolph is a Hero.
The reason why Republicans have so much contempt for Ayers is because they were his targets 40 years ago.
Eric Rudolph bombed the Olympics in Atlanta and Abortion Clinics, his targets were Democrats so that kind of Terrorism is just fine with Palin... You Betcha!
Dick Cheney may have been the anti-christ of politics for the last eight years but ay least he was capable of putting a cogent thought together once in a while. What do you do when your vice presidential candidate has a thought and it dies of loneliness???
W got his job not knowing what it entailed...'nuff said...
What an opportunistic, uninformed, ignorant wench. It's pretty obvious from her current behavior ( calling the media "jerks) pouting, disclaiming, ( I just wanted an occasional Dr Pepper) that this woman will never be fit for higher office. She's not fit for the one she has. Republicans....... this was an insult to American women! How'd you like the result?
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