The Man Who's Prepping Palin

ST. PAUL, Minn.--Sarah Palin is about to become a very busy woman. After hitting the highest of highs tonight--delivering a vice-presidential acceptance speech in St. Paul's Xcel Center amid the roar of 18,000 Republican admirers--she'll immediately plummet back to earth. The task at hand: learning the ins and outs of John McCain's domestic, economic and national-security policy portfolios at the feet of his top issue advisers.

According to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's domestic guru, the laborious process of tutoring Palin, who has less national experience than the vast majority of her veep predecessors, will start "tomorrow" in "a hotel room somewhere in sunny Minneapolis" and continue on the trail for the next several weeks. "I was thrilled to be back in our beautiful Crystal City [Va.] headquarters, but that may be over," Holtz-Eakin told a panel of NEWSWEEK reporters and editors over lunch this afternoon. "What we have to do is take all our accumulated policy and John McCain's entire Senate history and get her comfortable with the campaign"--a process that will involve "telling her about the strong contrasts we see with the Obama-Biden ticket and how we want to present our policies most effectively."  A squad of former Bushies (Tucker Eskew, Steve Biegun) and major McCain policy people (Randy Scheunemann, Joe Donahue, Ed O'Callahan) will also be involved. "That McCain guy is on his own," Holtz-Eakin joked.

As the first governor in 40 years to run for the vice-presidency--not to mention someone who had no serious contact with Team McCain until late this summer--Palin presents her new policy tutors with a unique challenge: how to familiarize a national and campaign newcomer with 15 to 20 issues in the course of a few brief weeks. Asked how well he knows McCain's newly-minted running mate, Holtz-Eakin admitted that he's only spoken to her once, having helped prep her for a surrogate appearance several months ago. "It was an entirely pleasant brief," he said. "She asked good questions." At this point, however, he's reluctant to "characterize her views" beyond the broad strokes already covered by campaign talking points--energy, reform, balancing the Alaska budget--and he confessed that "we still don't know everything she's thought about in terms of policy positions." "l'll have to learn from [this]," he said. In fact, Holtz-Eakin left open the possibility that McCain himself might learn a thing or two as well--perhaps even on drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, a proposition Palin supports. "The campaign's position is not drilling in ANWR," he said. "But for all I know, she may try to move John McCain on this. She's got her position, they talk and I wish her well."

Overall, Holtz-Eakin is confident than Palin can handle the pressure. "She's eager to learn the material," he says. "She's a person who's shown a great capacity to do many things. She's bright and committed to it." And there is at least one thing he does know about Palin's policy process: she likes to get her information on "big index cards." His team is preparing a batch as we speak.

Pressed to say whether Palin will make herself more available to the media after getting "up to speed"--she's only appeared in public once since joining Team McCain last Friday and has yet to take incoming fire from the political press corps--Holtz-Eakin said "there's no reason for us to have any hesitation about her answering questions that the American people care about." "You'll get to know her," he promised.