Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (36 page)

Meanwhile, Sarah's behavior toward Walt Monegan also changed. She initiated her well-practiced freezing out—the process that we'd seen most recently with Chief of Staff Tibbles. In Walt's presence, she
might sigh heavily, as if he were stupidly wasting time. Or she might dismissively turn her back and focus on something else. For those who witnessed this frequent process of falling out of favor, the overriding thought was,
Thank God it's not me
.

By midyear, the noose was being cinched around Monegan's neck. What appeared as an idiotic nonevent in the first days of July represented the last straw. In an emotional explosion, Todd would soon call for an end to the Monegan-Wooten madness. Lyda Green, now nestled alongside Trooper Wooten on the enemies list, was the catalyst for the dramatic denouement that virtually guaranteed an unpleasant final act. Todd directed those of us who did his bidding from behind his familiar curtain—responsible but mostly invisible.

Timingwise, the debacle couldn't have been worse. Another personal crisis
and
John McCain were about to knock on our door just as the “stuff” hit the fan.

23
 

Head over Heels for Sa-rah

S
arah was rumored to be on someone's vice presidential list as far back as March 2007. In an article extolling her first one hundred days in office, the
Anchorage Daily News
wrote, “There's even blog talk about the governor as a possible running mate for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid.” In response, Sarah was quoted as saying, “Oh come on. I got enough to worry about here in Alaska for the next four years.”

In July she told KTUU's Bill McAllister, “I feel like a commitment was made on my part, a deal was struck with Alaskan voters that I would stay put. I would feel like I was not being genuine in my commitment if I decided to run for another office while I was serving as governor.”

In an interview with the British-based international publication
Monocle
, Sarah downplayed her chances of being selected but sang a slightly less definitive tone by suggesting that her nomination would bring a breath of fresh air to the GOP:

Despite her approval rating in the state hovering around a remarkable 80 percent, Sarah was still unknown outside of Alaska. And with Alaska's three puny electoral votes, her selection seemed impossible. Flattering, but as likely to happen as seeing snow fall up rather than down.

The notion took on less improbability, however, when the Associated Press's Juneau correspondent Steve Quinn wrote a piece the day after Christmas 2007 that put the notion of national office front and center. The reporter, a close friend of Ivy Frye, was a passionate supporter of nearly every move the governor made. In his worshipful article, “Alaska Governor Shows Fearlessness,” Quinn quoted John J. Pitney Jr., a conservative political scientist from California's Claremont McKenna College, as saying, “Palin could be an ideal presidential running mate next year. What separates her from others is that at a time when Republicans have suffered from the taint of corruption, she represents clean politics.” Quinn and Ivy worked together diligently over the ensuing months to
build Sarah's reputation and position her nationally. In what I felt was somewhat manipulative of those involved, Sarah told me on more than one occasion in her office to feed stories through Ivy for Steve because “he and Ivy are like this,” holding up two crossed fingers, “if you know what I mean.” Whether this comment was true or not, I never had the heart to share it with Ivy. Nevertheless, it was Steve Quinn whom Sarah had summoned as her favorite
AP
reporter to break the news of her pregnancy in March. Later, in a heart-wrenching article after Trig's birth, entitled, “Alaska Governor Balances Newborn's Needs, Official Duties,” he detailed the moments when Sarah and Todd first came to know that they would have a child with Down syndrome.

Piggybacking Quinn's widely quoted December 2007 article, a Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President website run by Adam Brickley, a twenty-one-year-old college senior majoring in political science at the University of Colorado, began to attract attention. Eventually Brick-ley's relentless efforts caught not only media attention, but ours as well. Over the next year, leading into the presidential election, we began feeding him information on friends and enemies and held regular dialogues. In the month before her selection by McCain, Brickley claimed to have in excess of three thousand hits per day on his website—at least a dozen of those, I can attest, coming from inside the Palin camp.

Over time, others began to float Sarah's name.
Wall Street Journal
columnist John Fund said Sarah Palin would be one of the best VP choices for John McCain—fortunately, he and others were as unaware as McCain that in January 2008, Sarah emailed her circle that she preferred former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee over the senator from Arizona as the Republican White House hopeful.

Rush Limbaugh, also in February, put forward the name Palin as an attractive McCain choice. Around this time she landed an interview with Fox News where, I noted in an email to staff,
“Sarah was on Hannity's America. . . . Although he just pronounced her name wrong.”
Hannity, whom I have followed for years, eventually became enraptured with Sarah and embarrassingly canonized her every word, often appearing giddy, as if he'd swallowed silly pills.

Ivy continued to aggressively roll the Sarah-for-veep snowball. In May, when KTUU ran a poll of what was described as the vice presidential sweepstakes, Ivy email blasted her contacts:
“Please go to the KTUU website. . . . Gov Palin is in the lead . . . 55% to 45%—keeps the votes coming in!!”
This pounding for votes in various online polls went on without interruption throughout early months of 2008. We were being paid to run government in Alaska, but our real job was to catapult Sarah Palin's career as the savior of the GOP, America, and the world. Ivy, with full-time Google alerts, announced every mention of Sarah for vice president. She dutifully sent these mentions to her expanding list of contacts.

With typical Ivy devotion, she sent Sarah the following:

By April, Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President founder Adam Brickley was a full-blown participant in our cyber circle. He was at least as well connected as Ivy and emailed his own frequent updates. This one sent our hopes soaring:

Speaking of Ivy, while we had our ups and downs during my time with Palin, I have to say that if Ivy were an attorney, she'd be exactly the type of attorney I would want in my corner. Devoted and loyal like a family member and, like me, often went to over-the-top lengths to support our boss. Meanwhile, Sarah was not on the radar of the GOP rank and file outside of Alaska, but the list of conservative big-wigs who accepted her as viable was impressive: Limbaugh, Hannity, Gingrich, and a growing number of others. In June Larry Kudlow of CNBC, the business network, fell head over heels for Sarah when she appeared on his
Kudlow & Company
show. In this interview, unlike one she previously gave then CNN's Glenn Beck, she did
not
reject the notion outright.

Of all the fawning mostly middle-aged white men, nobody was more infatuated than Bill Kristol, the founder and editor of
The Weekly Standard
and a frequent guest on
Fox & Friends
, and a man I've agreed with more often than not. More strategically, he was an editorial columnist for the
New York Times
; its token right-wing ideologue alongside David Brooks. He'd gone to Alaska on a cruise in June 2007 and sat across the table from the sexy future of the Republican Party. Much as President George W. Bush claimed to have looked into Vladimar Putin's eyes and seen his soul, Kristol understood that deliverance for his beloved GOP lived inside this stunning, five-foot-five Aphrodite from Wasilla. Due diligence was conducted over moose stew, red wine, and winky charm. He did not need to ask about foreign policy or current event expertise. He saw a winner. Kristol began bongo drumming her out-mavericking-John-McCain virtues in every venue at his disposal. By June 2008, he was stating flatly on Fox News that Sarah Palin was a historic prospect for a vice presidential running mate. In public and to his contacts within the McCain camp, he made
it known that she was not only legitimate but also the only intelligent choice if McCain hoped to have any chance in the upcoming election.

While none of us believed Sarah to be a sure thing for veep—or necessarily even the front-runner—by midyear we understood that it was a possibility, a development that raised anxiety
and
excitement. In my case, I hit a mental Reset button and convinced myself that everything I believed in 2005 was still true: she was Ronald Reagan in high heels. All disappointment—the deception, anger, distrust, lies, wasted time, vendettas—was a necessary evil for launching her on the national stage. We Rag Tags still in place endorsed her candidacy with every cell of our weary bodies.

While we waited for the vice presidential process to play out, the Palins' personal demands were taking up an estimated 70 percent of my time. Added to the demands of my state job, the workday became a sixteen-hour, seven-day-a-week affair. As the hours in the office grew, time at home dwindled to almost nothing, and my wife and children were once again becoming strangers. Was this what I'd signed up for? Always protecting Sarah's back, fighting personal wars alongside Todd? Dining on coffee, Mountain Dew, Chinese in a box, oily cheddar Chex Mix? The burden of the official and unofficial jobs continued to impact my family, culminating in this email from my wife:
“You care more about the Governor than you do me . . . even Kris
[
Perry
]
. . . You bother to call Kris on a regular basis, but you are always trying to get me off the phone. Actions speak louder than words.”