Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (45 page)

What? A fake call from French president Nicolas Sarkozy? How could McCain's people have allowed such a thing to happen? Sarah emailed me and others because she needed our help. Prayer, words of
encouragement, and, if possible, action.
Do something, someone, please
. Shouldn't McCain's people be there for her? What kind of a numbskull campaign were they running?

I Googled
Palin+Sarkozy+prank
. Unfortunately, finding information wasn't difficult, as some heretofore-unknown Montreal radio jokester by the name of Marc-Antoine Audette—part of a duo calling themselves the Masked Avengers—just became internationally famous. The prank, news-viral within minutes of being aired, made Tina Fey's
SNL
spoofs look like Pulitzer Prize journalism.

I found an audio recording of the interview and listened. At one point, Audette said he loved “the documentary they made on your life, you know,
Hustler
's
Who's Nailin' Paylin?”
This was a reference to a ridiculous porn movie made with an actress dressed up as Sarah, seducing Russians who came to her door in Alaska.

Sarah said in response, “Oh, good, thank you. Yes.”

Equally ridiculous topics continued as Sarah responded giddily, oblivious to the setup. As I forced myself to listen with hands covering across my shaking face, I understood she'd somehow managed to let her love of celebrity get in the way of good judgment. Painfully, I began to suspect this wasn't the fault of McCain or his staff. Anyone who knew her well understood that Sarah was impulsive and difficult to rein in.

At one point, Sarah enthusiastically suggested to the faux Sarkozy, “We should go hunting together.” And then added, “Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We can kill two birds with one stone that way.” The “kill two birds” pun when referencing hunting was unintended. She seemed flattered when told that Sarkozy's wife was jealous of his speaking to her, clearly seduced by whatever this important man had to say. In a particularly wincing moment, when told that Sarkozy's wife was a former model and “hot in bed,” Sarah said, “Oh, I didn't know that.”

Audette asked if husband Todd was also known as “Joe the Plumber.” Sarah said “no.” Then fake Sarkozy said, “We have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It's called ‘Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit,
oui
.' ” Sarah acknowledged the plight of the working class, and the interview continued.

For what felt like hours, a dozen or more topics were covered, each more ridiculous than the last. Finally the Canadian interviewer came clean, likely because Sarah never seemed to catch on.

In no time, the Canadian press released a story that began, “In an over-the-top accent, one half of a notorious Quebec comedy duo claims to be the president of France as he describes sex with his famous wife, the joy of killing animals, and
Hustler
magazine's latest Sarah Palin porno spoof. At the other end of the line? An oblivious Sarah Palin.” In the article, Marc-Antoine Audette, the prankster who played Sarkozy, said of his victim, “You can see that she's, well, not really brilliant.” As if this weren't bad enough, the comedian later said they had a hard time setting up the prank because Sarah and her staff didn't know who the president of France was.

Sarah's request for prayer seemed like the only thing that might help. I sent out a quick email trying to reassure her:
“We just prayed that God would use this for his Glory. You've been thrown every other curve by the media and this is one more thing to chalk up. He will use it for His Will.”
Sometimes “His Will” is a painful lesson that we need to learn, something I know from experience all too well.

Later that night, the campaign stated that Sarah was “mildly amused” at having been the object of the prank. Suggesting that Sarah was amused struck me as the perfect example of putting lipstick on a pig.

Ivy Frye and I knew that had we been there to protect Sarah, this never would have happened. Ivy wrote,
“They got thru the secret service and all of her many, many experienced staffers? Why aren't we on the rd w them again??”

I wrote back,
“Yer tellin' me!!!”

The reason for believing we might have saved Sarah from herself?

Approaching any Election Day, Sarah required tighter reins on her activities and a higher human wall to deflect stress. McCain had assigned as her babysitter Tucker Eskew, a veteran GOP operative with whom Sarah butted heads. Eventually, by mutual consent, they had little contact. Sarah needed blindly loyal bodies to protect her from her own haphazardous impulses. We understood that; McCain apparently did not.

Despite a string of embarrassing moments along the presidential campaign trail—lowlights being the Gibson and Couric interviews along with the Sarkozy prank—Sarah's army remained immune to her foot stubbing. That core of passionate, allegiant believers fed off her vague rhetoric and pointed attacks on challenger Barack Obama. Crowds were fervent, resembling an
Elmer Gantry
revival meeting more than a political gathering. And the more harshly Sarah berated the media, the greater her popularity and visibility. The more guffaws, the more real she seemed to both hard-right conservatives and the burgeoning group that would later form the Tea Party. Senator McCain became an afterthought to Sarah's star attraction.

Being taken off my five-week suspension and back on the job as director of boards and commissions in late September, I joined in the excitement of the imminent election, especially energized by knowing that I'd been there from the very beginning. The day before the nation was to vote, November 3, 2008, brought that same gnawing anxiety I'd felt in past elections. The biggest differences were my being thousands of miles away and one additional layer of anxiety about to be unveiled.

Largely ignored until this day, Sarah had earlier taken a second preemptive step to counteract the Branchflower findings. After chasing down witnesses to discover what that investigation was likely to unearth, Sarah realized those efforts on her behalf were blatantly biased. In a follow-up act, on September 15 she filed an ethics complaint against herself with the Alaska Personnel Board, asking it to review her dismissal of DPS Commissioner Monegan. Tim Petumenos, an Anchorage-based trial attorney whose firm once handled the $15 million
bond issue to finance the Wasilla hockey complex that was Sarah's signature project as town mayor—a conflict of interest that critics believed should exclude him—was hired to conduct an investigation that tilted in what Sarah believed was the correct direction. He conveniently scheduled a press conference to announce his findings less than twenty-four hours before the polls opened. Anticlimactically, he concluded no probable cause that Governor Palin had violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act in her dismissal of Walt Monegan. He relied predominantly on her testimony to arrive at this conclusion. I welcomed what I eventually came to understand was undeserved vindication. Critics weren't placated, but Sarah and Senator McCain used the report to vilify the earlier Branchflower conclusions.

Palin attorney Tom Van Flein issued a press release: “Mr. Petumenos determined that the Branchflower report's findings that Governor Palin abused her power had no legal basis and that Governor Palin did not violate the Ethics Act as Mr. Branchflower incorrectly asserted.”

The
Anchorage Daily News
minced no words in a strongly disagreeing “Our View” column four days later: “Petumenos' analysis reads as if it could have been written by the governor's own defense lawyer. His exoneration of Palin was conveniently released just a day before voters nationwide decided on her bid for the vice-presidency.” The editorial concluded, “[I]t is definitely not OK for a governor's staff to spend a great deal of their publicly paid time settling a personal score for the governor's family. Petumenos uses some creative legal hairsplitting to argue that state ethics law does not cover that kind of behavior, when the plain language easily supports the opposite conclusion.”

With Petumenos providing a welcome breeze to the McCain-Palin ticket's sails (whereas the newspaper editorial appeared after the election), November 4, 2008, represented a conclusion to the wild ride I'd been vicariously watching from afar. On Election Day, Sarah and Todd briefly returned to Alaska and scheduled a freeway caravan on their way to a voting photo-op in Wasilla. Bruce Anders, Neen, and I stood by the roadside, bundled in down coats and waving mittened hands as Sarah's black Suburban, trailed by a fleet of other black SUVs, approached in the predawn darkness. Gusting wind cut
to the bone while we inhaled swirling snow mixed with exhaust and watched the lead car slow down and draw the others alongside, stopping at Sarah's favorite mocha stand. I removed mittens and pulled out my BlackBerry. With stiffened fingers and steamed breath escaping through the scarf draped across my mouth, I fumbled with a brief note:
“Just watched you pass by . . . we are praying! Can't wait to give you a hug. We are so proud. Neen, frank and bruce.”

A few hours later, after she'd voted and talked to the media, the SUV motorcade returned, on its way to delivering the Palins to the campaign jet that would shuttle them back to McCain's campaign headquarters at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. As the red taillights of the procession faded, I remembered how Sarah had said during the Alaska Republican primary that she had proudly cast her vote for Mike Huckabee instead of Senator McCain. For Sarah, running with a lesser candidate wasn't an issue; after all, it was widely rumored that McCain greatly preferred his buddy Senator Joe Lieberman over her, but simply couldn't get the far-right wing of the party to sign off on the former Democrat's social agenda.

Election night came, and instead of the familiar red-washed balloon-filled ballroom at the Hotel Captain Cook, Neen and I sat home in the living room, sinking into our overstuffed sofa. While the television commentators blah-blahed, I reverted to my habit of clicking Refresh on the laptop, watching the electoral map turning red or blue as the evening wore on.

Voting for her, I was internally at odds. I was beginning to have doubts Sarah was anywhere close to being a sound choice for second in command. Not only that, she seemed to dislike the job of being a political executive. In one PIN message she sent me about two weeks before the election, she asked me to pray she would win so “we can leave that place”—reminiscent of her oft heard comments that “Juneau is evil,” meaning that she was clearly sick of dealing with the mounting nuisances of being Alaska's governor.

At least McCain was a war veteran and had substantial political experience. But what if something happened to him?
Was she truly an effective governor?
At times, Sarah admitted that the office was overwhelming. More than a year before McCain selected her, touting her
executive experience and governing skills, she sounded lost. She shared in a long phone conversation that she was buried by the “never-ending to-do lists” and the necessity of having to whine at departments to get what she wanted done. This was clearly not what she expected when she campaigned for governor in 2006.

Sensing I was unable to pick up her spirits, I joked that if I lost my job I'd be “making lattes full-time” instead of fighting bureaucratic battles. Her response was darker, saying she expected she'd get fired before I would.

Experiencing emotional difficulty managing a state with fewer than a million people, what would President Palin do if a rogue nation like North Korea went nuclear? Would she be preoccupied with typing messages on the
Anchorage Daily News
blog? Would she use the FBI to monitor Dan Fagan's radio show or dig up dirt on Katie Couric? The IRS, would it suddenly run audits of former political opponents, bloggers, or editorial critics? Would she fire dissenting voices and find out too late they were right and she was wrong—as she'd done with the entire Board of Agriculture and Conservation over the Matanuska Maid Dairy debacle in 2007? Did we want Sarah and her thin skin anywhere near that red button after that 3:00 a.m. phone call, as Hillary Clinton had warned of Barack Obama during their hotly contested primary races?