It Came from Wasilla - McCain Staffers Unload on Palin in Vanity Fair Article

It Came from Wasilla

Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story. But what Alaska’s charismatic governor wants the public to know about herself doesn’t always jibe with reality. As John McCain’s top campaign officials talk more candidly than ever before about the meltdown of his vice-presidential pick, the author tracks the signs—political and personal—that Palin was big trouble, and checks the forecast for her future.

By. Todd S. Purdum .August 2009

The pattern is inescapable: she takes disagreements personally, and swiftly deals vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. Illustration by Risko.

The crowds begin streaming into the Evansville Auditorium and Convention Centre a couple of hours before the arrival of the “special guest speaker” at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner on a soft Indiana spring evening—nearly 2,200 people in the banquet hall, 800 more in an adjacent auditorium watching the proceedings on a live video feed. The menu is thick slices of roast pork and red velvet cake, washed down with pitchers of iced tea, and when Sarah Palin finally enters, escorted by a phalanx of sheriff’s deputies and local police, she is mobbed. The organizers of the dinner, billed as “the largest pro-life banquet in the world,” have courted Palin for weeks with care packages of locally made chocolates, doughnuts, barbecue, and pastries, and she has requited by choosing Evansville, a conservative stronghold in southern Indiana, as the site of her first public speech outside Alaska in 2009. Like Richard M. Nixon, who chose the coalfield town of Hyden, Kentucky, for his first post-resignation public appearance, Palin has come to a place where she is guaranteed a hero’s reception. She is not only a staunch foe of abortion but also the mother of a boy, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome just a few months before John McCain chose Palin as his running mate. The souvenir program for this evening’s dinner is full of displays for local politicians and businesses, attesting to their pro-life bona fides. An ad for Hahn Realty Corporation reads, “If you need commercial real estate, call Joe Kiefer! Joe is pro-life and a proud supporter of the Vanderburgh County Right to Life.”

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Just where that storm may be heading is one of the most intriguing issues in American politics today. Palin is at once the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party. Her appeal to people in the party (and in the country) who share her convictions and resentments is profound. The fascination is viral, and global. Bill McAllister, until recently Palin’s statehouse spokesman, says that he has fielded (and declined) interview requests from France, England, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, Bulgaria, “and probably other countries I’ve forgotten about.” (Palin, keeping her distance from most domestic media as well, also declined to talk to V.F.). Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

In the aftermath of the November election, the conventional wisdom among Palin’s supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this. Rather, she has pursued an erratic course that, for her, may actually represent the closest thing there is to True North. Her first trip to Washington since the election was to attend the dinner of the Alfalfa Club, an elite group of politicians and businesspeople whose sole function is an annual evening in honor of a plant that would “do anything for a drink.” Some of her handlers first said she had accepted—though she then went on to decline—an invitation to speak at the annual June fund-raiser for the congressional Republicans. She created a political-action committee—Sarahpac—with the help of John Coale, a prominent Democratic trial lawyer. But just months into its existence the pac’s chief fund-raiser, Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser. Also with Coale’s help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses arising from a slew of formal ethics complaints against her in her home state—prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach. Onetime supporters have become harsh critics. Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, “I don’t give a damn what she does.”

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“Just Make It All Go Away”

As Palin has piled misstep on top of misstep, the senior members of McCain’s campaign team have undergone a painful odyssey of their own. In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through. Do they ever ask, What were we thinking? “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,” one longtime McCain friend told me with a rueful chuckle. “You nailed it.” Another key McCain aide summed up his attitude this way: “I guess it’s sort of shifted,” he said. “I always wanted to tell myself the best-case story about her.” Even now, he said, “I don’t want to get too negative.” Then he added, “I think, as I’ve evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears … the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects may have been there … ” His voice trailed off. “I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better.”

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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/sarah-palin200908?printable=true¤tPage=all

and none of us were sure how many of them there were out there, especially after so many people were so disappointed when Hillary was out.

pumas who then went for mccain and his untrusty sidekick, palin..

Who was that tool? Lady somebody who made a big show of taking her marbles and going south?

:(

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8503167

that..any kind of "deals" palin got..she brought on herself..another one of those who is her own worst enemy.

Yes, she's a blithering idiot and yes, she could have spelled doom for the Dems. Why do you think those things are mutually exclusive?

IMHO, if the economy hadn't tanked when it did, she could be VP or even President (McCain doesn't look so good) right now.

The Repub base is filled with idiots just like her...the kind of people who walk around with a stuffed monkey named "Obama". Or folks who let their other brain make their voting decisions.

I shudder to think of her running in 2012. A significant percentage of Americans are incapable of recognizing stupidity when it's staring them in the face.

she can't recover IMHO. I'd relish her running again, because everyone would have a field day with it.

I took my first drink in 10 1/2 years watching her speak at the Republican convention. At that point we knew very little about her and it seemed McCain had found the magic bullet. She went over so well and was such a novelty I was afraid we were indeed doomed. Fortunately, I could see AA from my house.

not much of her other shit lies, either. I know what my psyche can take.

Her type is a dime a dozen.

reason to be concerned because the corporatemediaWHORES have a way of propping of Blithering Idiots and shoving them down America's throat.

The mediawhores couldn't even save palin.

I personally think the economy and some bad press saved us from her victory. When she was first picked, the MSM got all excited and breathless about how wonderful she was. It took a few good questions from Charlie and Katie, along with the uncanny impersonations by Tina Fey to make the press turn on her. If the MSM had continued to portray her as a no-nonsense, down-home, god-fearin' superwoman and the economy hadn't tanked right when it did, the election may have been close enough for the GOP to steal it again.

What a piece of work.

America is so lucky the Republicon Homelanders, their Chickenhawks, their perverted double-standard Family Values, and their overall Fail Freakery are in still the toilet where they crawled themselves with their lies, corruption, disrespect of our sons and daughters in uniform, and their gross incompetence.

Palin would have taken this Stinkin Republicon Mess -- and America with it -- to an even lower level...

but stupid lasts a lifetime.

;)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your GOP 2012 Presidential Candidate!

:rofl:

K&R, btw

I think if the economy is moving forward, we'd be looking at a LBJ-Goldwater or Nixon-McGovern type landslide.

I doubt she could surround herself with competent enough staff to run in the primary in every state.

programs love McCain, but he found himself in the national arena with someone who was more learned, better prepared, far more contemporary, far more capable of inspiring attention and trust, and far more agile with language and ideas.

The moment was Obama's. The pre-Eisenhower war hero was not a competitive national model against what Obama's community organizer model offered. A thousand Bob Schieffers would not dissuade a first-time voter in North Carolina or Indiana to cast a vote for John McCain when they had the choice of Barack Obama.

McCain was told he would lose this election if he chose someone else as his veep nom, but that he could make it a race if he chose Palin. He hardly knew who she was. They had met once or twice, very briefly. He was said to have strongly preferred Lieberman. It didn't seem to occur to him that even among Gore supporters in 2000, Lieberman was felt to be a questionable choice. I thought Gore would choose Kerry. Still think he should have.

You can't really blame McCain's crew for losing this election, since it was lost before it started, and generally Sarah Palin was a dime-store novelty. The foaming-at-the-mouth, foot-stomping GOP delegates on the tv screen from St. Paul loved her and someone had crafted a snarky, look-at-me speech for her to read off the teleprompter while Amy Goodman and her colleagues were being shoved around and arrested in the streets outside. We would expect the mentally unstable to stomp their feet and whoop it up when Palin said what she said, but the real arena was national, and the Democrats were offering one of the best choices ever.

She lifted McCain's chances for a couple weeks last fall. Then the engines dropped to the fields below and the aircraft lost altitude in a hurry.

My guess is that McCain, even if he had chosen Lieberman, would still have lost, but his staffers' swipes at Palin seem justified. She's a viable public servant in the same way a dessert cart carries nutriments.

wardrobe budget, it was a no-brainer, and I do mean 'no-brainer.'

all think she is essentially an over emotional, back stabbing idiot. Rethugs and Dems alike. Palin will never win higher office.

was one of three areas of the state that broke for Obama. It's more of a Union stronghold in the state than anything else.

thanks, izzy!

St Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville (a good portion of Kentucky) and Nashville are within about 150 miles.

By having a bigger area to draw for their event they can give the appearance of support for their cause.

it really says it all. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Stalin was a failed poet.

Hitler was a failed artist.

Palin was a failed sportscaster.

O'Reilly was a failed actor.

And on and on and on.

The archetype is "failed narcissist".

It's like the anti-intellectual American hero of 1940's Hollywood, under imagined attack from effete European sensibilities but always ready to plunge ahead with common sense on his side. RWers still believe this myth as a model for themselves and their leaders.

we're talking about the freakshows that gobble up rush limpbaughs.

But they had cut off the McCain part and proudly left the Palin part on the truck.

Freaks.

will lie to anyone else because she can.

"Then came the near-total meltdown of the financial system and McCain’s much-derided decision to briefly “suspend” his campaign. Under the circumstances, and with severely limited resources, Schmidt and the McCain-campaign chairman, Rick Davis, scrapped the Alaska poll and urgently set out to survey voters’ views of the economy (and of McCain’s response to it) in competitive states. Palin was furious. She was convinced that Schmidt had lied to her, a belief she conveyed to anyone who would listen."

I mean, come on. We know who you are. Just give up the ghost already.

It's pretty scary that Sarah thought the VP debate went so well that it "emboldened her". She strikes me as someone who very much believes her own hype.

The Big Guy probably doesn't need a ghost writer, I would reckon.