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Authors: John Heilemann

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At the same time, Palin was waging a persistent internal crusade to reverse one of the campaign’s major strategic decisions. On the day of the VP debate, McCainworld let it be known that it was pulling its resources out of Michigan, a key battleground state that it had determined was out of reach in the wake of the financial crisis. Palin had visited there more than once, thought she connected with its blue-collar voters and could put the state back in play, and lobbied to be allowed to return. When her traveling chief of staff, Andrew Smith, pointed out to her that McCain, Schmidt, and Davis had reached their conclusion on the basis of complex calculations involving the polls and the budget, Palin simply shrugged and uttered one of her signature phrases: “I know what I know what I know.”

Regardless of what Palin thought she knew, Schmidt and Davis turned her down flat about venturing back into Michigan. But Palin refused to give in, sending email after email suggesting ways that she could squeeze a visit to the Wolverine State into her schedule. “It’s a cheap four hour drive from [Wisconsin], I’ll pay for the gas,” Palin wrote to the senior staff on October 8. “I’d just be sleeping at that midnight drivetime anyway.”

She was emerging as a big-time control freak. With her family now accompanying her most everywhere, making air-travel logistics a pain, she directed the campaign to “schedule bus transportation instead of flights wherever possible, even if that means late night drives in the bus.” She became maniacal about monitoring her media coverage; she was constantly channel-surfing and blogosphere mining, and when she came across any mention that was less than flattering, she insisted that her staff try to have it corrected. Palin also showed an unusual wariness about the politicians and donors brought aboard her campaign plane and bus, insisting that she prescreen them before their seats were confirmed. “I want to google them myself so I can know my comfort level,” she emailed her team on October 9. “Photos, etc with them may come back to haunt me if I can’t vet these folks myself.”

Palin’s concern with such appearances was seen by some as an indication that she already had her sights set on 2012. But in truth, she and Todd continued to be far more preoccupied by her status in Alaska than just about anything else. Any issue related to the state put them on high alert, and incited some of their worst propensities toward parsimoniousness with the truth. On October 10, when the Alaska legislature issued a report on Troopergate stating that Palin had abused her powers but not broken the law, Palin proclaimed to reporters that she’d been cleared of all wrongdoing. When her staff told her she would have to walk back her statement because it wasn’t true, she said, “Well, why was I told otherwise?”—neglecting the fact that her talking points had made the results of the report quite plain.

A few days later, Palin got into a fight with Schmidt when she insisted that the campaign put out a statement denying Todd’s involvement in the Alaskan Independence Party. Palin contended that Todd had mistakenly registered with the party and rectified the error; she also claimed the party had nothing to do with secession. Schmidt curtly informed her that secession was the party’s reason for existence and that, according to the campaign’s records, Todd had been a member for seven years.

For Schmidt and Davis, Palin was a time sink the size of the Lake Eyre Basin. She pestered them with complaints that her schedules were so tight that she didn’t have time to get in a daily run. She never took no for answer; she just kept asking different senior staffers until she found someone who told her what she wanted to hear. Every media opportunity put before her produced a conniption.

In mid-October, Palin was considering an offer to do a guest spot on
Saturday Aight Live.
Schmidt was in favor, saying it would show the country that she could laugh at herself. After watching some clips, Palin was chary. “I had no idea how gross ‘celebrities’ could get,” she wrote in an email to HQ. “These folks are whack.”

Palin eventually came around and did the program on October 18. The moment that everyone was waiting for was fleeting. She and Tina Fey crossed paths briefly on-screen but spoke not a word to each other. Even so, the charge from it was electric, and rightly so.

For all the emphasis McCainworld had placed on Palin’s big three image-making challenges, none of them had done as much to shape public perception of her as Fey—and Couric. Pop culture has always been a part of presidential contests, but never before had there been anything quite like the Fey-Couric double act: two uptown New York ladies working independently but in tandem, one engaged in eviscerating satire, the other in even-handed journalism. The composite portrait they drew of Palin was viral and omnipresent. The sparkle of celebrity made it irresistible, and devastating. Faced with the footage of Reverend Wright, Obama was able to slay the dragon with his words. Faced with Fey-Couric, Palin was powerless. Everything she did or said only fed the beast. By the time she went on SAL, the definitional war over her had ended. She retained the ardor and loyalty of her fans, who continued to turn out for her, root for her, and defend her. But in the eyes of the broader public—and even more so those of the national media and political Establishments—any traces of her image as a maverick reformer had been erased. For them, Palin had been reduced to nothing more than a hick on a high wire.

ROGUE AS SARAH PALIN may have gone that October, she didn’t have a monopoly on the practice, even among running mates. The debate aside, Biden had basically been coloring outside the lines since the Democratic convention. With the Palin tornado making so much noise and kicking up so much debris, it just wasn’t nearly as noticeable—until, one day, it was.

In an effort to demonstrate his commitment to being a team player, Biden told Obama when he accepted the VP slot, “I’ll do anything you want me to do, but there are two things I won’t do: I won’t wear a funny hat and I won’t mess with my brand.”

The Biden brand meant a great deal to Joe, almost as much as the Biden name. To him, the brand was about substance, about truth-telling, about making hard choices even if they were politically awkward or painful. Biden thought of it as a Democratic version of the McCain brand—the old McCain brand, that is.

But what Biden quickly discovered was that Obama’s policies were awfully thin, not terribly specific, more rhetoric than substance. Right after the convention, at a prep session at his house in Wilmington for an appearance on
Meet the Press
, Biden listened to a bunch of the Obamans talk him through the Democratic ticket’s position on taxes. “That’s our policy?
That’s
our policy?” he said incredulously. “Well, it’s your campaign. I’ll say what you want me to say. But after Election Day, all bets are off.”

Then one day in the middle of September, a disturbing bulletin reached O-Town. Apparently, Biden had been hanging around with the reporters in the back of his new plane, running his mouth about how he was more qualified to be president than Obama. On paper, of course, it was arguably true. But that didn’t make it go down any easier with the suits; actually, it struck a nerve. Axelrod was a fan of Joe’s, but this made him angry. He and Plouffe had warned Biden about precisely this kind of scenario that August day in Wilmington. Right out of the chute, Joe was breaking the deal they’d made.

A chill set in between Chicago and the Biden plane. Joe and Obama barely spoke by phone, rarely campaigned together. Not only was Biden kept off Obama’s nightly campaign conference call, he wasn’t even told it existed. (When the idea of having Biden join was put to Plouffe, his response was “Nah.”) A different daily call was set up for Joe, with the Davids, so they could keep a tight rein on him.

The frostiness soon began to run in both directions. Biden had an endless stream of complaints about Chicago. He was frustrated with the staff, didn’t like the advertising, didn’t love how he was being deployed. After his comments about being more qualified than Obama, his access to the press was severely limited, and he didn’t like that, either. Are you part of the Chicago team or are you on my team? Biden would ask new staffers dispatched to join his road show. Are you with me or are you with them?

Then the cold war turned icy, when Biden started making public gaffes, some politically maladroit and some just plain goofy. In the span of a few days in late September, he equated paying higher taxes with patriotism; made a comment at odds with Obama’s position on clean coal; and offered a historical reference to the 1929 stock market crash in which he said that FDR was then the president (it was Hoover) and went on television (which hadn’t yet been invented) to soothe the nation. In an interview with Couric, Biden was asked about an Obama TV ad that knocked McCain for being computer illiterate. “I thought that was terrible,” Biden said. “I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it.”

In Chicago, irritation mounted over Biden’s indiscipline—not least inside Obama, whose unflappability burst into flames when it came to his running mate. One night during a debate prep session, Obama approached one of his advisers and said grumpily, When are you going to fix this problem with Biden?

Joe’s insertion of both feet into his mouth on October 20 took the tensions into a new and nasty place. At a fund-raiser in Seattle, Biden seemed to be showing off for the wealthy donors, trying to impress them with his farseeing vision, his exclusive knowledge. (Also, he wasn’t at his sharpest; he was dog-tired and had a cold.) “Mark my words,” he told the muckety-mucks. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. . . . Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

On Obama’s nightly call, the candidate hit the ceiling. (Axelrod was already up there, needing to be peeled off, having let fly a string of F-bombs when he first found out what Biden had said.) “Golly, man!” Obama said, with more anger in his voice than “gollys” normally carry. He was, in fact, as pissed off as most people on the call had ever heard him, more so than he’d been at even the wickedest jabs from Hillary Clinton. “How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?”

Obama asked if Solis Doyle, Biden’s chief of staff, was on the call. “Yes, I’m here,” she said abashedly.

“Listen,” said Obama. “Tell Joe I love him. I love him. But he can’t be doing this.”

A couple of days later, Obama phoned Biden and laid into him. You’re supposed to have my back, he said, not be out there creating problems.

With two weeks to go before Election Day, Biden’s remark was gift-wrapped booty for the McCain campaign, a ready-made TV spot. And, indeed, soon after the comment, just such an ad hit the air, complete with Biden’s voice and pictures of terrorists and a frightened child. Its message spoke directly to the stubbornest doubts that some voters still had about Obama, and to their fears about the risks entailed in electing him.

More than that, though, what rankled Obama was that Biden hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone and apologize. Worse, Biden didn’t say that he was sorry when Obama called; he showed no remorse for his Seattle comments or understanding that they posed a real political problem.

Biden knew he’d screwed up, of course, but he went into a defensive crouch. He told his aides it wasn’t really a gaffe, that he was just speaking the truth—as the Biden brand demanded. He got a little chippy.

Well, gosh, Biden said. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t say anything about bitter people who cling to their guns and religion.

ON OCTOBER 22, PALIN ticked the box next to the only remaining network to which she had yet to grant a sit-down, NBC. After finishing her talk with anchor Brian Williams, she tapped out an email to the campaign’s senior staff that had an air of resignation and a certain poignancy. “Was not a good interview,” Palin wrote. “So hang on to your hat w[ith] the criticism and mocking that will ensue. Just a head’s up—doubt anything can be done about it—the gotcha questions started right out of the shoot and as usual I was perplexed at the whole line of questioning and I’m sure that showed through.”

Palin was still as rogue as ever, but the thrill was gone. The only pleasure she seemed to take was in her crowds; she worked her rope lines hungrily, for two hours at a time, lingering over every hand she touched. Otherwise, Palin was demoralized, isolated, and confused. On her plane, when confronted with an uncomfortable topic by her advisers, she was still dropping her head and refusing to respond, even as they stood there awkwardly waiting for a reply. She had no idea whom to trust anymore or really where to turn. On the day of the NBC interview, Politico broke a story that the RNC had spent $150,000 for clothing for her and her family. It was the first shoe to drop in what over the next week would become a hailstorm of expensive footwear. CNN reported that someone close to the campaign called her a “diva.” Politico reported that “a top McCain adviser” called her a “whack job.” The maelstrom not only eclipsed Biden’s mega-gaffe but signaled the death of whatever was left of Palinmania.

The invective was the visible outcropping of a deeper fault line. McCainworld had split into internecine factions surrounding Palin and her candidacy, roughly divided between those who still had faith in Palin and those who did not. The tensions were bursting forth in the form of proxy warfare in the media, infuriating McCain. Schmidt and Davis ordered the campaign’s email system searched to determine who was behind the snipes in the press. Palin’s loyalists on her plane pointed at Nicolle and Mark Wallace for the “diva” comment. In fact, the source was veteran Republican fund-raiser and strategist Wayne Berman, a close friend of McCain’s.

Palin had long since lost faith in McCainworld. She felt belittled and lectured to by the senior staff; whenever an aide told her Schmidt was waiting to talk to her on the phone, Palin’s reflexive reaction was, “Do I have to?” She was raising so much money for the campaign and drawing such mammoth crowds, yet she received no respect in return. If I’m doing all this, she would ask, why can’t I have input? Increasingly, she was a picture of isolation, either listening to her iPod or surfing cable channels on her seatback TV on her plane. When politicians or donors traveled with her, she rarely spoke more than a few words of greeting to them; she stared at her speech text and avoided engagement.

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