This much we knew: Palin was a straight-shooting mother of five with sky-high approval ratings; typically levelheaded pundit Bill Kristol called her “my heartthrob.” And she was a dead ringer for Tina Fey.
I called Nicolle Wallace. I had recruited her to be a pundit at CBS but now she had a big job on the McCain campaign. “Talk to me,” I said. “Why Sarah Palin? That came out of nowhere.”
“We saw there was such excitement generated by Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” she explained as I furiously scribbled notes in the margins of my evening news script, “we wanted someone who could tap into that.”
That felt cynical to me—the assumption that Hillary supporters would vote McCain/Palin simply because there was a woman, any woman, on the ticket. Where Palin stood was definitely TBD.
Night three of the convention. The mood in St. Paul was giddy. The Republican faithful milled about, wearing GOP gear emblazoned with elephants and lots of red, white, and blue. It looked like the world’s biggest Fourth of July picnic, when in fact it was Sarah Palin’s coming-out party. Bob Schieffer and I watched from our booth as Rudy Giuliani delivered a red-meat speech, listing all the decisions Obama had apparently changed his stance on. “If I were Joe Biden,” he said, “I’d want to get that VP thing in writing.”
Nicolle stood just offstage with Palin, who was carrying a cup of tea and holding Nicolle’s hand for support. She said, “Do I have to go out there now?”
“You have to go out there now,” Nicolle answered. “You’re going to be great.”
An announcer worthy of the WWE introduced her. Palin let go of Nicolle’s hand, surrendered her cup of tea, and emerged from the darkness into the glaring lights and deafening roar of the convention hall.
I’ll never forget watching her walk across that stage. Not since Geraldine Ferraro strode out in her suffragette-white suit in 1984 had we gotten such a powerful hit of female energy at a national convention. The fact that she was also drop-dead gorgeous made Palin look like a gift from God. No matter where you stood politically, it was a breathtaking moment for women everywhere.
The jubilant crowd shrieked its approval before she’d even said a word, waving signs with messages like PALIN POWER and HOCKEY MOMS 4 PALIN. TV cameras homed in on her kids, her husband, Todd, holding their infant son, Trig. The applause lasted three minutes and 15 seconds.
Palin was a former mayor, a PTA member, and, yes, a hockey mom: “You know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” And here Palin pointed to her own mouth. “Lipstick!” The crowd went berserk.
About 30 seconds in, McCain, who was watching backstage with campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, said, “She’s good, she’s good.” A minute later: “Man, she’s great.” A couple of minutes after that, he looked at Schmidt, eyes wide, and said, “She’s fucking great, right?”
Palin took plenty of digs at Obama’s community organizing and positioned Michelle as unpatriotic for having said that, for the first time, she was proud of her country. Palin then praised the people who “grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” The crowd sent up its rafter-rattling approval.
Nicolle came by the CBS workspace looking elated, and rightly so （although she might also have been a little high on Vicodin—the ultimate multitasker, she’d tried to squeeze in a root canal between conventions）。
“What did you think?” she asked.
I had to hand it to her. “She was awesome,” I said. “Wow. You must be feeling really good about it.”
Nicolle told me that at a certain point, Palin’s prompter had been completely blocked by one of the huge signs people were waving.
“Oh my God,” I said. “What did she do?”
“She winged it,” Nicolle said. “She just threw in the pit-bull joke.”
Now, that was impressive.
Everyone in the media had underestimated Sarah Palin—myself included. The day of the announcement, while preparing an intro for a piece about her, I was reading some copy that mentioned her sons, Trig and Track.
“Where the hell do they get these names?” I said to a colleague, not realizing my mic was hot. Somehow the audio got out and circulated among right-wing news outlets, who’d later use it as proof that I was out to get Palin from the start.
WITH BOTH CAMPAIGNS in full swing, the fall of 2008 was go time. But the CBS Evening News was stuck in neutral. The ratings were struggling. I was struggling. I needed an attention-getting interview. I needed Sarah Palin.