Meghan McCain - Dirty Sexy Politics

THE SKY WAS DARK AND CLEAR. AS WE WALKED ONTO the stage at the Biltmore, I looked up at the stars shining and they made me feel strong. Before us, the golf course of the hotel was a sea of people, mostly silent.

My dad started to speak. I looked at him standing next to Sarah Palin in her dark blue dress and thought, I have to remember this . I wanted to hold on to every single moment. The sky. The stars. The stage that was full of people I loved. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.

Dad was starting to look sad, but he would keep it together, he always did. When things were hard, he always said, “I’ve been through worse,” and I knew that he was talking about being a prisoner of war. Back in the apartment he had said how lucky he felt to be part of a small group of people who had become a nominee for president. He always held on to his perspective. He held on to things that were good.

My father’s speech was perfect, so beautiful, the most glorious concession speech, but listening to it was one of the hardest things I will ever have to do. Down below the stage, Heather was taking pictures of us—the way she always did—but her face was streaked with tears. I remember thinking how awful, how awful, this is all so awful , but at the same time thinking how beautiful too.

Caring about your country was beautiful. Finding hope in a leader was beautiful. Even losing was beautiful.

Then I looked out, beyond where Heather was, at the people gathered on the golf course to hear my dad. So many of them were crying; it was a sea of crying faces. I was so moved by this, so crushed, so happy. Look at how much people loved my dad, and loved politics, and loved this country. This counted for something. This counted for everything. There was so much love all around, and spirit, and faith. And I saw that I was lucky—so lucky—to be John McCain’s daughter and to have been a part of this, the pain and the beauty. And above everything else, I saw that God had a plan and my father being president of the United States was not a part of it.

I don’t really remember walking off the stage. Emotion can be like a drug and wipe everything out of your head. But I do remember being backstage and seeing Sarah Palin’s mother crying hysterically—wailing, and making loud sobbing sounds and hugging little Piper. It was hard to witness. All the other Palins had their game faces on. They knew what their job was. But Sarah’s mother couldn’t do it.

Then, for some weird reason, Sarah stepped back onstage by herself. She was waving to the crowd, saying hi to the cameras, almost as though she were in Alaska—not Arizona. What was she doing? I was shocked. It was as if she wanted to make the night about her, and not my dad. She was trying to have the last word, and the last wave.

What else did she want or need? What was driving her to do this? Possibly it was unconscious, this dramatic bit of upstaging, and she couldn’t see how it could look to us or anybody else. She was supposed to leave the stage, but she couldn’t go along with the plans, even then—even on the last night—and just follow my dad and the rest of us back to the hotel bungalow. She didn’t have a go-along side to her. And I saw something that I hadn’t really wanted to see before: Losing wasn’t an end for her. It was a beginning.

As for me, I was perfectly ready to say good-bye. Good-bye to the campaign. Good-bye to politics. Soon it would all be behind me. I told myself: My dad will never run for president again. I will never have to go through this again.

My father and family had given so much to the Republican Party over the years, but I didn’t want to give anything more. The party couldn’t see or admit how damaged it was. And I didn’t want to stick around and watch it—losing its way, forgetting its heart, missing its chances, and completely missing the point. That night I was standing at its funeral and saying good-bye.

Iwoke up alone and the apartment was quiet, an echoing silence. So this is what defeat is like, I thought. Nothing and nobody and no sound.

We hadn’t made plans for losing. In the mind-set of our family, if anybody had ever said, “This is what we’ll do after we lose,” it could have jinxed everything.

Plans for winning? Oh, we had lots of those. My father had spent the last two years talking about nothing else—all the things he was going to do when he won, the things to fix, the war, the economy, health care. But now the talking had stopped. The rallies were finished. And I woke up in my parents’ guest apartment in Phoenix alone in bed and wearing my gold glitter dress and a smeared game face of election night makeup. I looked like I had been in a car accident.

My pain was dull but throbbing somewhere, way down inside me, like somebody had given me a shot of Novocain directly into my heart.

Where were my friends? They had gone, scattered off. Last I’d seen them, after the concession speech, they had come with me to the hotel bungalow for an after-party, where the campaign staff had gathered, the aides, the Bus Nazi, the Groomsmen. I was just trying to get through it, and looked for people whom I needed to thank and say good-bye to, like my tireless web designer, Rob Kubasko. But I lost heart very soon. I didn’t even have the energy to drink much. I was too sad and in shock. I felt unreal, like a person I was watching in a movie.

Shannon, Heather, and Josh had already left by then. I assumed they had wandered back to the ballroom of the Biltmore, where a far larger mass of people—thousands of volunteers, staff, donors, coordinators, speakers, organizers—were doing a grieving/celebrating thing that just seemed way too painful for me. I was supposed to stop by. I said that I’d stop by. Instead, I had gone back to my parents’ apartment building and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

After a shower, I went downstairs in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and tried to find a car. I didn’t care whose car or what car. My parents and a bunch of campaign staff had driven up to our cabin in Sedona—either very late on election night or early in the morning. The doorman brought around a Toyota Prius, the only family car left, and I drove it straight to the Biltmore to find my friends. I was in a crazy mood.

I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want to see anybody either, except Shannon, Heather, and Josh. I needed them the way I’ve never needed friends before. But the press corps was staying at the hotel and, more than anything, I didn’t want to be cornered and have to try to talk graciously about what it felt like to lose.

No more fake stuff.

I was done with that.

But while I was looking for my friends, I ran into Kelly O’Donnell, a TV reporter from NBC, and thankfully one of the normal people. Kelly was very sweet and sensitive, I remember that. But I couldn’t wait to get away.

Shannon and Heather and Josh were in various states of fatigue and inebriation when I found them. They were starving, too. So I brought them back to the apartment and fed them lunch. They started talking about election night and the parties I had missed—the drinking, chain-smoking, the madness and crazy stuff.

I started feeling a little frantic, just thinking about all the people that I hadn’t said good-bye to. All the people I might never see again. People who had meant so much to me. All gone, disbanded, people whom I had loved, and hated, and loved hating. You know what I mean. They had been my family and my whole world for seventeen months.

I hadn’t done anything right.

I hadn’t thanked enough people, or hugged enough people. The ending had slammed me. I had just survived it—like some kind of explosion—and not thought about anybody else but myself. I wondered when that would stop. When I grew up?