Meghan McCain - Dirty Sexy Politics

Obama was unbeatable, in my opinion. I believe that my father’s running mate—while she changed so many things about the race—had no bearing on the outcome of the election. Obama was just too appealing, a new messiah—a young, smart, good-looking politician who represented everything that George W. Bush didn’t.

THE ELECTION LEFT ME SHATTERED FOR A WHILE. I spent two months in my pajamas, pretty much, at home in Phoenix, a luxury that wasn’t afforded my dad, who was back in his office in Washington almost immediately, catching up on his Senate obligations.

When I wasn’t fogged out and numb, I wallowed in waves of dread and panic, and an unattractive fury, like something terribly unfair had happened in the world. It wouldn’t have been a good thing to mention president-elect Barack Obama to me during that time.

I didn’t know how my dad went on, plowing ahead without complaint. That’s how he is. His interest in rehashing was zero. The rest of my family was moving on too, or trying. My mom plunged into charity work. My sister, Bridget, had school to focus on, as did my brother Jack, who was in his last year at the Naval Academy. Jimmy had been deployed, and was overseas on a ship. I was jealous of their commitment to things, and that they had duties and plans.

Not me. The only duty I had was the blog. But I was avoiding that. I kept telling myself that I would do a final post about election night, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I couldn’t put those sad pictures on the Internet, or even write about it. My feelings were still too raw and my heart just wasn’t in it. As much as I wanted to pull the plug on McCainBlogette, I couldn’t come up with a good game plan about how to do it. So instead, I just let it die off, a slow death.

Graduating from college leaves a lot of people at a crossroads. I had heard stories about friends who fell apart, felt lost or full of dread during their first year out. There was a hole—and too many choices—after years of working hard in a formal setting of a classroom, with the predictable schedule of lectures, tests, finals, the next semester always coming up.

Now the question facing me was the very thing that I had escaped by joining the campaign. What was I going to do with my life? What did I want? I never put it into words like that. It was mostly a feeling of emptiness. The hurricane was over, I had survived, and now what was I supposed to do?

A bunch of nothing is what I did. I slept in. I watched a ton of TV. I went out with friends and drank red wine. I walked our dogs. I rediscovered yoga and dating and getting to wear consistently clean clothes. Looking back, I’m sure I was depressed and exhausted, and my body was trying to readjust to normal life. Except, nothing seemed too normal anymore.

AT CHRISTMAS, I WENT ON VACATION WITH MY FAMILY. It was the first time we were all together since election night. Only a few months before, it had been hard to be physically near my dad, or be alone with him, because of the pressure of the campaign, his grueling schedule, and the omnipresent Secret Service agents. But suddenly it was like old times, just the six of us traveling in a pack again.

It is weird to go on a trip with my father. People don’t know how to treat an ex-presidential candidate. There is an awkward reaction to seeing him in person, and not surrounded by a bunch of handlers or Secret Service agents. The fact that he is surrounded only by my mom and me, my brothers and sister, is jarring for people. Maybe they are so used to seeing him on TV that they think he must go on vacation with the hosts of Meet the Press and This Week .

People always say they voted for my dad too. Wherever we go, no matter what, they’ll say that. He’s a famous politician, so they want to get up close and talk to him, but once they do, they can’t think of anything else to say except that they voted for him, even if they didn’t.

At Christmas, at LAX, where we were waiting for a flight, there was more commotion around him than usual. The election had only been seven weeks before and was still fresh in people’s minds. Crowds formed around him, and people expressed emotion, and sometimes it felt very raw.

Even now, when people come up to me and say that they wish my father were president because “everything would be so different,” it is hard to know what to say. They like to tell me why he lost—all of their theories—and blame it on Sarah Palin or George Bush. Meeting me, I guess, brings up strong feelings about politics and the campaign, about my dad, about Obama and his administration. They project their emotions and feelings on me, and I understand that. But it is difficult for me, too, and was especially so after the election.

All I wanted to do was forget about it. Like my dad always does, I wanted to do my best to move on.

But to what?

SINCE THE ELECTION, I HAVE FOUND MYSELF RELATING to my dad in so many new ways—and admiring what he has brought to politics and the party over the years. He has made a career of thinking for himself, and not accepting the status quo or groupthink. That’s what got him the reputation for being a maverick.

But when I thought back on the campaign, and my own behavior, I cringed. There were things that I wished I’d done differently, and lots of things I wished I had never said. I’m not sure I handled the pressure and intense emotion as well as I could have. If only I had been more grown-up, or even just five years older.

Looking back, I believe a lot of my frustration was due to the constrained bubble world of a national campaign. I had been raised to speak my mind freely and be independent. If there was one thing that my dad wanted for me—and all his kids—it was to be strong, think for ourselves, and support ourselves. We were never supposed to rely on government or family money or a trust fund to take care of us. We were supposed to work, make a life for ourselves, and find a way to make things better around us.

But a national presidential campaign has to put forward one candidate—one agenda, one message, one set of views. The family of the candidate isn’t supposed to disagree or offer alternatives. The spouses of the candidates have to remain pretty silent—and just go along with the script. My mom is miraculously good at this. But even an old hand at politics, like former president Bill Clinton when campaigning for his wife in 2008, gets in trouble if he says too much.

I understood the reasoning. In the white noise rising from the campaign and all the candidates participating, it is important to hear each candidate loudly and clearly. My father was running for president, not me or my mom. And it was important for voters to really know him, and his views. If there was a chorus of dissenting opinions or different voices emerging from the campaign, his voice would get drowned out.

And then there was the Republican Party to consider. It was one thing to toe the line for my dad, who loved and appreciated and respected me—in spite of our differences. I could do that. But it was another to toe the line for a party that I felt increasingly alienated from.

More than anything, the campaign experience had opened my eyes to the inner workings and culture of the Republican Party. It had its own platform and agenda and base. And increasingly, this base was becoming narrower and narrower. It was no longer the party of the individual.

It was no longer the party of fiscal conservatives. George Bush had grown the federal budget in an unprecedented way. Under his leadership, it had moved farther and farther Right too, and was now a huddling mass of groupthinkers. The base, although critical of Bush, was spending all its time in a corner—a Far Right corner—and as far as I could tell, if it wanted to keep losing elections, it should stay there. It was becoming unappealing to moderates and people of my generation, who were now passionately politicized and voting in record numbers. And it was completely unappealing to the cross-over electorate who had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1981.