McCain's Steve Schmidt meets the press on Sarah Palin, as if by chance

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- One by one, two by two, then in quick streams, reporters Monday noon rushed down a curtained corridor on the print media floor at the Republican National Convention to swarm around one of the baldest men on the planet.

They couldn't believe their eyes. Just an hour or so after the bombshell news was put out by John McCain's campaign about the pregnancy of Gov. Sarah Palin's teenage daughter, there was the actual campaign manager himself, Steve Schmidt, walking right by.

He was quickly swarmed by media representatives with tiny tape recorders doing what excites them most, chasing a breaking news story on a day they thought would be dull.

Patiently, by and large, he answered question after question, some of them several times, pausing to appear to think as he crafted his responses. (See video below.)

Finally, after nearly a half-hour of pushing and shoving and competing to get questions in, Schmidt said he had to go. And walked off with a squad of newly-appointed Palin aides who'd been standing by not smiling.

The excited media, now fed new details, rushed off to write their stories and flash them out to the world.

Precisely as Schmidt hoped they would.

It was a classic, illustrative and instructive case of political damage control. Weeks ago one of the first things out of Palin's mouth when....

...she met with the McCain campaign's vice presidential vetter was word of her daughter's condition and her husband's DUI arrest in the 1980s.

Schmidt has known since then that if his boss picked the Alaska governor as the running mate, it had better be the McCain campaign that got the bad news out. And got it out its own way at its own time.

They well know the many lessons of politicians who thought they could keep secrets hidden at least until after an election, only to have enemies leak selective details at the worst-timed moments. For example, Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000, who hadn't even told party lawyers about his DUI offense years before in Maine.

Fox News' Carl Cameron was tipped and broadcast the embarrassing story about five days before the election. Bush had been comfortably ahead in Maine before the revelation. He lost that state's electoral votes on election day, which is the only reason that Florida's hanging chad and the Supreme Court became important.

Barack Obama's campaign was so worried about the militantly outspoken Rev. Jeremiah Wright's public relations impact that it disinvited the Obama family pastor from the senator's presidential candidacy announcement in February 2007. The  candidate hoped that Wright's racist and anti-American sermons would go unnoticed, which, of course, they did not.

A year later the shocking videos came out. The candidate tried to stand by Wright, who went out and said more inflammatory things, finally forcing a break. But the damage had been done.

The young Palin's pregnancy would never be good news for a conservative Republican ticket, but it could be disastrous if Palin's many enemies back home put it out, say, in late October just days before the Nov. 4 balloting.

Many people believe Hurricane Gustav was a terrible break for the McCain campaign, disrupting a carefully choreographed convention and message themes like the Democrats acted out last week in Denver.

The storm was actually a perfect public relations storm for the McCain camp, the kind of gift that Michael Moore asked God for, only for a different reason. It allowed McCain to demonstrate a take-charge, executive attitude while the Obama ticket campaigned in Ohio.

It allowed McCain to visit the potential area with Palin for briefings, vowing no more Bushes, uh, no more Katrinas and ordering virtually all of the convention's first-day proceedings canceled out of nonpartisan support for the potential victims. What a guy!

This also just happened to eliminate an appearance at the McCain Show by a politically toxic President Bush. Hmmm, what a shame. The storm's potential impact and dramatic video also drew away from St. Paul all the network TV anchors, leaving the B teams behind on what was expected to be a slow, eventless holiday Monday.

By announcing the surprise Palin choice early Friday morning, the McCain camp had snuffed out after only 12 hours the exciting image of Obama's stadium fiesta in Denver. It got a gush of two days' excitement from the conservative base, which had had doubts about Johnny.

Now we all know why Gov. Palin had no public events scheduled for Monday and why her husband Todd took all the children back home away from the spotlight Sunday night.

Monday morning, when least expected, the news release about the pregnancy went out, causing quite a commotion and extinguishing the planted online rumors that Sarah Palin's recent pregnancy was faked to cover up the pregnancy of her daughter, now a reported five months along on a real birth.

Schmidt's seeming spontaneous appearance in the convention's media area allowed him to elaborate on the news release the way he wanted to elaborate on it with his carefully formulated responses.

Some conservative family groups, now with their own stake in Palin, issued immediate statements of sympathetic support. And even Obama, noting that his mother had him as a teen, said family matters should remain private and out of political bounds.

Millions of Americans were closing up summer homes, preparing for school this morning, returning from the beach and generally paying no attention at all to the news on the last holiday of summer.

And because Schmidt's press encounter occurred unannounced in the print area, there were no TV cameras to create those annoying video loops for replaying a thousand times later as negative reminders.

Assuming the McCain camp knows all the adverse Palin news and got it all out at once, by late September this soap opera mini-chapter will be as old, superseded and forgotten as the bad news stories from last spring that we can't remember what they were right now.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Ticket Video by Andrew Malcolm   

Pictured: Steve Schmidt

Photo credit: Matt Sayles / Associated Press

Comments

[Dan Rains]

If this were Iran, Sarah Palin's daughter would have been knocked-off by her fathers and her brothers for disgracing the family. This is a fact. And Sarah Palin herself believes that getting an abortion should be a crime. Does anyone see the problem here? Take off your frickin' Republican-colored glasses long enough to see how Taliban all of this is. Someone save America from these seriously screwed-up people!

[Edwin]

People are not attacking Palin's daughter, they are rightly pointing out the hypocrisy of a Republican establishment that has advanced the politics of character assassination and undermined the Freedom of Religion in pursuit of power. The internet should be replete with apologies from Republicans for allowing their party to bludgeon fellow Americans with some Biblical passages when politically expedient, while not doing so with other passages like those on fidelity, fornication, shell fish, swine, and indentured servitude. Christian Fundamentalists in the Republican Party and Media that want to impose their particular religious interpretations on others can't have it both ways:

Either, a pregnancy is a personal matter SEPARATE from government (as most open minded freedom loving Americans argue), or it isn't.

Christian Fundamentalists want to impose non-medical/religious-only beliefs on people outside of their church in a nation where your pledge of allegiance means you swear not to do that. By advocating the imposition of her spirituality into law, Palin invited us to do something we shouldn't have to: to examine the consequences of the imposition of Palin's religious beliefs on those of us who don't share those beliefs. Hypocrites deserve worse than being put in front of a mirror that reflects all the "family values"/"I'm more Christian than you" that were used to distract the nation from a rational and substantiated discussion on issues that are most deserving of our attention.

Christ was the first to advocate a separation of church and state when he declared "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s" (Matthew 22:21, see also John 18:36). Don't you dare use him to hide your lack of integrity,self-reflection, and moral courage. Not even someone who Christian Fundamentalists believe is fit to run the country and pick Supreme Court justices; who embodies their "Christian Values"; is able to keep her adolescent daughter abstinent. If you don't want people to look at how well the politics that puts "abstinence-only education" ahead of adolescent welfare worked out for your daughter, do us all a favor, mind your own business and remember your oath to uphold the Constitution means real American patriots would sooner die than allow their or anyone else's religious-only beliefs to be forced onto others.

[Frank]

There was no chance Palin's daughter's pregnancy would not have hit the news almost immediately. If you look at the photos of her in profile at the Ohio VP announcement, she is visibly pregnant. That must be why she is draped with the huge baby blanket and holding Trig, to hide her bump. I did think it was odd that the proud father Todd left her the honors when it must have been the most important photo-op of his life.

[maz hess]

palin was a member from the alaskan secession.

[Deborah Dean]

Holy cripes, are you kidding me? If anyone had bothered to vet Sarah Palin they would have known all this. It isn't just the current "Trooper Investigation" or the daughter being pregnant, or the rumor about the 4-month old baby being Bristol Palin's child, or the drunk driving incident, or the $27 million dollar earmarks for a town of 6,000 people, it's ALL OF IT! I don't like dirty politics, not one little bit, and I don't like having families, especially their children, brought into it, but what does it say about John McCain's judgement when he could have chosen anyone of a dozen qualified Republicans with tons of experience and he yet he chose this woman and all her baggage? And what kind of woman drags her 17-year old daughter, who is already going through enough, into the harsh spotlight of a U.S. Presidential political campaign? What kind of a mother would do that? And what kind of a mother goes running all over the United States and leaves her 4-month old Downs Syndrome baby to be cared for by her husband, who has three other children to take care of, one of which is a 17-year old, unmarried daughter who needs all the love and supoort that two parents can give her? Michelle Obama, who is only the "wife" of one of the candidiates, spends one day a week campaigning and even then, her mother takes care of her girls. George and Laura Bush wouldn't let a spotlight near their girls. But Sarah Palin is a spotlight-grabbing, selfish, thoughtless, publicity-hungry narcissist who said she cares about the people of Alaska, . . . that is untl 18 months later a better offer came along. Shame on her for even accepting this nomination and shame on John McCain for even asking her!

[MrBruAl]

Mr. Frederick:
It's the same old Watergate question: what did McCain know, and when did he know it? If he didn't know about Palin's lovegrandchild, what kind of vetting did his people do? If he did know, what kind of politician would deliberately put an unwed teenage mom through this kind of s___storm? Either way, he's screwed. Let the deathwatch for the Palin candidacy, and hence McCain's own, begin.

[ericmiami]

This gives new meaning to the term "soccer mom." The girl's pregnancy is not the issue. McCain's and Palin's judgment is. What kind of mother would parade her daughter's indiscretion before the world's press?

[dave]

the whole soap opera of these elections will not be forgotten, in this generation's lifetime - as they see the whole charade, not only this isolated portion, aimed at offering entertaining distraction and diversion from the underlying issue: both preselected candidates of the major parties are not the people's choice, and do not represent them, nor their interests. they do not qualify, and are not eligible by law. they represent the lowest common denominator, in a race to the bottom; they represent two varieties, of the same vile, stale corporate fascist rule of leeching profiteers and mobsters that have hijacked both parties, and the government. their agenda is the destruction of the people's rights and liberties, and of the nation's sovereignty. many people are aware though, of the struggle going on; and of RON PAUL's peaceful rEVOLution, and his republican convention in minneapolis - that's not televised, but still the real one, representing the constitutional core majority of the republican party, and the people of america. while the delegates deliberate with their conscience, a nation is waiting in breathless anxiety. the party is not over.

[Ann]

Liars the entire lot of them.

They did not know, but by the party having to be spin masters they knew what to do and did it to minimize the hits they had been delivering to Obama and Michelle in the past few months.

NOW THE FAMILY IS OFF-LIMITS...HYPOCRITES!

[Gorefan]

While troopergate and babygate are interesting, the real problem for McCain/Palin will be earmarkgate.
I suspect that in the next few days, McCain will reverse his long held position that all earmarks are wrong. Since Palin has been using earmarks for a number of years both as mayor and govenor (todays LA Times), it will seem hypocritical for her to oppose other small town mayors or governors from using the same system that benefited her.

[BBox]

Senator McCain completely misses the point on why so many people in this country are energized by Senator Obama. We have had eight, agonizing years of a President whose gut decisions were never confused by reasoning or critical thinking, of a Commander in Chief who buddies up to a former KGB officer by “looking into his eyes and seeing his soul,” of a spokesman for our country who is so inarticulate he can’t speak with basic subject-verb agreement. We now have an incredibly intelligent candidate who can think, who can process complex problems and chose a course of action based on reasoned decisions, and who has repeatedly demonstrated in a bruising national election extraordinary qualities of organization, discipline and leadership.

Instead, McCain gambles the future of this nation by shooting from the hip and with a nakedly political move names an unqualified running mate who he hopes will appeal simultaneously to the disgruntled far-right conservatives and the disaffected Clinton progressives. He claims, incredulously, that her time as a beauty-queen mayor in a town of 8,000 (and who as a Creationist not only believes the earth was created in six days but supports teaching the same religious dogma in your child’s science class) is the intellectual equivalent to being President of the Harvard Law Review. McCain chooses political theater over national security by professing his future Vice President’s executive experience fighting for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has prepared her for being one heartbeat away from taking on a belligerent Iran, an unstable Pakistan, a resurgent Russia and an unfinished Iraq.

The prime requirement of a Vice President is readiness to step into the office of President at a moment’s notice. Period. As a former naval aviator, it is unconscionable that Senator McCain would take an enormous tactical risk that leaves the nation without a parachute.

[Jesse Tomblin]

All this so called News about the Palins is just more of the LIBERAL bent of the So called Media.I notice that none of them have said one word about the LIES of Obama and Biden.But I shouldn't expect them to since it is only news if they start telling the TRUTH to America.Leave history and private matters of a candidates life out of the news and start reporting facts like REAL reporters all the media spend to much time stating opinion and not enough on the facts.

[Bernie Meyer]

Amazing that the MSM splashes Gov. Palin's personal family story on it's newspapers and network screens but they can't find anything to report on Obama, William Ayers ant the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Stanley Kurtz is going through 140 boxes of records from the failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Can't you picture Kurtz sitting by himself going through those records, that Obama tried to keep sealed, wondering WHY no other reporters were interested in this HUGH story? Then picture the hordes of MSM chasing a seventeen year old trying to find out about her pregnancy?
Will anything not shame them into investigating Obama?

[Staggslaw]

Did Palin oppose the Bridge to Nowhere only after it was already going to fail as a purely political ploy? What did she have to say about it earlier in the process? Does her participation in the windfall taxing of big oil, and the redistribution of the proceeds to Alaskans, disprove her fiscal moderation, or was that just another ploy to buy good approval ratings, tolerated by her big oil friends for future rewards? Did McCain panic, and roll the dice, apparently his favored leisure past-time, on an unknown untested female running mate, for no other reason than she is female and might attract disaffected Hillary voters, and how does that reflect on his judgment in a crisis? These are legitimate issues. On the other hand, families, especially children, should be off limits, unless it really is an issue that raises legitimate questions about the judgment of the candidate, or the candidate who chose the candidate. This should be the test for whether or not the media or either campaign should elevate the rantings of anonymous bloggers to the much more public stage. In my view a 17 year old's unwed pregnancy does not pass that threshold, but because it was inevitable in our society that it would become news, the judgment question is fair game. Obama promptly and unambiguously declared the issue off limits. The McCain people are using it as a foil, lashing out at any who would raise the issue as supposed Obama surrogates. Had they simply included it in the initial bio of the Palin family, this would not be an issue, but they chose not to do so. By doing so, they would have taken the air out of the sails of the anonymous bloggers, be they Obama fans or Trojan horse McCain supporters. Having not paid much attention this weekend, I am curious, and invite an answer, whether the media, and which media, raised this issue from the blogs before the McCain campaign announced it. Now that it's out there, though, I do believe it further raises the issue of McCain's judgment in choosing Palin and in announcing her without saying "and her eldest daughter is pregnant," and I do have to wonder if it is not fairly a matter of concern to many voters if many opposed to sex education are also more likely to parent unwed teenage daughters. Opposition to planned parenthood is a central plank of the Republicans and of Palin, and those who believe preaching abstinence is not enough to prevent unwed teenage pregnancies are not attacking the child merely by questioning the political views of the parent.

[Natasha Jacobs]

The Vice President serves as the president of the Senate and may vote in that chamber in the case of a tie. As such, the vice president has both influence in matters before the Senate and legislative power. At the behest of the president, the vice president can also push for the president’s nominees to the federal courts and federal departments.

Sarah Palin was picked for the job because of her position on family value issues; the issues that Christian social conservatives want to thrust into the the business of government and onto the citizenry. She was picked to secure the critical “bibles. babies, and bullets” Roverian base that constitutes roughly 30% of GOP voters. In short, she was specifically picked to promote and impose her particular moral system on the rest of us.

Palin and those like her chose long ago to make the personal political. To give her a pass on her personal family issues isn’t kindness or decency, it’s moral and civic cowardice. The ugly truth of the Sarah Palin’s in our society isn’t that “We can’t control what our children do.” It’s that they absolutely want to control what my children do.

[chris]

Let me get this straight, Sen. Obama is held accountable for what other adults that he has no control over says but this woman is not to be held accountable for what a child in her house does?

Michelle Obama's comments can be used against Sen. Obama but Cindy McCains drug stealing, and Mr. Palins drunk driving are not relevant?

It is okay for repubs to make the private sexual affairs of millions of women a political issue but her own child having unprotected, prematial sex and spitting out babies while she is still a baby is a private family matter.

You neo-cons are masters of hypocrisy!

[Bob]

One thing is for sure - Jeremiah Wright is a lot more relevant as a periphery issue to the USA presidential campaign than the teenage daughter of a candidate boinking her boyfriend under cover of a frigid Alaska night.

However, it would have probably been easier to leak this into the local Alaska media a week ahead of Palin's appointment, muting the effect, than having it suddenly sprung onto the national stage, where it looks like a quasi-secret as a result, irrelevant as it is.

[Wake up]

HELLO!!

The question that is not being asked is, "What kind of parent would KNOWINGLY choose to subject their teenage daughter to this type of magnifying glass at a such a trying time?
Do a survey and check the responses.
John McCain and Gov. Palin KNOWINGLY put this poor girl it this situation just to get a "bump" in the polls.

[Lynn Rossiter]

I am just going to respond to the last comment - Bristol is no longer available for comment - she's back in Alaska with her FATHER. She is loved and has made a mistake. END OF STORY. GET OVER IT!

[Rick]

> "Monday morning, when least expected, the news release about the pregnancy went out, causing quite a commotion and extinguishing the planted online rumors that Sarah Palin's recent pregnancy was faked to cover up the pregnancy of her daughter, now a reported five months along on a real birth."

Andrew, please elaborate on your information that the rumor was 'planted'.

I haven't tried to track this down, but most of the reports I've seen suggest that posters at the Daily Kos with backup from Andrew Sullivan broke the rumor, which apparently had been in circulation in Alaska for some time.

[Jeannie Jackson]

Watching the video from a POW who was there with McCain, he stated McCain lost a temper a lot, and watching Katie Couric interviewing his campaign strategist, Steven Schmidt, he sure showed he has a temper quite similar to Mr. McCain--one that if I were in the same room with, I"d go home and take a nap--both boring old men. As for Palin and her "troopergate," she had already proceeded in the direction of politics as usual; and as I heard on TV from a lady back East, "She can't control her daughter, how can she control a nation?"

[Nate]

I don't have a bunch of political venom to spew. I just thought somebody should comment on the writer Andrew Malcolm. This was a good article and informative. It told me something that I haven't already heard or heard speculated on. I like the writing style, too. A+

[Chris Morton]

So Steve Schmidt says that questions about Palin's background are over. To hell with him. Palin is a nothing and needs to be exposed as such.

So the potential Palin pitter-patter of little bastard feet in the White House is something the people should ignore as personally private? "Family values" is a conservative Republican plank, is it not? Does the Palin teen pregnancy show anything at all about the ability of Mom to teach and maintain the Christian family values she says she embraces or any values at all for that matter? Is the Alaska investigation into Palin potentia/possiblel criminal family behavior also personally private? Did old man McCain choose Palin without much thought or clear analysis but because she is a religious conservative or because she could be president if his early onset dementia gets worse (perhaps he should take a pre-presidential trip to Yugoslavia)? Was his choice the best, given the current country needs: severe economic problems, international relations deterioration, educational deterioration (and she is a creationist!), severe health problems? Did not Palin say that she knows nothing (that is NOTHING) about international affairs? Is Palin the best person to run three wars in progress (terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan), and two more possible wars (Iran and N. Korea) because she has been the "commander" of the Alaska National Guard for a little over one whole year? Is Palin able to negotiate with foreign leaders like Putin? A few more things pop up now - what else will there be? Do they show what a wonderful potential president Palin is and what a smart McCain selection she is?:

_Palin sought pork-barrel projects for her city and state, contrary to her reformist image.
_Her husband once belonged to a fringe political group in Alaska, with some members supporting secession from the United States.
_A private attorney is authorized to spend $95,000 to defend her against accusations of abuse of power.
_She has acknowledged smoking marijuana in the past.

Isn't Palin a marvelous candidate for the Republicans? Is she obviously the best Republican for the job? Is this all the Republicans can pull out of their hat?

In their support of Ms. Palin are the Republicans being completely truthful and honest? Are they really happy with her? Are they really excited by her? Is Ms. Palin a reliable candidate? Is Ms. Palin capable of being the President of the United States? Can Ms. Palin be trusted? While, in word, Ms. Palin embraces Christian conservative Republican values, but do her actions show these values? Indeed, by nominating such a creature is McCain really showing his love for his country by doing his "best" for the country?

[Patty Lucas]

I hope John McCain mentions that we don't really know what's behind all the flowery words from Barack Obama that people want so desperately to hear. What kind of change does he really want??? All indications are that he is a leftist radical that when he is elected, along with a Democratic Congress, could turn this country into a Socialist Dictatorship quite easily...And many will willingly drink the Koolaid to follow him. Many who don't know a thing about personal responsibility. When I was a college student, I loved all the flowery days that we lived in. Reality is much different. Truth is much different. We need reform, and everyone was enjoying the prosperity. But as they say, "Pigs get fed, and hogs get slaughtered". I just want to be sure that I don't get slaughtered by another Hitler or Castro seeking power...