When John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the summer of 2008, Sanjay was so agitated that he founded a not-for-profit organization to pursue his interest in spotlighting the growing political aspirations of the Christian right. I helped him get his tax-exempt status from the IRS, and strongly advised against the name he was considering, Theocracy Watch.
“Theocracy,” I argued, “is an egghead word. Ordinary people don’t know what it means. And besides, it doesn’t sound all that bad—kind of like ‘democracy.’ Also, ‘watch’ is too passive. Who wants to support an organization that only watches? You need to use a word like ‘campaign’—something active.”
Sanjay usually took all my advice seriously, so I really needed to be careful about what I said. He was earnest and apologetic when he told me he was sticking with Theocracy Watch.
“Sorry, G. Your points are excellent ones, and I considered them carefully. But there is no good synonym for theocracy. It is exactly the right word. All the alternatives suggest that I object to religion in general, or to religious people exercising political power, or to the advocacy of morality in politics or civil life. I do not oppose any of these things. The only problem I have is with a state where law and policy are based on divine revelation, and government officials purport to speak for God—a theocracy. And it
is
a ‘watch’—the purpose of my organization will be to watch and report. It will not be a campaign. I do not want to be politically active. I want to watch and then shine a spotlight on what they say and what they want. Only that is necessary. The people and the democratic political process will take care of the rest.”
And so, in the fall of 2008, Theocracy Watch was born, and what Emilie liked to call Sanjay’s “hobby” became his full-time job.
At the same time, he sold
You and I
to a tech fund for $400 million. The closing was only three weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and Sanjay put all the cash into treasury bills. He was now, without “striving,” wealthy beyond anything he could have imagined, or anything that I could hope to attain, even as a successful Wall Street lawyer. At the time I thought it highly ironic that he owed his fortune to the Alaska governor who worshiped at a dominionist-influenced church in Wasilla where worshipers spoke in tongues, who did not read books, and who epitomized the woeful ignorance of much of the extreme evangelical subculture. But for Sarah Palin being yanked from deserved obscurity, Sanjay would not have sold
You and I
before the market crash, would have labored in noble poverty, and would never have had the resources to mount the vigorous campaign he did against the theocratic effort. From that point in time, the fates of Sanjay and Sarah Palin were closely intertwined.
It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearless shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior.
—Ken Wilber,
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
She absolutely believes these are what the evangelicals call the Last Days. She absolutely believes … that the earth is six thousand years old and that dinosaurs and man once lived together. And she absolutely believes that Jesus will return to earth during the course of her life. These beliefs are at the core of everything she says and does. She is locked into that worldview. If you don’t appreciate how totally she is governed by these beliefs, you’ll never understand Sarah Palin. Sarah feels chosen. She feels called…. She knows herself to be on a mission from God…. [I]f you’re on a mission from God to destroy evil, there are going to be all kinds of expendables along the way. Collateral damage.
—Rev. Howard Bess, quoted in Joe McGinniss,
The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin
I want to be invisible. I do guerilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag.
—Ralph Reed, 1991
H
ALF THE NATION
WAS DISAPPOINTED
when the dream of an Obama presidency died. Although the popular vote was close, 51 percent to 49 percent, the entire nation was relieved that there was no replay of the electoral litigation drama of 2000. And though I had voted for Obama, I was content with the outcome. I believed that McCain was fundamentally a good man: experienced, independent, and well intentioned. I was hopeful that the McCain administration might even bring us a few years without the bitter partisan divide that characterized the Clinton and Bush years. Moreover, the continuing financial crisis was truly scary, and despite McCain’s apparent lack of economic savvy, I assumed that the Republicans would nonetheless be better stewards of financial markets and the economy. But none of us could have anticipated the bizarre way in which the McCain administration began and ended, or the disastrous start to Sarah Palin’s presidency.
The Palin factor had weighed on the minds of many Republicans during the election, myself included. Most of the Republicans I knew—the moderate types found in New York—believed that John McCain either had been careless to the point of negligence or had made a distasteful but perhaps clever bargain with the right wing of his party. It was a difficult subject to discuss. All Democrats, and a few of my Republican friends who had particular reasons to know something about Palin, were disdainful and, I could tell, genuinely disturbed by McCain’s choice of her. For them, politics seemed to have turned a corner. Never before had someone as ignorant, naïve, uncultured, and unprepared been elevated, for the most cynical reasons, to be a candidate for high national office. Never before had the voters seemed so mesmerized by the personal narrative of such a person, so driven by emotional appeal, and so accepting of a candidate with only the most superficial grasp of policy. But most Republicans I knew were willing to overlook it. After all, they said, both parties had a history of choosing “lightweights” for the vice presidency. This was the favored euphemism. Yes, she was a lightweight, but this was not enough to override their conviction that Barack Obama would surely raise their taxes.
“Don’t you understand,” said a partner I respected, “that this means money out of your pocket? Do you really want to be poorer?”
It was apparent from election night on that President-elect McCain and his running mate were not on good terms. She was not permitted to speak that night. The next day, the “McCain-Palin” campaign morphed into the coming “McCain” administration, with the word “Palin” never again appearing in a public statement or press release from the transition team. She was given no special assignment and no responsibilities, and she became invisible until the moment of the inauguration. She reappeared on the steps of the Capitol to be sworn in immediately prior to John McCain, and then again retired from public view. Although the press amused itself for a while speculating about the relationship between the two, they quickly tired of the story and settled into a “new normal” where the vice president was to be neither seen nor heard.
President McCain allowed his Treasury secretary to take the lead on the continuing fallout from the financial crisis, and decided to focus his own activity on foreign policy—his traditional area of strength. Relations with Russia having hit new lows during the second Bush term, the McCain team negotiated quietly with the Russians for a series of major cooperative initiatives, to be announced at the new president’s first overseas visit, to Moscow.
When President McCain left in early March 2009 on his first overseas trip, the vice president was not present at Andrews Air Force Base to see him off. The press, already accustomed to the invisibility of the vice president, hardly made any comment.
For whatever reasons, the Russian government did everything possible to flatter the new US president. Crowds lined the streets from the airport, and he was invited to address a joint session of the State Duma and the Federation Council. The speech must have been in midafternoon Moscow time, as I heard the news on the radio in the morning while shaving.
The seventy-two-year-old president walked to the podium looking vigorous. He delivered about three sentences of his remarks, paused, gripped the back of his head, and then crumpled to the floor unconscious. Surrounded by Secret Service, he was taken to the nearby Kremlin hospital by the ambulance always flown in on a presidential visit. A CAT scan revealed a cerebral aneurysm. Kremlin doctors, with the president’s doctor in attendance, opened his skull in an attempt to intervene, but the president was declared dead from massive cranial bleeding before the ruptured artery could be repaired.
I stayed at home with Emilie watching the endless video replay of the president collapsing at the podium and the scene of reporters mobbing the gates outside the Kremlin hospital. When the president’s American doctor emerged to announce McCain’s death, around nine in the morning in New York, I felt a grip deep in my gut and bent over slightly to relieve the pain.
Emilie, who focused intently on the unfolding story, did not notice my reaction. After a while, no new details were released and the coverage became completely repetitive. “I’m going to work,” Emilie said. “See you tonight.”
I too went to work, but not before calling Sanjay.
“San. What do you think?”
“It was my worst fear. And now that it has happened, it somehow feels like it was inevitable.”
His voice sounded weak.
“You OK?”
I heard a deep breath.
“Talk to you tonight” was all that he said in reply.
Not a lot of work got done that day. The firm tuned the plasmas in the conference rooms to CNN and allowed the lawyers and staff to watch. All the protocols for this situation had been executed efficiently. Palin had been spirited away to the White House Situation Room from her home at the Naval Observatory (where a cleaning lady later revealed that the vice president had been watching reruns of a television reality show,
Bridezillas
, and not the president’s address). One hour after the announcement of the president’s death in Moscow, Palin appeared on television reading remarks announcing that she had been sworn in as president by the chief justice, that all the cabinet members and Joint Chiefs not with the president in Moscow had gathered with her in the Situation Room, and that the US military had gone to DEFCON 4, as is prescribed by protocol, although no enhanced threat to the United States was known or anticipated.
By midday, the news coverage had shifted from the medical aspects of President McCain’s death to a considerable state of confusion over the location of his body. In these circumstances, everyone expected that the president’s body would be promptly removed to Air Force One and returned with the rest of the official delegation to the United States. The president’s staff, cabinet members, and others had returned to Vnukovo International Airport. The president’s doctor was apparently still at the Kremlin hospital, and none of the press had seen the president’s ambulance leave the facility.
At 5:00 p.m. on the East Coast, the Kremlin released a one-line written statement to the effect that under Russian law an autopsy and inquest were required before the president’s body could be released. These would be scheduled and conducted in accordance with normal procedures, and the public would be advised of the results when complete. In the meantime, the president’s body would remain in the custody of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Few people in the United States slept much that night. The Russians held the president of the United States, dead or alive, and refused to release him. Commentators speculated wildly on the motives of the Russian government in what could only be construed as a remarkably bold and aggressive affront to the United States. Experts explained how the international law of diplomatic immunity, if asserted, would exempt from autopsy or inquest a government official who died on the soil of another country. Others noted that wars had started over far less serious offenses. Congressmen advocated ultimatums. I thought that Putin and Medvedev were, in a typically Russian way, simply testing their new adversary, Sarah Palin.
The White House pressroom was in a state of near riot, with no spokesman emerging to speak for the new administration. Around midnight, the deputy press secretary, who had not traveled to Moscow, emerged, ashen faced, to announce that President Palin was in touch with Russian authorities and would have more to say in the morning.
But in the morning, the unthinkable happened. Instead of a statement from the White House, the website Wikileaks announced that it had secured two transcripts of the call from the night before between Presidents Palin and Medvedev—one in Russian leaked from the Kremlin, another in English leaked from the White House (the latter from a loyal McCain aide who had been one of the chief architects of the vice president’s invisibility). The two transcripts matched exactly:
“Mr. President, this is Sarah Palin.”
“Madam President, please accept my sincere condolences on the loss of your president. A terrible tragedy. And to happen here in Moscow, we are inconsolable.”
“Yeah, well, it was God’s will, ya know. So. I mean, um. I want to talk about the, you know, body.”
“Yes, Madam President.”
“Well, what’s this about not … about keeping it, uh, him. The American people want him. I mean, they want him to come home.”
“Ah. I’m afraid it’s the law, Madam President. Due to the circumstances of his death, an autopsy is required and then an inquest must be convened to determine the cause of death. I’m sure it will be quite routine; I understand that President McCain was not in the best of health. When it’s complete the body will of course be turned over.”