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The in-fighting goes a lot deeper than bickering over the Veep’s wardrobe. The New York Times has some juicy details from anonymous top advisers in the McCain and Palin camps, who seem to have been waging a divisive battle of their own as Barack Obama rode the presidential unicorn to living sainthood. Deets include Palin’s desire to steal McCain’s concession thunder, leaked comments from both sides that the other side is full of whack jobs, and Palin’s forehead-smackingly clueless response to her foreign-leader prank call.
First, NYT details the snafu that led to the faux Sarkozy prank call:
As a top adviser in Senator John McCain’s now-imploded campaign tells the story, it was bad enough that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska unwittingly scheduled, and then took, a prank telephone call from a Canadian comedian posing as the president of France. Far worse, the adviser said, she failed to inform her ticketmate about her rogue diplomacy.
As a senior adviser in the Palin campaign tells the story, the charge is absurd. The call had been on Ms. Palin’s schedule for three days and she should not have been faulted if the McCain campaign was too clueless to notice.
Plus—-Palin wanted to deliver her own concession speech!
As late as Tuesday night, a McCain adviser said, Ms. Palin was pushing to deliver her own speech just before Mr. McCain’s concession speech, even though vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night. But Ms. Palin met up with Mr. McCain with text in hand. She was told no by Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, and Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist.
I would have loved to see that. Read it to me, Sarah—-I’ll listen!
Graphic by Jason Mogavero.