Get a behind-the-scenes look, 16 years later.
Sarah Palin’s lengthy interview with me was one of the highlights of my time as anchor of the CBS Evening News. The media landscape has become even more fragmented and tribal in the years since, and I’ve often wondered if any interview could resonate the way that one did.
I write about our one-on-one (which first aired on Sept. 24 and 25, 2008) in my memoir, Going There. Here’s an excerpt that reflects my time (and the impact) of the interview people couldn’t stop talking about. And if you’d like to go deeper, don’t miss part one and part two of a special podcast I recorded looking back on the making of this unforgettable interview on its 10-year anniversary in 2018.
The den in my apartment had a full wall of built-in bookcases painted cranberry red, so the girls and I named it the Red Room. But in the days leading up to my Sarah Palin interview, the Red Room became the War Room.
The floor was blanketed with research. I settled in for several marathon sessions with Brian Goldsmith —at just 25, a full-on policy wonk. (In high school, he was grounded for sneaking out of his bedroom to…watch C-SPAN.) We inhaled everything that had ever been written about Palin and her sometimes wacky views on things like evolution and global warming. Our goal wasn’t to give her a pop quiz. Since she was totally unproven on the national stage, we wanted her to reveal her positions on the issues and her fitness for the presidency. If elected, John McCain, who’d been treated for melanoma four times, would be the oldest president in history.
We picked the brains of the smartest people we knew, including the head of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, now focused on bioterrorism. The best advice came from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
“She’s really a blank canvas,” Albright told me over the phone. “No one really knows where she stands. My advice to you would be this: Just let her talk.”
Those four words sank in. It’s a natural impulse when you’re interviewing someone to try to fill the dead air, and you end up letting them off the hook. So I made a mental note to avoid jumping in, no matter how awkward the silences.
We fine-tuned a list of questions, then role-played the interview, Brian doing a not-half-bad Palin. Meanwhile, in a hotel room across town, the real Sarah Palin paced the floor, holding a thick stack of cards full of facts she was trying to memorize. It wasn’t going well.
I got up at 6 and jumped into the shower while my glam squad, Josie and Dana, filed in. Josie laid out brushes, eye shadow, and tubes of mascara and lipstick on my desk in the Red Room. Wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe, I took a seat and they went to work. Once I was camera-ready, I stepped into a navy pin-striped Hugo Boss suit that I always felt good in.
The day was glorious—crisp and crystal clear, reminding me how long it had been since I’d felt that jolt of early-morning energy. Brian, Rick, and another producer, Jen Yuille, were waiting downstairs. We piled into a black SUV and I started reviewing my questions for the first of two cracks at Palin.
I knew from watching Charlie Gibson’s interview that Palin could respond with a baffling word salad—it was critical that I didn’t let her wander off topic. I was also aware that my performance would be scrutinized almost as much as hers: what I asked, my tone, my demeanor would be pored over and picked apart. So I decided I would remain as expressionless as possible.
We settled into a makeshift studio at the Millennium Hotel. Palin walked in looking friendly but tense. As she was getting mic’d, she told me how much her parents liked me. Then she started futzing with her Elle Woods–worthy pink jacket, which was refusing to lie flat against her décolletage. So, in a surprise Girlfriend, I got you moment, I grabbed a piece of gaffer’s tape from a crew member and offered it to her, which she appreciated (is there anything women bond over more quickly than a wardrobe malfunction?).
I felt like I was leading a lamb to slaughter.
The crew tweaked the lighting. Rick was sitting in my sight line, behind Palin and the cameras. I’d told him not to make any sudden movements; when we were out in the field, he was always signaling me like a base coach to do one thing or another, and I didn’t want him distracting me.
The cameras started rolling.
We began with the financial crisis. Palin said that America was looking to John McCain to fix the system. I repeatedly asked her for evidence that he would lead the charge for more oversight and regulation. Palin offered a couple of non-answers.
Me: But he’s been in Congress 26 years; he’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee and has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.
Palin: He’s also known as the Maverick, though, taking shots from his own party and certainly taking shots from the other party…
Me: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point: Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.
Palin [smiling]: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring ’em to ya.
I sensed she was getting rattled. Clearly, Palin wasn’t ready for prime time and a part of me felt sorry for her, watching her grasp for answers, trying to put sentences together that made sense. I kept going, asking why she thought Alaska’s proximity to Russia enhanced her foreign policy credentials.
Palin: Well, it certainly does because our next-door neighbors are foreign countries. There in the state that I am the executive of.
Me: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
Palin: We have trade missions back and forth. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America—where do they go? It’s Alaska.
Brian was sitting close enough to a press aide from the Palin team to see the message he was typing on his BlackBerry: “This is a f*cking disaster.”
Back at CBS, a puffed-up Rick walked through the newsroom pronouncing the interview, “Huge. Huge.” People barely looked up from their keyboards. We’d turn around some of the interview for that night’s broadcast. Rick also asked Lori to reach out to 60 Minutes.
“Tell them we’ll just drop some bread crumbs throughout the week and they can do a big piece on it Sunday.”
“No, thanks,” 60 Minutes executive editor Bill Owens told her over the phone.
“Really?” Lori said. “It’s a fantastic interview.”
To which Owens replied, “Sarah Palin just isn’t that in-ter-est-ing,” o-ver-ly e-nun-ci-a-ting ev-er-y syl-la-ble, as he often did.
I didn’t get it. Rick was dumbfounded. He felt it was the most important political interview since 1979, when CBS anchor Roger Mudd asked Ted Kennedy why he wanted to be president. Kennedy’s rambling response pretty much doomed his campaign.
I heard later that a high-ranking producer had walked into 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager’s office and urged him to run a chunk of Palin on Sunday. Fager said he wasn’t interested in my interview. When pressed, he responded, “I don’t need her on 60 Minutes.” I’m not sure if he meant Palin or me.
The following Monday, I met Palin and her daughter Willow in the hall outside their hotel room in Philly—Nicolle had thought the scene would make good TV. I asked the 14-year-old if she was enjoying all of this.
“It’s so fun,” Willow said with a sweet smile. “I love it.”
I imagined her mom, standing a few inches away, might be feeling differently.
We headed for Ohio on the McCain campaign plane. Palin was up front on the aisle; Brian and I were seated several rows back. Brian glanced in the governor’s direction and noticed her manicured hand turning the pages of the New York Times. Funny—we hadn’t pegged Palin as a Times reader. It made me wonder what else she read on a regular basis to stay on top of the issues.
After a rambunctious rally where the crowd ate up her every word, Palin and I wandered backstage to continue our conversation. We needed some B-roll of us walking and talking, so I asked a few more questions, including what newspapers and magazines she read.
Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media—
Me: But, like, what ones specifically? I’m curious that you—
Palin: Um, all of ’em, any of ’em that have been in front of me over all these years. Um, I have a vast—
Me: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country where it’s kind of suggested, it seems like, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with the rest of what Washington, DC, might be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?”
I’ll never know why Palin didn’t just answer the question. No, she wasn’t a big reader, but why couldn’t she just wing it, like she did so brilliantly with the pit-bull joke? At the very least, she could have said the New York Times, although maybe Palin thought it would anger her conservative base. Or maybe she was just over it. And me.
It’s funny—of all the serious things we discussed, this off-the-cuff exchange was the one that played on a national loop, marking a turning point in the campaign. Almost immediately, McCain’s poll numbers started to sink.
The interview was a turning point for me, too. Finally good press, and lots of it. And the people at CBS were visibly surprised by how well it went. Brian, such a great and loyal friend, was basically like, Duh—have you seen Katie before? This is what she does.
Then there was Saturday Night Live. A friend called at around 10 p.m. to say, “Make sure you watch tonight!”
Oh, boy, I thought. This could go either way.
I got in my flannel PJs and sat on the couch with Ellie in the Red Room. Sure enough, we were in the cold open.
There’s letter-perfect Tina Fey as Palin in the pink jacket and rectangle-lens eyewear—an American flag in the background, just like in our interview. And there’s Amy Poehler playing me.
It’s a hilarious bit, with Fey nailing Palin’s impenetrable gosh-golly syntax and Poehler-as-me staring back and rapid-blinking incredulously. At one point she asks, “What lessons have you learned from Iraq and how specifically would you spread democracy abroad?”
After a long and comical pause, Fey/Palin cites the mayday option for contestants on the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: “Katie, I’d like to use one of my lifelines.”
Which pretty much summed up the state of the McCain/Palin campaign.
Choosing Palin wasn’t John McCain’s finest moment. But when I watched him give his classy concession speech, I was reminded of what an incredibly decent guy he was. I’d always enjoyed being in his presence; he’d invited us to stay for a barbecue at his ranch in Sedona when I was there to interview him (unfortunately, we had to hit the road). He loved to goof around with reporters and really respected what we did. Those were the days.
Sarah Palin may have crashed and burned, but she launched a new era in American politics. Her plainspoken mean-spiritedness and her ability to tap into populist grievances planted the seeds of Trumpism that would grow and spread like kudzu across the land.
The interview won a coveted duPont-Columbia Award. And while it didn’t provide much of an uptick in the ratings, rumors that I was about to get fired would never be whispered again.
