Steaming pile of campaign loss Nicolle Wallace, whose communications acumen while working for the 2008 McCain campaign led the war hero to a decisive loss against a socialist with ties to a radical preacher and domestic terrorist, says Sarah Palin’s new book is a work of “fiction.”
Wallace was chiefly responsible for Palin’s interview with Wallace crony Katie Couric, who Wallace knew through her work at CBS immediately prior to joining and ruining the McCain campaign. Wallace put Palin in the situation of sitting for hours upon hours of interview time with Couric.
CBS ultimately used only 9 minutes of the interview, showing Palin uncomfortable or awkward, in what was a negative turning point for Palin’s image and the McCain campaign, which only had any chance of winning because Palin was a part of it to begin with.
NEW YORK – Former McCain campaign senior adviser Nicolle Wallace says Sarah Palin’s book “Going Rogue” is “based on fabrications,” and that the basis for Palin’s depictions of her and former McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt as villains “took place entirely in her imagination.”
In a statement to The Rachel Maddow Show (ed. – what does that tell you?), the former McCain spokesperson repeatedly used the word “fiction” to describe Palin’s narrative and echoed criticisms by other former McCain staffers.
Let’s be clear about one thing: McCain’s only chance of victory came from Palin. McCain only managed to muster the 48% he did because of Palin. The only time during the entire campaign that McCain was ahead of Obama in the polls was during the period between Palin being announced as McCain’s running mate at the end of August, and McCain suspending his campaign to “work on the financial crisis” at the end of September. Anyone saying anything else – or suggesting that a war hero being unable to defeat a guy who hung around with a domestic terrorist in a presidential race was caused by anything other than complete campaign incompetence – is a liar or an idiot.
“[Palin] probably has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better conceived and executed,” Wallace said. “A book about that would have been painful but not entirely unfair,” Wallace told an msnbc producer in an off-camera, on-the-record interview.
How awesome for Wallace to be the arbiter of “fair.” Thanks for all you’ve done, Nicolle. Now let Nicolle Wallace tell you her side of the story without ever mentioning her relationship with CBS – which, as you may remember from a few paragraphs up, ended only when she joined the McCain campaign.
Wallace took particular issue with Palin’s version of her Katie Couric interview, which did not cast the former vice presidential candidate in a favorable light.
Palin described thinking the Couric interview would be lighthearted and fun. “It was supposed to be … a working mom speaking with [another] working mom and the challenges that we have with teenage daughters,” she told “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in an interview broadcast Monday.
Wallace told msnbc that this is “rationalization or justification or fiction.” “We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two working gals … that was supposed to be to highlight her foreign policy savvy.”
In her book, Palin writes that the campaign selected Couric to interview her as a favor, to give the evening anchor “a career boost.”
“She just has such low self-esteem,” Palin recounts Wallace as saying.
Wallace said that was also “fiction,” adding, “I am not someone who throws around the word ’self-esteem.’ Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors … I did not advocate an interview for anyone I am friends with.”
Get out the hankie. Nicolle is feeling a little sensitive.
“I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning,” continued Wallace.
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