A Consequential Disaster

A CONSEQUENTIAL DISASTER

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Political Positioning

No one knew quite how large the mess John McCain would be left was. Though George W. Bush was able to retreat from the White House and retire to Crawford, there was still much work left to do, things were going to have to get worse before they could get better. In his first month in office McCain fought to establish his image as a strong Commander-in-Chief. He met with his National Security team numerous times and began compiling information on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of State Joe Lieberman touched down in Iraq. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates was on talk shows arguing McCain's point: that the war would continue until the mission was truly accomplished. Still, this was an incredibly unpopular position in a country that had turned harshly anti-war. Soon enough Chief of Staff John Lehman advised the President that it was in his best interests to deal with the economy. McCain agreed, not to ignore Iraq's importance.

Meeting with his team of economic advisers, McCain hoped to turn the economy around in a short amount of time. The President was very serious about making the economy get better but there was no perfect way to go about it. Over the course of his first few weeks in office McCain met with Democrats from the Hill to begin talks on a plan to turn the economy around, a stimulus package. Still, McCain didn't want another TARP. Instead he wanted to stimulate the economy through cutting taxes and reforming federal spending, hoping that would be what turned around the economy. Democrats said it was a classic case of Republicans ignoring the problems at hand.

By one of the late rounds of negotiations McCain met an unlikely ally in Hillary Clinton. Impressed by her knowledge of the economy in the opening of the meetings, McCain asked her to stay after and speak with him privately in the Oval Office. It was incredibly unusual because Hillary bore no technical pull within the Senate Caucus. She was widely assumed to be McCain's opponent in the 2012 Presidential Election, but that was a long ways away. So what did John McCain want with Hillary Clinton? To talk. They spent hours in the Oval Office talking about the situation, about why Democrats wanted what they wanted and why the President would insist on not supporting it. Steve Schmidt would later write in his memoirs, "I don't know what they talked about, but whatever it was - I wish I could've been a fly on the wall."

When Hillary emerged sometime later she returned to Capitol Hill. Two days later McCain made his way to the Capitol Building for an address to a Joint-Session of Congress. There McCain called on the American people to tell their congressmen and senators to prevent tax increases on them and to make sure that a stimulus package, a real stimulus package, would be passed and that they would be protected "not the CEO's on Wall Street but the average American." It's hard to tell if Hillary changed the President's mind. Neither McCain nor Hillary really mention their meeting on that particular day but they do admit that they formed an unlikely alliance. In the days after the speech McCain held another meeting with Congressional leaders where he conceded some infrastructure development in return for tax cuts on the Middle Class. "We all want a balanced budget," McCain said, "but that won't happen in the midst of a terrible economic recession."

After that meeting with Congressional leaders McCain and Clinton rarely met again. Sure, there were formal occasions when they were cordial to one another but there was no wheeling and dealing between the two. It was an odd point in the early days of the McCain Administration. Did Hillary use McCain to say she could work with both parties? Is that why McCain used Hillary? Or did they realize they could work very well with each other? No one knows for sure, no one knows if it was Hillary who talked sense into McCain when it came to the stimulus package, but overall both sides conceded. In early-March McCain signed the "Moving the Economy Forward Act" into law. The bill consisted of infrastructure development and grants as well as tax cuts for Americans making under $250,00 a year. Despite this, unemployment continued to climb in the early months of McCain's Administration.
 
Some news on the future of the timeline: I've completely altered its course. I've thrown at the bulk of the original plan and I think all of you will like the new direction you'll see it take.
 
Special Update: A Growing Rift

A Growing Rift

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From the Memoirs of Sarah Palin
After the Stimulus Package was ushered in by the President, and even before, to an extent, there was a growing rift between the President's Office and the Vice President's Office. I would often remark that there were simply two different administrations with two different goals. The rift was really accentuated by the influence of Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace on President McCain. Steve Schmidt was one of those hired political hands that was used to to gauge the political response to a particular policy or program. His actual title was Senior Adviser but Steve was nothing more than a political operative.

Nicole Wallace was quite the character. Interested in tearing down people she had personal issues with, Nicole made being Vice President a very tough job for me. Her repeated ignorance and lack of respect was disgusting and often humiliating, I couldn't deal with her - she was in the game for her own self-interest and it was gross. Still, she was Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Policy and that meant she was often in my way. Our feud was an open secret. Nicole and I worked together on the campaign and I must admit she really viewed everything as her responsibility. She's always been the kind of person to think she's right and therefore everyone else is wrong. It's a frustrating personality to deal with and there's really no way I was going to put up with her. I was insistent that the President put pressure on her to treat me with respect, but alas he didn't. I had a lot of respect for John McCain but I felt I wasn't part of the team.

So Nicole and Steve laid the foundation for a rift between the President and I in those early days of the Administration. I couldn't trust them and I wholly doubt they trusted me. Like I said: two different administrations. After the President passed the stimulus package I was very serious about moving forward with a more conservative agenda. It was our responsibility. We were Republicans, conservatives, and we'd been elected to carry out an agenda that reflected that. Of course, John was receiving conflicting advice and often I lost out when someone disagreed with me. The economy was in shambles and if we were going to do something we'd need to act quickly. We had to slash taxes and end all this spending that was ruining the economy and the budget. Luckily, the President was able to push through an end to earmarks early into his first term, before his first 100 days in office.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with the White House. I was often overlooked, left out of meetings, etc. It was an impossible situation and it was very hard to deal with all of it. I felt unwanted, unneeded, and it was Todd who helped me through all of it. A great deal was made about my decision, in March, to return to Alaska for a week and a half. I needed to clear my head and get away from the stresses of Washington. I hated the political grind, the White House, and how the liberal media was criticizing me for things I had no control of. Fox News was the only agency that gave me fair coverage.

When I returned to Washington after my mid-March vacation I was told I should sit down for an interview. I pushed very hard for Fox News, but instead I was scheduled for an hour-long interview with David Gregory which would air on Meet the Press. I remember a few days before the interview the President, himself, called me and suggested that I sit down with Nicole Wallace to review the material. I agreed, but only because it was the President who asked. Nicole was still as terrible as ever. No one understood my style. I didn't want to memorize answers, I wanted to understand the questions - and I did. I knew perfectly well what to expect. I instead opted to work with people I trusted. I learned the issues, reaffirmed my understanding, and went from there.

I felt the interview went fairly well. Of course there were hiccups but they were nothing more than David Gregory playing the gotcha game that so many in the liberal media play. I respect the media and I have admiration for them, but they are so overwhelmingly biased that it made my job very, very difficult. As a Vice President I had to deal with all sorts of issues they couldn't even understand. I thought the interview went okay, but obviously there was some disagreement in the media about how I did.



From Nothing More Than Lipstick by Steve Schmidt
No one fully understood how bad things had gotten over at the Vice President's office. It was impossible to communicate because the Vice President never returned a single phone call from me. During the first 100 days in office I called her at least twice a day, on average. Not a single time did I receive a response. There were times when she wouldn't return calls from the President! This was a woman who had let power get to her head. So, of course, I "forgot" to include her in cabinet meetings, national security meetings, meetings where we'd spend the entire duration listening to her dumb voice if she were there.

I must admit that I was the one who fought for John McCain to put Sarah Palin on the ticket. I apologize to America for that. While the campaign was brutal on me, it was particularly harsh on her. I sympathize with that. The woman was beat up on every turn and some of the shit she was brought through wasn't fair, but there were major fuck-ups on her end and they were truly her fault. When we won, however, there were major issues. I already mentioned the fact that she ignored communications between the two offices, but she took the Office of the Vice President to a whole new level. The few instances when we did talk, usually in-person and sometimes by email, she often referred to her office as its own administration. "My administration..." she'd say. Countless times I was forced to remind her that she was not the Chief Executive and that the buck didn't stop with her. It was an impossible thing to understand and I get it. The woman was the Governor of Alaska, a position with a wide range of responsibilities. Despite that she still owed her loyalty to John McCain and I wasn't going to let her forget that.

It was about this time that she appeared on Meet the Press. The Vice President was wholly unprepared and did a terrible job with the interview. She failed to prove that she'd smartened-up during her time in office. Palin's natrual response was to say she did fine and that any error could be summed up to David Gregory's bias. This was a colossal error and no one should let her get away with it. The Vice President was asked about the economy, asked about the ins-and-outs of the economy and how the Administration was dealing with it. And she threw the President under the bus. The most memorable answer came when Gregory asked her about meetings between the President and Congress. Vice President Palin replied, "You'd have to talk to someone whose invited to those meetings, David, the Administration has done a great job of separating me from the thick of negotiations." She proceeded to attack White House Senior Staff, calling them thugs, while, at the same time, reaffirming her "respect" and "admiration" for the job President McCain was doing.


From Second Feud: The Bobby Kennedy and LBJ of the 21st Century by Dan Balz
Steve Schmidt and Sarah Palin were not friends and it was their feud that defined the 2010's. Schmidt was an influential adviser to McCain. Never elected, never holding constitutional influence. Palin was the opposite. She was the Vice President. She'd been elected, the constitution gave her powers, but she had little say on the day-to-day operations of McCain's Administration. It was a fight that began with the 2008 Presidential Election when Schmidt, who originally suggested Palin, grew to feel a great sense of regret in the aftermath of the announcement. Schmidt moved in to the McCain White House when John McCain won that election and Palin took up shop as the Vice President.

Schmidt and Palin were brutal to each other, nasty to each other. Their genuine hatred tore the McCain White House apart and forced Senior Staffers and, in some cases cabinet members, to take sides. The feud worked its way up to the Oval Office where John McCain was pressured into an uncomfortable position. Here's where things get murky. Some documents and reports suggest that McCain was on Schmidt's side while some say he was on Palin's. McCain was not all too pleased with Palin's performance but truly felt she needed to be kept in the loop in case something happened to him. He felt obligated to make sure she was kept up-to-date and that she knew what was going on. By the spring of 2009 the Auto Industry was crumbling and it was clear it would require Presidential action. Schmidt fought vigorously to keep Palin out of talks while McCain felt firmly that she needed to be involved.

With Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid fighting to move McCain to the left, Palin was fighting to move him farther right. In reality, the McCain White House was a clusterfuck of confusion and inaction. It was incredibly difficult to release so much as a memo because they couldn't get anything done without the Vice President's office releasing its own opinion and inner-office tensions were tearing the White House apart and there was only one place left to draw the lines: The Oval Office.
 
A Growing Rift

From Second Feud: The Bobby Kennedy and LBJ of the 21st Century by Dan Balz
Steve Schmidt and Sarah Palin were not friends and it was their feud that defined the 2010's. Schmidt was an influential adviser to McCain. Never elected, never holding constitutional influence. Palin was the opposite. She was the Vice President. She'd been elected, the constitution gave her powers, but she had little say on the day-to-day operations of McCain's Administration. It was a fight that began with the 2008 Presidential Election when Schmidt, who originally suggested Palin, grew to feel a great sense of regret in the aftermath of the announcement. Schmidt moved in to the McCain White House when John McCain won that election and Palin took up shop as the Vice President.

Schmidt and Palin were brutal to each other, nasty to each other. Their genuine hatred tore the McCain White House apart and forced Senior Staffers and, in some cases cabinet members, to take sides. The feud worked its way up to the Oval Office where John McCain was pressured into an uncomfortable position. Here's where things get murky. Some documents and reports suggest that McCain was on Schmidt's side while some say he was on Palin's. McCain was not all too pleased with Palin's performance but truly felt she needed to be kept in the loop in case something happened to him. He felt obligated to make sure she was kept up-to-date and that she knew what was going on. By the spring of 2009 the Auto Industry was crumbling and it was clear it would require Presidential action. Schmidt fought vigorously to keep Palin out of talks while McCain felt firmly that she needed to be involved.

With Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid fighting to move McCain to the left, Palin was fighting to move him farther right. In reality, the McCain White House was a clusterfuck of confusion and inaction. It was incredibly difficult to release so much as a memo because they couldn't get anything done without the Vice President's office releasing its own opinion and inner-office tensions were tearing the White House apart and there was only one place left to draw the lines: The Oval Office.

(From the comments section of the Huffington Post article that was the above excerpt)

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Balz wrote that "the constitution gave her powers" about when Palin was Vice President. But it gave her NO administrative powers. The Vice President's constitutional powers are only to preside over the Senate. Of course we all know that the VP becomes President if the President dies or is incapacitated (we know that too well) but that's only a potential power when the VP ceases to be the VP.

As VP the only administrative responsibilities of the VP are those delegated to the VP from the President, the same as any Senior Advisor.

Palin was an over reaching, stupid, ego maniac. Some of us new it from the start and when she went on Meet the Press we knew the disaster she was.
 
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