The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin

  Once again, Sarah found herself in the right place at the right time, and—in this instance—in the right condition. McCain later said Sarah had made a strong impression on him during their meeting. It’s not unreasonable to assume that he at least hinted that she was one of the people he’d consider as a running mate if he won the nomination.

  It would be worse than unreasonable to assume that he told her that the only thing that would make her a more appealing choice would be if she could somehow give birth to a Down syndrome baby before the Republican convention in September. Yet only eight days later Sarah announced that that’s exactly what she expected to do.

  Glazier prayed again with Sarah—this time in person, not over the phone—at a Governor’s Prayer Breakfast later in March, after she’d announced her pregnancy.

  At 9:26 on Monday morning, April 14, Sarah e-mailed a staff member to say she did not want Gary Wheeler or anyone else from her security detail to accompany her two days later when she flew to Dallas to speak at a Republican Governors Conference luncheon.

  “First Spouse is available to travel instead,” she wrote. Never before as governor had Sarah traveled out of state without her security detail, and she offered no reason for wanting to do so at this time.

  Any number of people have observed that it was reckless of Sarah to have traveled to Dallas in her condition. How much more reckless was it to leave behind uniformed security personnel who could have helped to ensure her safety and that of her baby if a medical emergency arose? What could have been her motive for doing so? Was it because, as Gary Wheeler told me, if he’d been there and her water had broken at 4:00 AM on April 17, he would have whisked her to a Dallas hospital as soon as possible, and certainly wouldn’t have let her fly to Alaska twelve hours later?

  Nobody asked Sarah this question at the press conference she held in Anchorage on April 21, three days after Trig’s birth. The atmosphere was celebratory, not inquisitorial.

  Describing her time in Dallas, Sarah said, “Felt perfectly fine, but uh, had thought maybe a, a few things were starting to progress a little bit that, that perhaps there was an, an idea there that maybe he’d come a little bit early. So called my doctor at about, uh, four in the morning in Texas, [1:00 AM Alaska time] and, um, I said, ‘You know, I’m gonna stay for the day’ … have a speech that I was determined to give at one o’clock that afternoon.”

  She was asked if she’d felt contractions.

  “Well, not contractions so much … nothing real painful but just knowing that, um, it was feeling like I may not, um, be able to be pregnant a whole, another four or five weeks, knowing that it would be not a bother to call our doctor and let her know.… We knew to call her and just get her advice.”

  She was asked if her water had broken.

  “Well, if you must know, uh, more of those type of details, but, um—”

  “Well, your dad said that and I saw him say it, so that’s why I asked,” a reporter said.

  “Well, that was again if, if I m-must get personal, technical about this at the same time, um, it was one, uh, it was a sign that I knew, um, could lead to, uh, labor being, uh, kind of kicked in there was any kind of, um, amniotic leaking, amniotic fluid leaking, so when, when that happened we decided, okay, let’s call her.”

  She tells the story somewhat differently in Going Rogue. “At 4 AM a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in bed. ‘It can’t be,’ I thought. It’s way too early. Moments later, I shook Todd awake. ‘Something’s going on.’ He sat up in bed, instantly alert. ‘I’m calling CBJ [Cathy Baldwin-Johnson].’ ‘No, don’t do that. It’s only 1 AM in Alaska.’ I didn’t want to call anyone yet. I just wanted to take stock and see whether this baby was really coming. I also wanted time to pray and ask God silently but fervently to let everything be okay. Desperation for this baby overwhelmed me.”

  Desperation for the baby overwhelmed her? She wanted to ask God to let everything be okay? The best way to ensure that everything will be okay in a high-risk obstetrical situation when the amniotic sac ruptures and fluid starts leaking is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible.

  In many ways, Sarah was better off in Dallas than she would have been in Alaska. Dallas has at least five world-class hospitals and medical centers equipped with neonatal intensive care units and personnel who specialize in high-risk births. Even without her security detail, Todd could have taken her to either the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Baylor University Medical Center, Medical City Dallas Hospital, or Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. Safely ensconced in any one of them, Sarah might have found her “desperation for this baby” less overwhelming. But, according to Going Rogue, it faded quickly, even without medical attention.

  “Over my protests, Todd called CBJ. I told her that I felt fine … We agreed that I would stay in contact with CBJ through the day. I’d take it easy, give my speech, then catch an earlier flight back to Alaska. I still had plenty of time.”

  Did she? Sarah’s age alone put her into the high-risk category for childbirth. She was carrying an infant whose Down syndrome made him high-risk as well. In addition, she’d already had two miscarriages. In addition to that, the rupture of her amniotic sac prior to her thirty-seventh week of pregnancy indicated that she’d give birth prematurely.

  So why would she think she had plenty of time? Perhaps more to the point, how could Dr. Baldwin-Johnson assume she did? How could any competent physician, awakened by a 1:00 AM phone call from a patient thousands of miles away who said she was leaking amniotic fluid not have insisted she go immediately to a hospital for evaluation? How could she have allowed Sarah to risk infection, or worse, by continuing with a full day’s worth of normal activity and travel?

  In Going Rogue, Sarah writes that in those predawn hours her only thought was for the welfare of Trig: “Please don’t let anything happen to this baby,” she prayed. “It occurred to me, once and for all: I’m so in love with this child, please, God, protect him! I had fallen in love with this precious child. The worst thing in the world would be that I would lose him.”

  But in the next sentence she writes that she “absolutely did not want to cancel my speech and disappoint the folks at the conference.” So she did nothing for the next nine hours and then made a speech at 1:00 PM. Actually, nobody knows what she did during those nine hours. Did she order room service breakfast? Did she take a hot bath? Did she go shopping?

  In any event, surely now, after her speech, she’d go to a hospital, at least for examination and evaluation. She couldn’t even consider putting her unborn child at grave and unnecessary risk by flying back to Alaska without first being seen by a physician. Just as surely, her loving and attentive husband couldn’t let her even entertain such an idea.

  Todd had the whole morning to make arrangements for Sarah to receive medical attention as soon as she finished her speech. He had the governor of Texas within arm’s reach. The finest obstetricians in Dallas would have lined up to ensure the safest possible delivery of Sarah’s premature Down syndrome baby.

  Instead, Todd used his BlackBerry to e-mail Sarah’s aides Frank Bailey, Kris Perry, and Ivy Frye, using the subject line “Her speech kicked ass.” The message: “Awesome man!!!! She rocks!!” He made no mention that her water had broken ten hours earlier and that she was apparently about to deliver her baby a month before its due date.

  In Going Rogue, Sarah writes, “I reached Todd at the exit and he eyed me with a grin. ‘Love this state, but we can’t have a fish picker born in Texas.’ ”

  In her April 21 press conference, Sarah said, “Called my doctor before I got on the plane to say, ‘Yeah, we think that we will come home a few hours early,’ and, uh, she said, ‘Okay, well, call when you, when you land and I’ll check you out.’ ”

  If that conversation occurred as Sarah said it did, some might feel that at best Dr. Baldwin-Johnson displayed poor judgment. In a telephone interview with a Daily News repo
rter on April 21, her only public comment about Trig’s birth, Baldwin-Johnson said of the patient whom she hadn’t examined and who had not been examined by any doctor in Dallas, “Things were already settling down when she talked to me. I don’t think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back.”

  So, almost twelve hours after her amniotic fluid had started to leak, Sarah began a journey that involved a flight from Dallas to Seattle, a change of planes and a two-hour layover in Seattle, a flight from Seattle to Anchorage, and then a drive from Anchorage to Wasilla. It would be at least a ten-hour trip, barring delays.

  “Digest that for just a second,” Dr. Jeffrey Parks, a Cleveland, Ohio, surgeon, later wrote.

  A 43 year old woman carrying a child with known Down’s Syndrome, in her eighth month of pregnancy voluntarily embarked upon a transcontinental adventure to give [a] speech. Then, after noticing some cramps and the passage of amniotic fluid, she went ahead with her speech and, instead of proceeding directly to the nearest Dallas high risk pregnancy center, boarded a four hour flight to Seattle. Then she hung out in the Seattle airport lounge for a while and took a connecting flight to Alaska. Then she drives to Wasilla. Finally, she decides to seek medical attention at a local Wasilla hospital, a facility lacking a NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] and other high risk specialists. That’s her story … Palin willfully and wantonly placed herself and her unborn child in tremendous danger by flying cross country with amniotic fluid running down her legs … What kind of mother would take a risk like that with her child, let alone a high risk, premature one?

  There are some who think her entire story is a fabrication, that she was never pregnant but had arranged to have a Down syndrome baby presented to her at the Mat-Su Medical Center in order to advance her political career. That baby wasn’t due until mid-May, so Sarah felt free to make an April speech in Dallas. When she suddenly received word that the Down syndrome baby was coming prematurely, she hurried back to be there when, or soon after, it arrived.

  A friend saw Sarah briefly the night before she gave her speech in Dallas. He and Todd had been to a Dallas Mavericks basketball game and he stopped by Sarah’s hotel room after the game to say hello and wish her well. “I patted her belly,” he told me in March of 2011. “I didn’t feel a baby kick, but to me she seemed obviously pregnant.”

  No flight attendant on either of the two Alaska Airlines flights Sarah took back to Anchorage the next day, however, even noticed she was pregnant, much less leaking amniotic fluid. Nor did the man who talked to her in the Alaska Airlines lounge at the Seattle airport between flights. He later sent her an e-mail that said, “Yesterday evening as I was flying back to Juneau from a business trip in Seattle, I had the pleasure of chatting with you and your husband Todd in the Alaska Airlines boardroom. It seemed as though you were engrossed in a book so I spoke mostly with Todd and tried not to intrude on your opportunity to relax. Little did I know that you were in labor at the time. I’m impressed that you were gracious enough to speak with me even though you both obviously had much more important things on your mind.”

  Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish described Sarah’s story in detail to eight leading U.S. obstetricians. “While none would say that this pregnancy could not have happened,” he wrote, “all of them said it was one of the strangest and unlikeliest series of events they had ever heard of and found Palin’s decision to forgo medical help for more than a day after her water broke and risk the life of her unborn child on a long airplane trip to be reckless beyond measure.”

  Was she deliberately trying to kill her baby before it was born? Given Sarah’s religious beliefs, that would make her a cold-blooded murderer, a far more serious charge than that she chose to advance her political career by means of a hoax that, for years to come, would leave her caring for a Down syndrome child that wasn’t hers.

  Is it even barely possible that the pregnancy story was cooked up in a hurry after Sarah met with John McCain, and that Trig was obtained, indirectly, from a pregnant woman who felt herself unable to care for a special-needs child? That concept is so abhorrent, the level of cynicism it would require so impossible to imagine, that surely no rational person could believe it. Sullivan, an eminently rational man, isn’t saying he believes it, but he does point out, “Without the Down Syndrome pregnancy, Palin would not have had the rock-star appeal to the pro-life base that contributed to her selection.”

  I DIDN’T COME to Alaska in a quest for “the truth about Trig.” Maybe Sarah has already told it, as outlandish as her story is. Maybe she did get to be seven months pregnant with no one noticing, and maybe she did have a good reason for suddenly deciding to go to Texas without her customary security detail, and maybe everything was just as she’s described it, and maybe Trig is Sarah’s child.

  In that case, on April 17, 2008, she and Todd were guilty only of gross negligence and a level of irresponsibility that put the life of their unborn child at severe and deliberate risk. Why? Because you can’t have a fish picker born in Texas.

  I don’t know. I do know that I found a remarkable number of fair-minded, “commonsense” Alaskans who’ve known Sarah for many years who do not believe that Trig is her child.

  This surprised me. I would raise the question, expecting to be told that doubts about Trig were preposterous. Time and again, however, I found a deep and abiding skepticism. Thus, it does not seem irrelevant to point out that in regard to Trig, as with so many other aspects of Sarah’s life, those who know her best believe her least.

  It is perhaps the most blistering assessment of her character possible that many Wasillans who’d known Sarah from high school onward told me that even if she had not faked the entire story of her pregnancy and Trig’s birth, it was something she was eminently capable of doing.

  TIME TO go home. Sarah and Joe Miller and Glenn Beck are staging some sort of September 11 extravaganza in Anchorage, but I don’t feel the need to stay for that, because I’ve already seen Sarah perform.

  That was in The Villages, a Florida retirement community north of Orlando, during Thanksgiving week 2009. It was part of the book tour for Going Rogue, the tour that she pretended to be doing by bus but actually did most of by private plane, hopping on the bus only in time to hop off again at the next destination, waving Trig around like an American flag until everyone got the news footage and stills they needed.

  I flew into Orlando and drove to The Villages the night before Sarah arrived. I had dinner with my friend Ray Hudson, who had come up from Fort Lauderdale. Ray is from Newcastle, England, and played for Newcastle before jumping to the North American Soccer League in the 1970s, where, playing for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, he became one of the league’s stars, alongside the likes of Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, and Pelé. Ray now does the color commentary on soccer matches for Gol TV, mostly from La Liga, in Spain. His verbal flair, which combines raw passion with Shakespearean flights of poetic imagery, has made him a cult figure among soccer fans in the United States. Believe me, you have never seen Barcelona play if you haven’t heard Ray Hudson do the commentary on one of their matches.

  The Villages is a sprawling agglomeration of private homes and condos surrounding a couple of ersatz “town squares,” to which retirees can drive their cars and golf carts and shop without fear of being mugged. Everything about it is artificial, designed to “recapture” the feel of an America that never existed, but one that many wealthy whites in their seventies and beyond would like to think they remember. In its utter syntheticness and absolute devotion to Republican homogeneity, it seems the perfect venue for Sarah. In fact, during the 2008 campaign an estimated sixty thousand people turned out at The Villages to hear her speak, the largest crowd she had drawn anywhere in America during her run for the vice presidency. The Villages simulates real life precisely as Sarah simulates genuine concern for the future of our nation.

  After dinner, Ray and I walk over to the Barnes and Noble at which Sarah will sign books for the first five hundred people
in a line that is already forming, although she’s not scheduled to arrive until 2:00 PM the next day. The mood is congenial and relaxed. These are pilgrims who have reached the very walls of Mecca. Many, in their lawn chairs and canvas recliners, stay awake through the night by reading aloud from Going Rogue.

  (illustration credit 19.1)

  Ray and I opt for an early night so we can be back out among the worshippers by 5:00 AM. By then, even in a drizzle, many hundreds have gathered, and Barnes and Noble employees are telling those who join the end of the line that already they’re too late: the five hundred magic wristbands that will permit entry to the store in the afternoon have all been distributed.

  A gray dawn breaks gradually over the asphalt, on which thousands of folding chairs now sit. But many in the crowd—at least two thirds of which is made up of people older than me, at sixty-six—are too energized to be still, and shuffle slowly back and forth, expectant.

  “I hear she’s gonna speak before she goes in to sign.”

  “Yeah, see that podium? That’s for her. She’s gonna do an interview with Gretchen what’s-her-name from Fox.”

  “Gretchen Van Susteren?”

  “No, the other one. The blond one.”

  “They’re all blond.”

  My camera battery dies just before the Sarahbus arrives. She emerges, holding Trig. Once the TV cameras and still photographers have had their fill, she hands him off to an assistant, who soon puts him down on the asphalt parking lot and lets him crawl. The lot is covered with broken glass, cigarette butts, and old chewing gum, and Trig is barefoot. Eventually Piper comes along and puts him in a stroller.

  This is almost the full monty, family-wise. Chuck and Sally and old Aunt so-and-so, plus Piper and Trig. Chuck and Sally work the crowd. Leaving Trig in the stroller, so does Piper. She’s eight years old and has the fake smile of a ten-term congressman. For some reason this sticks with me as the saddest sight I see all day.