This Week on Oprah:
Oprah and Sarah Palin's First Meeting
Oprah says the supposed snubbing was actually just an attempt to keep her show separate from her public support for a candidate as a private citizen. "Because of that, I had made a decision not to have any of the candidates on my show during the campaign," she says. "So for the record, I just want to say that Sarah Palin never asked ... to be on the show."
Now that the campaign's long over, all bets are off. Palin is opening up about her family, her future, her decision to step down as Alaska's governor and what went wrong during the election.
The world has been fascinated with Palin since Sen. John McCain announced she would be his running mate. In her new memoir, Going Rogue, she writes about the moment she got the call that changed her life. Palin was at the Alaska State Fair when her candidacy was set in motion. Though there had been talk that Palin was being considered for the vice presidency, she says she didn't take those rumors too seriously at first. "There were other names that were being really considered, it seemed much more seriously, and I had heard that interviews and vetting was going on with those other candidates."
When she got the phone call from Senator McCain, Palin says she had no hesitation before saying yes. "I didn't blink," she says. "I felt quite confident in my abilities and my executive experience, knowing that this is an executive administrative job."
After that phone call, Palin flew to Arizona to meet with Sen. McCain and start the vetting process. "It went on for hours through that evening," she says. "I thought after all that, 'Wow, I better confess it now. The one skeleton that is in my closet.' By then, you know, they already knew about [my daughter] Bristol being pregnant. I said, 'The one skeleton that I have to confess to is I did [get] a D 22 years ago in a college course.' And I thought that was going to be the extent of the controversy of Sarah Palin's life."
Palin says she was surprised the McCain camp knew about her then-17-year-old daughter's pregnancy because at the time only the family knew. She was also surprised by the way the information became public, she says. "If [Bristol and I] had been given the allowance to deal with the issue in a more productive way, we perhaps could have sent a better message: 'This is not to be glamorized. It is not to be emulated. It is a tough, tough challenge and it is a problem in America, so let's try and deal with it.'"
When the news of Bristol's pregnancy first broke, Palin says she tried to send that very message, but the message was rewritten and she and her husband were painted to be doting soon-to-be grandparents. "Just a little bit of an indication of problems to come about what I would be able to say and how I would be able to speak or not speak my heart and my values and seize opportunities to communicate better," she says.
Bristol called her mother when she saw her pregnancy on the news, Palin says. "She was quite devastated and, perfectly honestly, she was quite embarrassed," she says. "She called me in tears saying 'Oh, mom, now not just [in] Wasilla do they know what's going on in my life. Now the whole world knows.'"
Palin says she didn't expect her children would be such a popular topic in her campaign. "I would hope that my children would be kind of excluded from the controversy and any of the tabloidization of what's going to go on a campaign, but I knew right off the bat then with the episode that the kids were going to be part of it—good, bad or ugly, it was going to be quite taxing on them."
Sen. McCain did warn Palin that the campaign would be hard on the family, Palin says. "I said: 'You know what? No doubt it is, because I've been in elected office for a decade and a half. The kids have grown up with that.' Of course, though, not knowing how intriguing it would be for some of the haters, for some of the critics, to really delve into our personal life and make more of some of the issues than actually were there."
Palin says she was glad when then-Sen. Barack Obama spoke out to say their kids were off-limits. Still, she says she doesn't think her family got the same treatment as the Obamas. "I wasn't given that privilege of being able to protect my kids, my family. I think there was a little bit of a double...not a little bit, there was a double standard," she says. "There were some times that [Obama] was asked about the treatment of the Palin kids and, yes, he came to our defense and I so respect that."
Palin says she was surprised throughout the campaign that she was often told how to dress, what to say, who to talk to and even what to eat. "There were a lot of things we should have been worried about. What I don't think we should have spent a lot of time on was what I eat, and that was a focus of some of the campaign operatives, which was odd," Palin says. "I would have liked to have focused on what the issues were that the American public needed to hear about."
Palin's clothes, and the fact that some pieces of her wardrobe were bought for her, also became a point of focus and controversy during the campaign. "I thought: 'Good. I don't like to shop,'" she says. "'That's going to be one less thing for me to worry about.' Never thinking it was going to be a big controversy, because it wasn't a controversy with other candidates—where did they get their clothes and who's styling their hair and all that. ... I think the male candidates have it a little bit easier in that arena." continue story here.
Palin's clothes, and the fact that some pieces of her wardrobe were bought for her, also became a point of focus and controversy during the campaign. "I thought: 'Good. I don't like to shop,'" she says. "'That's going to be one less thing for me to worry about.' Never thinking it was going to be a big controversy, because it wasn't a controversy with other candidates—where did they get their clothes and who's styling their hair and all that. ... I think the male candidates have it a little bit easier in that arena." continue story here.
