Did Politico’s Mike Allen read Going Rogue? If he did, he’d know that his scoop on Sarah Palin is actually quite old. Here’s how Allen opens his story on Politico’s homepage:
Sarah Palin’s charming opening debate line for now-Vice President Joe Biden — “Hey, can I call you Joe?” — was scripted after she repeatedly referred to him as “O’Biden” in preparation sessions, former McCain campaign senior adviser Steve Schmidt told “60 Minutes.”
Schmidt was interviewed by Anderson Cooper for a segment about “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,” a book about the 2008 presidential campaign by political reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, to be published Monday.
CBS News said in a release previewing the segment, to be broadcast Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT, that Schmidt recalled a reflexive tendency by Palin to refer to Biden as “O’Biden.”
O, please. Palin detailed all of this months ago on page 289 of her book:
During rehearsals, I accidently called Randy “Senator O’Biden” — a slip of the tongue combination of Obama and Biden. The blunder struck too often, even tripping up campaign staffers. (Jay Leno later made the same slip on his new talk show, so we were in good company.) We laughed about it but knew that if I said it even once during the debate, it would be disastrous. Then somebody said, “You ought to just call him Joe.” . . . So that’s what we decided I would do. We had no idea my mic would already be hot when I walked onstage, crossed over to his turf, and said, “Can I call you Joe?” The “expert” post-debate analysis was that my question was a cleverly devised strategy to disarm my opponent. Yeah, right.
So I guess the saying is true: In Washington, without an index, nobody reads your book.