NBC Photo: Dana Edelson
John McCain on “Saturday Night Live” with Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.
I was listening to a podcast of Tina Fey talking to Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” recently about her book, “Bossypants,” and Fey mentioned something in passing that gave me insight into an enduring political mystery. Gross asked Fey about her time writing for “Saturday Night Live” and which guest hosts she particularly liked. Fey talked about how much she enjoyed John McCain when he was on the show in the early 2000s. In 2004, Life magazine photographed the two of them together in Washington for a get-out-the-vote cover.
Fey described with affection coming to Washington with her husband and spending a great day with McCain as he showed them around. McCain then framed the photo of the two of them and displayed it in his office. Fey went
on to say that Lorne Michaels always thought that the reason that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, despite the fact that he had only just met her, was that he’d been looking at the photo
of him and Fey for years; he felt an immediate comfort and familiarity with the Alaska governor who looked strikingly like the comedian. That explanation about why McCain might have made that bewildering choice
made as much sense to me as just about any I’ve read. (For more on McCain/Palin and the unraveling of his Republican presidential campaign, read Robert Draper’s terrific story in the magazine from the fall of 2008.) Little did McCain know how different the two women would turn out to be.