In the McCain-Palin camp, Schmidt says that when he was told by a campaign staffer prepping Palin for her debate with Biden that the vice presidential candidate was doing very poorly in her preparation, it was a crisis moment. "He told us the debate was going to be a debacle of historic and epic proportions…she was not focused…not engaged," he tells Cooper. "She was not really participating in the prep."
Schmidt confronted Palin with this and, he says, "She said, 'You know, I think that's right.'"
If that wasn't enough for deep concern, Palin had a reflexive tendency to refer to Biden as "O'Biden," says Schmidt, something that had to be fixed before the debate. He says others in the campaign came up with a solution. "It was multiple people - and I wasn't one of them - who all said at the same time, 'Just say, Can I call you Joe,' which she did."
Schmidt says he took over the prepping, simplified it, and says she "more than held her own" in the debate. But not without one "O'Biden" slip on national television.
Palin declined to be interviewed for this story, saying she had dealt with many of the allegations in her own book.
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