That is what President Bush wanted to do on that day-show that they would not shut down the government. The fountains ran and the food service continued and the phones were answered. So on a day like 9/11, where you would think that everything would be different, in very many ways, everything was exactly the same. There are hundreds of people running the White House. It is an 18-acre complex on which there's a nuclear blast–secure bunker, three or four dining rooms, a huge Park Service staff to maintain the magnificent grounds. The White House is its own character in my books. What was it like to be at the White House during 9/11? How close was it to what happens in the novel? Madam President takes place during a terrorist attack, which has some similarities to 9/11. It was overwhelming and exciting and exhausting and thrilling. Jeb was a statewide officeholder, but because he was a Bush and because his brother was running for president, it was a job with national scrutiny. What was that jump to the White House like, going from state politics to national after working for Jeb? But the job that changed my life, and changed the course of my life, was working for Jeb Bush when I was 25.
You know, I worked in the White House, and I worked for Sarah Palin, and they made an HBO movie and that stuff was really amazing and fascinating and cool. They interviewed me and I said yes on the spot. I put my down comforter and a bunch of clothes in a suitcase and moved to Tallahassee. And you relocated to Florida, no problem?
And so I think I learned in that moment that things always work out. I was devastated, but I went to work for a young, rising star in the Republican Party named Jeb Bush. You were fired from that first political job working for Bill Leonard.
I'm sure that many members of my family have voted for the people I run campaigns against. It's good that voting is something everyone gets to do in private. You've mentioned in other interviews that you don't always agree with stances of the people you work for. I felt like I had a seat at the table for campaign strategy and I saw how important communications are to politics and in politics. He was my first Republican boss and he was lovely to me. Then I really became enamored with Assemblyman Bill Leonard. But I was attracted to politics at the state level, which was what I did in Sacramento, because I felt like I could help them get a message out to the media since I had been the local media. And I was a small-town reporter, so local politics were the thing that affected everyone's life: snow removal and speed limits and drug laws. I liked covering politics as a journalist. So politics wasn't something that was a big passion of yours until you got involved with it professionally.
One was a Democrat and the other a Republican, and the Republican hired me. I wanted to move to Sacramento, where my boyfriend was going to law school at the time. Nicolle Wallace: I went to journalism school and I was working as a small-town reporter in Redding, California. cities simultaneously.ĮLLE.com spoke to Wallace about what it was like to be in the White House on the real 9/11 what it was like to watch Sarah Paulson play her in the HBO movie Game Change, about the McCain/Palin campaign and what she thinks of Hillary Clinton's campaign so far. Almost all of Madam President takes place on a day when America is under a 9/11 kind of siege, during which terrorists attack several U.S.
Her new book, Madam President, is the third in a series of compulsively readable novels Wallace has written about a fantasy White House, where the president, vice president, and key cabinet officials are all women, and where bipartisan agreement is actually possible.
In addition to her co-host role on The View, she is the mother of a three-year-old boy and a best-selling novelist. With all that verve, it's no surprise that Wallace appears to be an effortless multitasker. Wallace is as comfortable talking about her big fat Greek wedding as she is about her disastrous experience managing Sarah Palin when she was a senior staffer working for John McCain during the 2008 elections. She exudes a rare combination of sharp competence and California girl bounce. Bush's White House, is as bright as the room is drab. Wallace, one of the talk show's 2014 additions and the former communications chief for George W. It's a bleak little hovel in a nondescript Manhattan office building where The View is filmed. Nicolle Wallace looks out of place in her dressing room.