so, suddenly you're in a jam. >> schmidt: we were. >> john heilemann: that's the state of desperationn as they sit down with mccain that sunday night over a dinner of deep-fried burritos and say to him, "what about sarah palin?" >> cooper: john heilemann of "new york" magazine and mark halperin of "time" covered the campaign, and spent the last two years interviewing some 200 political insiders for their book, "game change." among their revelations is how mccain's campaign manager, rick davis, spotted sarah palin while searching the google and youtube for possible vice presidential candidates. >> mark halperin: rick davis saw one interview she did with charlie rose where she was very much the sarah palin that people find appealing. she was lively, she was engaging, she popped off the screen. mccain boxed himself in. he needed a game-changing pick for vice president. and that left them with a last minute pick of someone who was, to mccain, a virtual stranger, and was, to his senior staffers, an absolute stranger. >> cooper: just two days before mccain publicly announced his choice, sar

-- john heilemann, why don't you take that?t: in our author's note,ç we mentioned that we conducted the interview on deep background, basically what howie writes in the peace. it is not complete, the description of all the conversations we had with our sources to talk any great detail about how the interview we did conduct would be used in -- we talked in great detail about how the interview that he would conduct would be used in the book. i can say that there is no case in which the way that we explained we are going to that in the and we did not live up to that agreement with any source we talked to in the book. it is important that people understand that a deep background, as many people have written, is not a concept that is etched in stone. every journalist has rules of the road. host: you don't think that concrete come on-the-record -- guest: with new ones, you can describe different things. we did not violate the agreement with anybody that we made for the book. unlike a lot of exchanges and washington and journalism ge

. >> we are joined by the authors, john heilemann and mark halperin. list of things you thought would make news in this book. what on that list has not made news that you were surprised about? of things. when john and i set out to write the book, we hope it would be interesting book to read an interesting story. but we were also going for breaking news because we thought there were things that were uncovered during the campaign. i will give you one. john will have others. sarah palin was picked by john mccain and people were shocked when it happened to that time, the campaign said that she had been on consideration for a long time and receive as much of a background check, so-called vetting, as any of the other people john mccain considered. there is skepticism about that at the time did not of the political journalism parade moved on and there were other things to cover. -- there was skepticism about that at the time it. but the political journals a great move on and there were other things to cover. the truth is that she was brought into the game a v

-- john heilemann, why don't you take that?the interview on deep background, basically what howie writes in the peace. it is not complete, the description of all the conversations we had with our sources to talk any great detail about how the interview we did conduct would be used in -- we talked in great detail about how the interview that he would conduct would be used in the book. i can say that there is no case in which the way that we explained we are going to that in the and we did not live up to that agreement with any source we talked to in the book. it is important that people understand that a deep background, as many people have written, is not a concept that is etched in stone. every journalist has rules of the road. host: you don't think that concrete come on-the-record -- guest: with new ones, you can describe different things. we did not violate the agreement with anybody that we made for the book. unlike a lot of exchanges and washington and journalism generally, between reporters and sources, with the terms are

host: john heilemann? guest: a caller is exactly right about what the clintons believe.hat, to the letter, what we report in the book -- hillary had been concerned about the caucuses for awhile, that they were to lose, and that he was the state senator from illinois and that this could happen to it the night of the iowa caucuses, when hillary had come in third, she and former president clinton are in a hotel suite and they are as angry as their aides have ever seen about what has happened. she finished far off third and they are incredibly upset. former president clinton starts going on about the fact that all of these people, to order 39,000 people had shown up. -- 239,000 people had shown up. it was incomprehensible to him that many people had shown up to the caucuses, and he seized on the notion that the shooting had occurred and that the buses had come in from -- that cheating had occurred and that losses had come in from illinois to five days later, he suggested that hillary raise this question in a debate, at the outcome of the caucuses should be invalidated becaus