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Stop the Bus, I Wanna Get Off!“[CNN political correspondent] Candy Crowley can’t think of a single thing she’ll miss about the campaign. She’s long ago sent in her Maryland absentee ballot, and November beckons with lush vistas of sleep and TiVO. . . . ‘After the previous campaign, it took me a good month to stop waking up in the middle of the night in a panic that I’ve missed something,’ Crowley says. ‘After a while, you just miss your house, you know? I miss my back yard. I miss going to the grocery store.’”
—Julia Joffe, writing about the effect of a two-year campaign
on journalists who’ve covered it, The New Republic, 2008
on journalists who’ve covered it, The New Republic, 2008
NEWS FLASH: First-in-the nation returns from Dixville Notch, NH, where all 21 of the village's registered voters cast ballots just after midnight Tuesday, show a groundswell for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who received 15 votes to 6 for Republican John McCain. It's the first time Dixville Notch has gone Democratic since 1968. Click here for CNN report.
A sympathetic campaign "bus" reminiscence from someone who knows. Jim Slade is an ABC News veteran:
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I used to wake up in the middle of the night in some campaign-stop hotel, wondering where the hell I was. It would sometimes take 3 or 4 minutes to sort it out in the dark. I resorted to leaving the bathroom light on so I could find it in the middle of the night and leaving the campaign schedule on the side table within easy reach.
I know and understand Candy's feelings of disorientation and fear; the merciless phone would ring at 3AM with some innane question or "big tip." The prime directive was: "When you see food, eat it..when you see a rest room, use it." And it was good advice because you never knew when you'd see those things again.
I was with Jimmy Carter during that last mad dash to election day. One night, after three consecutive days on about 3 hours' sleep, we checked into a hotel near O'Hare airport. The candidate was going to go to church the next day and most of us decided to give it a skip. Somewhere in the dark period between 2 and 4AM, the call came that the Iranian parliament was about to vote on the hostages. Carter got out of bed and returned to Washington, leaving most of us running around in groggy circles. Of course, it turned out to be nothing that he or anybody else could control, but he went back anyway.
On the last frantic day of Carter's campaign, we went from Portland, ME to Portland, OR with several stops in between. Going east to west, he stretched out the last day by three awful hours. Then, he loaded up and we flew to Plains, GA so he could vote. I was so glad to see the backside of that SOB by that time that my only goal was my own bed in my own home with the radio and TV OFF.
So I understand what Candy is saying and the public never will. Journalism IS a public service in the final analysis, but it shouldn't require human sacrifice.
When I walked into the polling place this morning, I said in a loud voice, "All right, let's clear this up once and for all." I hope we can.
Best,
Slade
It’s insane for the country, too, that the campaign is more of an endurance test than an airing of ideas. There should be one primary date, the day after Labor, no political commercials only three minutes for each legitimate candidate airing several times before the primary and the general, and voting only on election day.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Coulter, Ingraham, O’Reilly and the rest of their ilk should rot in their own waste.
I wonder what took her so long. I've been sick of it since I learned that the primaries were being held earlier rather than later.
ReplyDeleteJoseph