Journalism Noir: Campaign Reporting Is a Mug's Game

This week it was reported that press outlets were complaining about lack of access to Barack Obama.  It reminded of a piece I wrote back in January and wasn't able to sell called "Journalism Noir," where I played campaign reporter for a day.  It's a bitch, lemme tell ya. 

I don't know that it qualifies you to make pronouncements about policy or campaign strategy, which is the endgame for a lot of these folks, but it's a tough way to make a buck.

And yes, I'm disappointed about the FISA thing too ...

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Perfect, I figured. The Candidate was coming to town for a ‘meet the voters’ chat and I had a press pass. It seemed like a good time to jump back into the fray and not just criticize from the sidelines. It had been years since I’d basked in the glow of real shoe-leather reporting. Since I was a kid, in fact. So I headed off for the event, notebook in hand. If I’d had a fedora, I’d have worn it. And after a rough afternoon working the trade -  well, let’s just say I was looking at the Joes and Janes of campaign reporting through new eyes. 

So they’re susceptible to flattery and sensitive to criticism. Can you blame 'em? They offer up their days to the boredom and their bodies to the punishment. In return they’re manipulated, pushed around, and treated like second-class citizens. And for what? You’d get more real information from a press release. Like they used to say: It’s a mug’s game. 

It wasn’t hard to find the right house on that little street in the San Fernando Valley. Satellite dishes sprang up around it like a grove of mushrooms from the Magic Forest. An hour before the event the onlookers were already gawking. I found the focus of their attention, a modest blue and white home midway down the block, just by triangulating from their stares.  

This street had been a lower-middle-class neighborhood, probably Hispanic, until bubble-inflated prices made these modest houses unaffordable to anybody but yuppie interlopers. Now newish Volvos sat next to primer-coated Ford Econoline vans and old Chevy Novas with web-fractured windshields. Lean palm trees cast scant shade on swing sets and barbecues in the neighboring backyards. Underneath the thin veneer of Martha Stewart whitewash it was still Raymond Chandler country. 

Campaign aides and dark-suited Secret Service agents stood awkwardly around the place like choirboys at a Sadie Hawkins dance. A ponytailed female agent in a pantsuit checked names against a list while her male colleagues passed the time by practicing their menacing looks. She seemed to take extra time clearing me through. As she did a sandy-haired man moved in on us. He wore mirrored shades and a suit he probably paid too much for. The tie looked like it came from a pushcart in Grand Central Station. His shirt screamed Tommy Bahama, maybe the “Latin Cruise” collection. He interrupted us - but not the call on his cell phone. There’s one in every crowd. 

“Oh, hey, buddy,” Suit Boy said into the Nokia, “hold on a second while I deal with this.” He brushed back his sandy hair and said ‘I’ve got to –“. She cut him off with a dismissive gesture until she was finished with me. I liked her. She had moxie.

White plastic patio furniture was already set up in the backyard, between a small garage and a storage shed. A press viewing area – more like a holding pen, really – was cordoned off by ropes. The ropes were lighter than the ones in boxing rings, and they were set way down at calf height. They couldn’t stop a toddler, except through intimidation.  But intimidation works, especially when the guys facing you have guns. Camera crews had already set up their equipment, blocking any direct line of sight to the table and chairs. Most of the remaining available space was filled with non-journalists – neighbors and friends – forcing the print scribes to fight for elbow space with amateurs. I shook my head. I’d been doing this for twenty minutes and I was already resentful. 

The sun was merciless and I had a bad case of the flu. Like a chump I asked for water. The campaign aide looked surprised and said “there isn’t any.” Then I asked a burly Secret Service agent with a dark moustache where the bathroom was. Mistake. His response was to re-check my credentials, curling his lip in what looked like amused skepticism at the “blogger” letterhead. He called a campaign representative over. They left me cooling my heels for a few minutes while they conferred.  Then he came back to indicate with a nod that I could stay. When I reminded him about the bathroom he shook his head, expressionless behind dark glasses. This wasn’t shaping up to be my day. 

Reporters, camera people, and bystanders jostled for shade in the midafternoon sun. Occasionally a cheer rose up from the front of the house, only to die down again. At one point sirens shrieked from down the street and someone shouted “here he comes,” but the Secret Service agents stood motionless. They’d been through this a thousand times. 

The Candidate arrived precisely on schedule. Politicians are known for being habitually late, and his opponent had said the night before that he was a lousy manager. Score one for the challenger. As he walked in several observers commented that he was taller than he looks on television. That’s not what people usually say when they see a celebrity. He gave a low-key wave to the faces in the pen before taking his place at the little plastic table. 

He had a runner's body, the deceptively thin kind that athletes know can hide wiry strength. Sometimes inexperienced and bulked-up fighters go up against a guy like that and think they have it made. Next thing they know they’re breathing hard and hanging off the ropes. A couple of rounds later they’re frustrated, enraged, and bleeding from a cut above the eye. "I can't believe this kid can hit so hard,” they’ll say.  “I should be kicking his ass." 

The four citizen-interviewers were already in place. Cameras clicked and whirred. Print journalists holding notebooks were jostled aside by neighbors taking cell phone pictures. The Candidate gave a short introductory talk about consumer debt and then opened the table up for questions. Strobe lights flashed white, erasing the pale blue shadows cast by the garage.  

The discussion took about 45 minutes. Folks had been saying The Candidate is new in town, but from the looks of things he’d been working on his moves. When it was over he thanked his guests, stood up, and headed toward the house as reporters shouted questions. “Okay,” he said, “one.” He turned to a gesticulating blonde woman who stood on a plastic chair with a cameraman at her shoulder. “You again?” He smiled a bloodless smile. Clearly no introductions were necessary. 

“Columnists have been saying …” she began, introducing a charge about his campaign finances. “Which columnists?” he feinted. “How many?” I don’t know, she said. “Name a couple,” he parried. She hesitated, then named someone from the local paper. “Ah,” he said. “One columnist.” He took a breath. “Just so we know where we stand,” he said. Then he answered.  

More shouted queries. The Candidate looked around. “One, two, okay, three more.” A few more exchanges he was gone. The agents held the small crowd behind the ropes as he disappeared into the house. The Secret Service man who had scoffed at my “credentials” manned the gate that led to the street. Three or four print reporters and a crew from one of the local Spanish-language television stations stood nearby, bitching about the delay as The Candidate made small talk on the fenced-in back porch.  

Suddenly a new figure pushed to the front of the crowd. It was the sandy-haired guy with the mirror shades who had tried to push past me at check-in. “Hey, buddy!” he said to the man at the gate. “Why are we still waiting here?” More impassivity from Agent Moustache. “Procedure,” he said finally.  

“Oh, I see.” Shades sneered for a minute, the Tommy Bahama rising and falling with each breath. “The front yard’s covered with neighbors, but we’re hemmed in like cattle. Let the amateurs mill around but lock up the professionals. That makes sense!” The agent shrugged, then looked away with an air of dismissal that seemed well-rehearsed. I wondered if there’s a law-enforcement course called Asshole Control. 

Still, I had more sympathy for Mr. Mouth than I’d have had two hours earlier. Penned up, neglected, trampled on by onlookers, ignored - I couldn’t do it day in and day out. My thoughts wandered to John King, the CNN reporter who recently vented at blogger/columnist Glenn Greenwald over a piece that slammed his softball questions to John McCain. Campaign reporters hate that kind of criticism.  Of course McCain gets the kid-gloves, I thought. He treats these guys like human beings. 

They can’t help it, I thought. It’s what zoologists call the “behavioral sink.” Cram mammals into a small enough space, deny them basic biological needs, and they turn aggressive and frantic. Cookies and coffee on the “Straight Talk Express” must trigger a metabolic state of gratitude, create some sort of physiological bond. They know McCain. They like him. And then some punks they’ve never heard of¸ who haven’t paid their dues in this racket, have the nerve to badmouth them? It must feel like a sucker punch. 

King had recently announced an impending marriage - and a religious conversion, too. That’s gotta add to a guy’s stress level, I figured. “I don't read biased uninformed drivel,” King’s email to Greenwald had begun, “so I'm a little late to the game.” 

Heh. Not even Jewish yet, and he’s already grouchier than my Uncle Hyman. 

A cheer erupts in the front yard, followed by a roar of engines as the candidate departs. The Secret Service agent watches us, unmoving, waiting for the all-clear to come through his earpiece. Sixty seconds pass, then ninety seconds, then two minutes. The cameraman from the Hispanic station shifts his weight from foot to foot and addresses the agent. “He’s gone, yo,” he says quietly. 

A few more seconds pass before the agent unlocks the gate. Reporters and onlookers scatter in all directions. I walk up the street behind my benefactor, the ponytailed agent, as she makes her way to a small green rental car. The man in the overpriced suit has vanished. Camera crews are stowing their gear in scratched-up white vans as I drive away. 

Okay, John King. I’ve got a new point of view. I think you were out of line back there with McCain, and with Greenwald too. But I’m not made of stone. It’s tough out there.  

And who knows? Maybe someday we’ll all meet and shake hands – you, me, Greenwald, a thousand others - out there somewhere, when the hour is growing late and the bone-crushing fatigue starts coming on. When the light is fading and those convenient bathrooms are just a working stiff’s dream. Out there. Somewhere. Behind the ropes. 

Because at the end of the day we’re all mugs, and it’s all just a game.  

Isn’t it?