I think you all should know: I slept my way to the top of my political career. |
Though to be fair, it was a very short-lived career, and I made only minimum wage. |
In the fall of 2008, I was 22 and unemployed. My boyfriend — a community organizer — was running a voter-registration drive in Staten Island, and I persuaded him to hire me to knock on doors. |
Door-knocking is like trick-or-treating for grown-ups, except instead of candy you get an education in what it means to be a citizen of America. You can try to make assumptions about who lives in which house, based on whether the siding is cracked or gleaming, whether there are curtains in the windows or sheets, but you never know who’s going to open the door. You never know whether they’ll be willing to talk to you. |
I’ve been thinking lately about how door-knocking is one of the many election-year traditions that is going by the wayside during the pandemic. I imagine that’ll have some effect on turnout. But it’s also just sad that Americans are missing out this chance to meet one another face to face. |
Which brings me to another thing that’s just not the same this year: political reporting. Normally journalists would be crisscrossing the country in the company of the presidential candidates or fast on their heels. They’d be listening to the candidates in auditoriums and shadowing them on rope lines, trying to get as close as possible. This year they’re far away and they’re on the phone. |
The Sunday Review cover this week is by the editorial writer and veteran political reporter Michelle Cottle. It’s a deep dive into the Biden campaign and the “concentric circles” of influence around it. For today’s newsletter I asked Michelle how much the pandemic had affected her reporting, and what she missed most. |
“One of the best ways to get a sense of a politician is to travel with them,” she told me. “The closer you can stick to them, the better. You not only get a chance to see them in less formal, less guarded circumstances, you get to hang out with their staff. Stories get told, even if off the record, that give you a better sense of the person.” |
Plus, she said, “it’s fun.” |
She once followed Rick Perry around Charleston, S.C., when he was considering another run for president. They talked about his parents, his dogs and his favorite saints (don’t ask, she said). Once, waiting for a fund-raiser to start, “I watched the governor stick his nose down into a shiny new cowboy boot that had just been removed from the foot of Rep. Mick Mulvaney’s wife.” |
“This is going to wind up in your piece, isn’t it?” he asked. “He likes to sniff women’s shoes!” |
“Well, duh,” Michelle told me. |
“Fun aside,” she pointed out, “sensitive information is often best imparted in person.” She did some of her most delicate reporting about the vicious fighting inside Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign “at odd hours, in the quiet corners of bars, coffee shops and staffers’ homes.” |
Today, she said, “not getting to travel with Biden is a particular disappointment. There is nothing quite like watching him work a room.” |
She told me about riding in an SUV during the Obama administration with just him and his press secretary — “who looked vaguely anxious when the VP reached down, grabbed a large microphone and threatened to start talking to the crowd outside through the vehicle’s PA system.” |
“I’m known for my discipline,” Mr. Biden joked. |
“All that spontaneity and glimpses of humanness are lost,” she said, “when everyone is consigned to phone calls and virtual meet-ups.” |
But that doesn’t mean she can’t do her job. In today’s piece she digs her way into the campaign and tells us who’s who — who has power and who wants it, who’s the enforcer, who’s the alter ego, and who came up with the candidate’s catchphrase about “the soul of America.” |
One of my favorite details from her reporting is Representative Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat, explaining how he deals with all the people who call him up to ask him to pass advice and demands on to the candidate. |
“I don’t tell him any of it,” he chuckled. |
Forward this newsletter to friends … |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment