Question: Do You Miss Being a Reporter on the Campaign Trail

Answer: No

Over on FB, I posited a question - what do you want me to write 250 words about? Whoa boy, but did people have some great suggestions. Many of them wanted me to write about ice cream for some reason. I think the heat is getting to us.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do, starting today. Ready? Let’s go.

TOPIC: Things you do and do not miss about being a journalist following campaign trails during election years.

Honestly, none. I miss no part of it. I miss journalism. I sometimes miss being on the road. I miss those things because I like telling stories. I’m able to do SOME of that here, and I certainly tap my experience as a journalist and reporter to attempt to make this space interesting.

But the campaign trail. Nada. Zilch. Nope.

When I was a junior reporter in New Jersey, I enjoyed covering local politics because I was (and am) a policy wonk. I was interested in how laws and government could, you know, help people.

But once I came to New Hampshire and began covering national politics, that all went out the window. In late 1999 and 2000, I covered the national beat for NH Associated Press. Not as a writer, but what at the time I called an information gatherer. I’d go cover rallies or events and then phone them in to the actual reporter who would write it up. But I didn’t have enough clout to cover George Bush or Al Gore.

So, I covered Gary Bauer. Remember him? Yeah, nobody else does either.

Want to know what the one story of mine - the one event that was my claim to fame after years of cutting my political teeth as a journalist in New Jersey - that made national news?

Bauer fell off a stage flipping pancakes. That was it. Back then and still today, presidential candidates have to do idiotic things on the campaign trail. Bisquick sponsored a pancake flip at the Manchester Armory. Bauer flipped, badly because none of these guys had any clue how to do menial, domestic tasks, stepped backward and fell clean off the stage.

Really.

There’s video of it. Here’s a link. I’m not in the video but I was standing off stage just to the left. Bauer Flips and Falls

That story made national headlines without my name attached to it because that’s just how it worked back then. And as I stood there the next day reading the two paragraph blurb in the local paper about the “pancake incident” I knew I was done with being a political reporter.

The election happened. Bauer didn’t win, obviously. I could have petitioned to see if I could continue on to South Carolina, but the thought of covering more pancake breakfasts, or corn dog eating contests, or kindergarten politician story times (yes, that was a thing) made me feel sick. So I quit and started up The Hippo newspaper with a couple partners, met my wife and here I am.

And you know, it’s not even the stupid pancake flips. It’s the fact that we (as in voters, citizens, humans) have no access to who these people actually are. I remember that Gary Bauer was invited to a private home of a supporter for a meet and greet. No reporters or photographers except me were there. It was in a basement. Barely anyone was there. There was baby carrots with ranch dressing.

Gary and I played a game of ping pong because what the heck else were we going to do. He talked to me about growing up in Kentucky and how he felt the political calling because he was convinced the local town hall was under the control of a crime syndicate. He said he wanted his small town to be free of corruption. He said his Southern Baptist faith called him to try to make life good for people.

He told all those things like a normal human person. I wasn’t allowed to write that story, he wouldn’t let me. The next day, he just defaulted right back to being a horrible a**hole (and continues to be to this day, I would add, at least in public).

I wanted, at that point in my career, to write real things. I had discovered that the national political path was not real. At least not how I defined real.

And now? Well, just look around. Find me real, I dare you.

Anyway, that’s my campaign trail as a journalist story, and I suppose, part of the inspiration for my writing that was to come and for what I at least attempt to do here. I try to be real. I try to be positive. Those things are hard sometimes, but worth it when it works.

Thank for the theme and question. This was waaaaay more than 250 words! See you tomorrow with another one.