WASHINGTON — During the 2008 presidential race, Bill Clinton likened them to spies.
Campaign staffers, meanwhile, regarded them as bellwethers of the election.
But to the media outlets that hired them, the young reporters who traveled with presidential campaigns in 2008 – they called it embedding – were an invaluable source of up-to-the-second news.
At a George Washington University forum Tuesday night, former “embeds” and staffers offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the often tenuous relationship between political campaigns and the people who cover them. “Embeds” picks up on the nickname for war reporters who travel with military units, writing stories the troops sometimes love, and sometimes don’t. The relationship for campaign reporters and staffers was much the same.
“You’re never friends, but it’s a really, really complicated relationship,” said former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman Jamie Smith. “They don’t really know all the stuff that you’re doing behind the scenes, and you don’t really know all the stuff that they’re doing behind the scenes.”
For their part, the reporters described 20-hour work days filled with travel and fattening food, and the challenge of asking candidates hard questions – then having to sit next to them for hours on the campaign bus.
“Being a good journalist is about the … friendliness of your relationship with the campaign,” said Adam Aigner-Treworgy, who covered Republican campaigns for NBC. “You need to be able to call them when you need an answer – and you need to have the campaign answer your phone calls.”
While some reporters said they were disarmed by the access given to them by John McCain’s campaign, not all of them had the same problem.
Former Newsweek embed Nick Summers described one bitterly cold day leading up to the Iowa caucuses when Hillary Clinton, who had a chillier relationship with the press than McCain, unexpectedly boarded the campaign bus bearing hot coffee and bagels for reporters.
“The relationship was so bad that really no one said anything,” Summers remembered. “It was such an alien thing to have her right there that nobody really piped up, and afterward, one reporter made a joke and said under his breath, ‘Geez, does anybody want to go outside and warm up?’”
But in the end, Smith said, the relationship between embeds and campaigns hinged on mutual respect.
“What does bind you all, and the reason that you’re all doing this 24 hours a day, is that reporters really want to make America as strong as possible,” Smith said. “While you are not always in the best of relationships, fundamentally, that’s where you link up.”