Washington Post reporter Jason Horowitz files a great piece of what it’s like to be one of the Boys on the Bus (to borrow the title of Timothy Crouse’s 1973 classic) covering the U.S. Presidential campaign.
Having covered a few Canadian general elections often on the buses or planes of different leaders, there was a lot in Horowitz’s piece that was familiar to me. But there were also some significant differences. For one thing, those poor American reporters never get a chance to put a question to the candidate. In the last Canadian general election, the challengers, Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff, would answer pretty much any and all questions the travelling press could dredge up while the incumbent, Prime Minster Stephen Harper, would take questions every day but only a limited amount (usually 5 or so). While I (and many Canadians) don’t like the fact that the current PM takes only a limited number of questions every day from reporters, it’s absolutely god-awful in the U.S. where the incumbent, Obama, has not taken a spontaneous unscripted question from the press that travels with him for months. Romney’s not much better apparently. Continue reading The Boys on the Bus: 1979 vs 2012
