WASHINGTON -- Presidential campaigns aren’t always as glamorous as they are portrayed in the movies. They often involve seemingly never-ending hours of tedious work over relatively minor pieces of political real estate.
In the latest edition of "Drinking and Talking," The Huffington Post talked to political operatives and reporters about the madness of campaigns -- whether it was running into Target to buy clean underwear, begging to get fired by a boss, waking up at 4 a.m. to read the National Enquirer’s scoop on a boss’ sex scandal, or having to work with unreasonably loud sex taking place in the hotel room next door.
Over beers, Eddie Vale, vice president of the Democratic opposition research firm American Bridge, and Tim Miller, executive director of the GOP opposition research firm America Rising, shared their lowest moments working on presidential campaigns. Amanda Terkel of The Huffington Post and Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News matched them with horror stories of their own.
We hope you enjoy.
Watch the video above. Here's an index of key moments in the discussion:
00:00 -- Meet The Roundtable00:45 -- Reporting From The Campaign Trail/Shopping At Target03:35 -- Eating Healthy Is Impossible In An Election Year04:56 -- The Worst Moments On The McCain And Huntsman Campaigns08:00 -- The Worst Moments On The Edwards Campaign08:59 -- How To Not Die At A Political Convention10:10 -- Noisy Hotel Neighbors At McCain/Palin '08
Also, listen to or download the audio below:
UPDATE: 2:02 p.m. -- Apparently unimpressed by these tales of campaign woes, Liz Mair, a Republican operative, has emailed a list of her own:
1. While working from home one day, I failed to appropriately guard my laptop from the menace of my cats. While I was typing an email, containing a comment I was asking a reporter to include, one of the cats jumped onto my laptop keyboard, and jumped off. I hoped, in vain, that when my email disappeared, it had been saved to drafts, or was deleted. Nope. She sent it. I think it read something like this: "Please would you update your piece to include the following quote from me: 'Our energy policy is focused on serdfgkhjuly786trtyfrte435468o79uoihjkbhgftdrthfgcnbvhjkl ...'" Thankfully, the quote was not used.
2. The high point of the 2008 GOP convention for me had to be when I had to beg my husband to intervene in a fight between a member of the media and someone staffing the convention, to prevent the member of the media continuing to assault the staffer with the various constituent parts of a hamburger as more media were headed in the direction of the fight. I'll do a lot to avoid bad press.
3. Realizing that on a day when my eyes were watering a lot and I had zero time to run a quickie errand (and was in exclusively male company), all my eyeliner had run off, and attempting a MacGyver-esque fix by using my cigarette lighter to light the wrong end of a match, and smudging the burnt charcoal-y bit around my eyes. Amazingly, this worked quite well and I even got a compliment. But I haven't replicated the experience.
4. Forgetting decorum and responding to a prospective presidential candidate's first-ever phone call to me with "Oh hey man, how you doin'?" Use of titles is something I will admit I have not found consistently easy or natural in my career, and I blame my high school, where we called all our teachers by their first names.
Before You Go
