Hooked on Politics

By James Kelly, Managing Editor

Journalists who cover presidential campaigns are like junkies: they work seven days a week for months, eat food that was last reheated during the Reagan years, lose their luggage in six different states, and when it's all over, what do they crave? To become White House correspondents.

Luckily for us, we have two of the best addicts on the beat: Jay Carney and John Dickerson, who got to know each other so well following George W. Bush that they and their wives had planned to go on vacation together right after the Nov. 7 election. (I hope they were able to get their deposits back.) "What most intrigues me about Bush is how he uses low expectations to his advantage," Jay says. "His opponents judge him by his sometimes awkward public performances and fail to realize that he is a shrewd judge of character with keen political instincts." Both reporters have family connections to their new assignment. Jay's wife Claire Shipman has been covering the White House for NBC News (her cubicle in the press section is one flight up from TIME's), while John's mother, TV correspondent Nancy Dickerson, reported on four Presidents, starting with J.F.K. "With Bush, but in a very much smaller and quieter way, it feels as if I'm returning to my corner of the family store," John says.

There is one person who is even happier than I am about the new gigs for John and Jay, and that's Karen Tumulty, who reported on the Clinton White House brilliantly for us for four years. "Covering politics is largely the business of trying to figure out what it is that divides us and what it is that brings us together," says Karen. She will now do that figuring all across America, in her new beat as national political correspondent. Once an addict...

James Kelly, Managing Editor