The Wall Street Journal-20080206-Campaign -08- Slog Becomes Sprint For the Candidates- Campaign Brings Dizzying Routine- Colds- Weight Gain

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Campaign '08: Slog Becomes Sprint For the Candidates; Campaign Brings Dizzying Routine, Colds, Weight Gain

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On a plane Sunday night from Minnesota to New York, an exhausted Hillary Clinton asked reporters accompanying her for a favor: help her deliver her stump speech.

"You guys have got to keep me on message, you know," she joked. "I haven't had much sleep, so what I want you to do is strategically position yourselves so if I forget any of my good lines, call them in."

Political strategists like to say a presidential campaign is a marathon, not a sprint. This past week they have been wrong.

With 21 contests for Republicans and 22 for Democrats, the candidates and their entourages have followed a dizzying routine -- airport to stump speech to fund-raiser, repeat -- that plays out several times a day in a blur of states.

Sen. Clinton, for example, has followed a grueling schedule that begins at dawn and carries her and her entourage of 30 to 50 traveling reporters, staffers and high-level supporters to as many as five states in a single day. She prefers to fly overnight to get an early start in the morning.

The cost: strained voices (Sen. Clinton), wobbly eating habits (Mitt Romney) and expanding waistlines, and persistent colds and coughs (campaign aides and the press corps).

"Anywhere I am for more than 15 minutes I sleep. . . . I'll nod off for two minutes at a time," says Jay Carson, Mrs. Clinton's press secretary, who has worked on three presidential campaigns.

On Monday, Mr. Romney woke up in Tennessee, ate lunch in Georgia, paused for an hour in Oklahoma and held his newborn grandson in California before turning around and hopping on a cross-country flight to West Virginia. The millionaire opted to forgo his row of three seats and instead slept on the floor, his feet sticking out into the aisle.

Mr. Romney lamented the quick flying time to voters in West Virginia yesterday when he landed.

"By the time you fall asleep and as soon as they get you up to get you seated properly and the tray tables stowed and all that stuff why you haven't had a lot of time to catch any shut-eye," he said. "I'm a little . . . uh," he added with a pause "inarticulate this morning." Then he quipped: "Not that there's a big difference you'd notice."

So frantic is the pace that two federal agents had to track down a reporter from the Buffalo News at a Clinton rally in Albuquerque in time to depart for St. Louis. They found him interviewing voters -- just in time to make the motorcade.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, at 71 years old, is the oldest of the remaining candidates and often naps on flights. This past week, he has enjoyed a more relaxed pace that comes with his front-runner status. His staff has kept the candidate primarily hopscotching around the delegate-rich Northeast.

Barack Obama also stayed in the East in the past few days, after a jaunt around the Midwest. On Sunday, after stops in Connecticut and New Jersey, the Illinois senator flew home to Chicago for the evening to watch the Super Bowl, and Monday, after a stop in Massachusetts, returned home again.

Food is a major challenge. Mr. Romney goes to great lengths to eat healthily. While watching the kickoff to the Super Bowl on Sunday, the former Massachusetts governor ate chicken fingers but also munched on raw broccoli. But he isn't without a sweet tooth: He jumped aboard the press bus the other day and took the remnants of a box of chocolate- covered peanuts a reporter had left behind.

And if candidates and staffers aren't hungry, chances are they are dressed inappropriately. Yesterday's voting states ranged from bitter- cold Alaska to now-balmy Arizona.

"Look! The guys on the runway are wearing shorts," a campaign staffer yelled a couple of weeks ago as Sen. Clinton's plane touched down in Monterrey, Calif. Having been dressed for chilly Washington, where the flight originated, the passengers and the candidate happily threw their winter coats onto the plane's seats.

In her now-famous teary moment at a coffee shop in New Hampshire, an exhausted Mrs. Clinton lamented that it is hard to eat healthily on the campaign trail, "when the easiest food is pizza." On the coast-to- coast tour, every flight now offers Mrs. Clinton and the other passengers cheese trays, bottles of red wine and salty snacks. That has contributed to "campaign-trail weight" -- the 10 to 20 pounds most people gain on the road.

The close quarters and the lack of sleep also mean colds, which are passed from staffers to reporters to candidate and back. The motherly on-the-road head of the Clinton campaign's traveling press operation has taken to handing out cough drops to reporters. Mrs. Clinton prefers an alternative remedy: She and former President Bill Clinton both eat whole jalapeno peppers, seeds and all, which are believed to fend off colds.

Families, too, are being pressed into service. All five of Mr. Romney's sons have been sent to far-flung places to speak for their father. On Friday, Josh Romney, a father of three who lives in Utah, flew to Alaska. "People warmed to the idea that a family member of a presidential candidate was in Alaska, making the effort," Mitt Romney says.

Candidates may be losing their voices and the battle for their waistlines, but not their competitive spirit.

When asked if she was tired of the mad dash to Super Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton gave an emphatic, "No. "

"I love a good campaign," she said.