Facing the Fatigue Factor

Always running at full tilt, the Candidates show the strain

The Denver reporter, who had not seen Gary Hart for weeks, thought he looked terrible—haggard, pale, tapped out.

"Don't you badly need a rest?" he asked when the candidate arrived in Colorado last week as the votes were being counted in Pennsylvania. Hart hemmed, hawed, then rasped almost plaintively, "Tomorrow will be the first day we've had off since Christmas." Back in Philadelphia, Walter Mondale, the eventual victor, had turned peevish during his last go-round of a day with reporters. Would he predict his margin of victory, a newsman asked. "No," snapped an irritated Mondale. Is something wrong? asked the next questioner. "Nothing," barked Mondale. Then he caught himself and apologized. "I am getting what is known as punchy," he said. "I don't think I've been home in five weeks."

Four weeks, in fact. But none of the three men who remain in the race for the Democratic nomination can be blamed if they lose track of a few days here, a week or so there. Even Jesse Jackson, the youngest of them, is exhausted. "He doesn't sleep," jokes a Jackson aide. "He just faints a while." Hart, 47, Mondale, 56, and Jackson, 42, have been on the road for more than a year. Since January they have had to go at a ferocious pace, running an electoral marathon at sprinters' speeds. It shows. The survivors often look drawn and ashen, and all have made blunders because of fatigue. Indeed, the intensity of this year's primary rigors, physical and emotional, may be unprecedented. Says one drained journalist, a veteran who is trooping after Jackson: "There has never been anything like this. Never."

The candidates are enjoying a bit of a respite right now. But during the high-pitched seven weeks from Iowa's caucuses to Pennsylvania's primary, each roared in and out of hundreds of towns, eating perfunctorily and exercising hardly at all. Sleep comes a few hours at a time in stuffy rooms and cramped airplane seats. The adrenaline gushes all day long. Every remark, every intellectual twitch or tic is scrutinized, recorded, analyzed. In the frenzy of political combat, the candidate must improvise crucial strategic moves, keep his facts straight and try to look presidential to boot. Senator John Glenn said he was "perpetually tired" two months before the first primary. Fellow Dropout George McGovern seemed well rested, even twinkly, while he was in the race. Still, he says, "Fatigue is public enemy No. 1. It has become a most serious problem in American politics."

The standard campaign day just before any primary includes a couple of events in each of five cities. Mondale may hold one season record: the day before Super Tuesday, he hit eight Southern cities in 18 hours. During one 24-hour period before the Pennsylvania primary, Jackson flew aboard a twelve-seat turboprop plane from Pittsburgh to Madison, Wis., to Milwaukee to New Orleans. Along the way he delivered five speeches and slept about five hours. Two weeks ago, Jackson made a campaign appearance that ended at 10:30 p.m. in Albany. He then traveled to Harrisburg, Pa., and went to an antinuclear rally from 4 to 6 the next morning, after that attending a meeting of black state legislators at 10 a.m.