Facing the Fatigue Factor

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For the two front runners, last Monday's schedules were typically tough. Mondale awoke at dawn in Wilkes-Barre and toured a dress factory. He flew to Erie for a runway press conference, then to Pittsburgh for another runway press conference. In Harrisburg, Mondale waited as usual for the press to shuffle out of the 727 ("How many more?" he croaked as the reporters filed by), so that the TV news cameramen could get a clear shot of him disembarking. For the 100 supporters gathered on the tarmac, he recited his routine speech, then climbed back up the ramp. On to Philadelphia for a fourth runway press conference ("Vice President Mondale, what is your favorite color?"), and then to Washington for a fund-raising dinner.

Hart's Monday, meanwhile, publicly began at the Philadelphia docks for a 7:30 a.m. mingle with longshoremen. He flew off to Allentown and Bethlehem to stroll through a steel plant and hold a press conference, but engine problems kept him from leaving for Pittsburgh on time. While a pair of small Learjets were being hired, Hart felt obliged to caper around for photographers (he posed in a cockpit wearing dark glasses and pilot's cap) and to discuss the Democrats' alleged indulgence of black antiSemitism. At Pittsburgh's airport (four hours after Mondale had touched down there), he met with a group of old people bused out for the occasion, then submitted to three separate TV interviews and a 20-minute radio call-in show. During his hour in Erie, Hart gave another press conference and, growing ever more hoarse with bronchitis, addressed a rally. From there he flew to Trenton, N.J., drove back into Pennsylvania for a nighttime rally in a shopping mall, and finally returned at 11 p.m. to Philadelphia—where the day had begun.

The ceaseless scurrying would tax anyone. The more ineffable pressures the candidates face, to regain or maintain momentum, to remain intellectually focused but not rigid, are at least as burdensome. Frequent high-stakes televised debates (eight so far) have been an extra drain on emotional resources. "The debates are particularly difficult," says Oliver ("Pudge") Henkel, Hart's campaign manager. "It's a major change of pace from the rest of the campaign. It is so intense that there's invariably a letdown afterward."

The advanced stages of candidate fatigue are obvious. "I can tell," Mondale says. "My syntax starts going first." Press Secretary Maxine Isaacs notes that his looks go too: "He gets big bags under his eyes." Other aides say Mondale gets grouchy as long days wind down.

A bushed candidate is more prone to mistakes and misstatements. Usually the bungles are minor. When Mondale was asked in Pennsylvania about Hart's proposal for a $ 10-per-bbl. tax on imported oil, he rambled numbly, "It's a question of, ah ... ah ..." He stopped. "I can't think of the name. I'm getting a little tired. I'll get back to it." Yet Mondale, who is rather too buttoned down in public, sometimes loosens up when he is fatigued. Campaigning hi upstate New York, he joked that as Vice President he had channeled so much federal money to Rochester, he was afraid he would be investigated.