Campaign Remedies: Regrets, I've Had a Few, Reporters Admit

By: So, after nearly two years of campaign coverage culminating in the November vote, what specifically do some of the leading political writers say about their work?

Page of USA Today, who has covered seven presidential campaigns, wishes she had focused on how Bush was going after his conservative base and Kerry was trying to bring in swing voters: "I saw stories on that in The Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune before I had noticed it."

For the Tribune's Silva, dispelling the swift boat story sooner would have been his priority. "It was ridiculous on the face of it," he says.

Dan Balz cites letting polling steer him away from one story. "I had information in December 2003 that led me to think Kerry would come back [in Iowa and New Hampshire]," he told E&P. "But some polling in New Hampshire showed the opposite so I did not write it. I missed writing that there was a comeback in the making."

Another polling regret comes from the Des Moines Register, where assistant managing editor/metro Randy Essex, who oversees political reporters, says his paper's last polling story ? published two days before Election Day ? was way off. "It showed Kerry up 3% and Bush ended up winning by 10,000 votes," Essex says.

Carl Rauscher, Cox Newspapers' politics editor, laments: "We should have paid more attention to the GOP ground game." Rauscher adds that reporters looked closely at the so-called 527 committees and other Democratic Party groups, "but the GOP mobilization and turnout effort got much less scrutiny." He also feels fact-checking began "way too late."

Germond says he had researched a piece for The Sun that incorrectly compared the election to the 1992 race, on an economic basis. "But the economy is not as bad as in 1992, not nearly as bad," he says. "We did not assess the weight of that issue." He also wrongly assumed that job loss in Ohio would tip the state to Kerry, adding "the job loss was primarily on blue-collar workers who already vote Democratic."

Then there is Ron Brownstein, who says he mistakenly compared Bush to other past incumbents, and spent too much time in Wisconsin, rather than southern Ohio, which went overwhelmingly for the president. His lament: "I did not spend enough time explaining their ties to Bush."