BOCA RATON, Fla.—Nobody’s sleeping. That’s the real political headline now. Nobody working in the campaigns is sleeping. I talk to the press people, I talk to the surrogates, I talk to people running the campaigns and this is what the conversation is: “Are you getting any sleep?” “No.” I ask, “Do you have three different smartphones on the pillow next to you and even if you get to sleep at 2 o’clock, all night the smartphones are going beep and bop and boop and you hear them and the pillow vibrates and you look?” They laugh and say yes. One top campaign staffer told me he can get to sleep, but when he sleeps he dreams about work and when the alarm goes off he thinks: “I have to go to work but I’ve been to work all night!” How does this leave them feeling? How are their minds working? At “Face the Nation” this morning I said to Kevin Madden of the Romney campaign, “The election is in 16 days. How are you going to feel in 17 days?” He pulled from his pocket a smartphone and tapped an app. He showed me a running scroll count: The election is in 15 days, 20 hours and 39 minutes. Not that he’s counting.
The biggest thing you hear in a campaign now: “Do you have any Ambien?”
Nobody’s sleeping. Not journalists, either.
Are you sleeping?