US campaign takes its toll

2008-02-01 14:45

Washington - In the marathon race for the US presidency, candidates and their back-up teams go without sleep for days, battle fatigue and lose physical capacities as they slog along the campaign trail.

"Campaigning can have a physical impact on the candidate. There is an enormous amount of sleep deprivation, as people seem to be campaigning 24 hours a day," Christopher Bull, a presidential primary scholar at Georgetown University, told AFP.

"It's astonishing to see how some of the candidates wear down physically under the strain and some of them don't," he said.

"(Republican Arizona Senator) John McCain is showing real grit and physical toughness for his age. He appears to be bearing up very well while the youngest candidate in the race, Barack Obama, is losing his voice and weight."

McCain is 71; Obama is 46.

Five hours of sleep

At Christmas, just before the first caucus vote in Iowa, the young Illinois senator told members of the media accompanying him on the already months-old campaign trail that the present he wanted most of all was eight hours of sleep.

Five hours is more the norm for candidates.

In the week before Super Tuesday - when 22 states hold primaries or caucuses on February 5 - Obama covered 15 states.

"I predict that some of the candidates will lose their voices and will have to cancel some of their talks," said neuro-laryngologist Andre Reed, who counts speakers, professors and singers among his patients.

In the closing days of his campaign for the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton had completely lost his voice.

But he deftly turned the handicap into a plus-point, one aide recalls. The then not-yet-president said: "I may not have a voice now, but if you elect me, I'll be your voice in Washington."

In the run-up to the South Carolina primary, Bill Clinton took on Obama and the media in a foul-tempered campaign on behalf of his Democratic nomination hopeful wife, Hillary.

The New York senator, who was soundly beaten by Obama in South Carolina, put her husband's behaviour down in part to lack of sleep, saying it was "marking all of us, our families, our supporters".

Hillary's teary moment

Clinton's famous teary moment of vulnerability in New Hampshire in January, which some analysts believe helped her to a shock primary win, came after she was asked how she got up day after day, and hit the road and carried on fighting.

As her voice caught and eyes brimmed, the episode seemed to come down as much to chronic, punishing fatigue as emotion.

Harried Clinton aides say the 18- to 20-hour days on the campaign trail are already taking a toll, and are bound to get worse as the contest heats up.

Hillary campaign staff have been known to sleep through their morning wake-up calls or doze off during events.

"We have a car to pick up stragglers who sleep in and miss the bus in the morning," said one senior aide who declined to be named.

Even Bill Clinton publicly caught some shut-eye on the campaign trail as he slept through a tribute to black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, jnr.

'It's worth a bit of fatigue'

But the sleep deprivation is worth it if you're working on the campaign team of the first woman with a real chance of being elected president of the United States.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that's worth a bit of fatigue," said a yawning Hillary aide.

Lack of sleep can result in slower reaction times, poorer judgment and less mental acuity, experts say.

It can also leave you in a foul mood and, in extreme cases, lead to hallucinations and even death.

But there is evidence that "older people and women tolerate sleep deprivation better than young people," sleep scientist Barbara Phillips of the American College of Chest Physicians said - giving Hillary and McCain one point each over Obama.

- AFP