votes, 10 points. in 2008, both bill and hillary clinton came to town, including the day before the election, and i won by 100,000 votes. so i welcome president clinton back to kentucky. every time he has come, it s been really good for me. thanks a lot. he is still smiling, howard. your thoughts. and it s time for you to start out thing this race here. you re from out there. you know it. you re the jack germond of louisville, kentucky. is this too close to call early, or is this guy, the old pro just going to wind it up when he needs it? i haven t eaten in nearly enough restaurants to be the jack germond of anywhere. but i was in the room today for the fundraiser that bill clinton headlined on behalf of alison grimes. it was an overflow crowd. it was a big crowd. it was a crowd so enthusiastic, it was almost giddy. i haven t seen anything like that in kentucky in a long time. the kentucky democratic party is unified. they re excited.
beneful is awarding a $500,000 dog park makeover. in the 2013 dream dog park contest. enter now. this is a passage i want to read of jack germond from fat man in the middle seat talking about contrasting the era, in his prime covering campaigns with the new era. he says the next generation of leading political reporters are every bit as good as we were as reporters but their lifestyles are more disciplined. tend to drink white wine or beer rather than irish whisky and they carry cell phones so they can talk to their offices more than the once or twice a day i considered adequate. they go out running early in the morning and a lot of them eat salads from room service, believe it or pnt. reading this made they mike: think i would have loved being on the road covering
attach them to the phone. that was really new technology. but jack germond was one of the first if not the first print reporter to make it on television as a pundit. and it wasn t because of his leading man looks. i mean, he really was a character. he was the anti-pundit, too. yes. the chair that he sat on, the chair is still there, and many other people have sat in it. it leans to one side because jack always leaned to one side. but he had such reverence for the written word. when i first started doing the mclachlan group, he would say, this is just television. it doesn t have the power of the written word. it just out there and breaks into a million pieces. when people would sit in the green room and prepping, or as jack would say, working on their spontaneous one-liners, he would be there with the racing form or crossword puzzle as if to say, this is barely worth my time. but it was that kind of antagonism to the medium. everybody loved him.
insight and unhealthy coziness. he didn t hide his political views. he was a democrat. his passion was politics. political campaigns, learning who wanted to run, figuring out who was going to win and understanding why. he had no problem with horse race journalism as long as it was good horse race journalism. jack germond s world has given way to a radically different political media landscape. politicians face more scrutiny and account act than they did before but the fear of an unguarded moment going viral on youtube or twitter have walled off politicians to the public like never before. the intimacy like jack germond is largely a thing of the past. in many ways the quality of political coverage today is better than it s ever been. yes, we remember the goold good oel days as being better than they were but germond s passing is a reminder that something
personally. i want to know if you can talk about jack germond the reporter, his approach to politics, what he was like as a reporter. well, the first thing about jack is, he loved reporting, he loved people, he was fun to be around. and as a reporter, his idea was you had to start at the bottom. if you went into a state chasing a candidate, yeah, you d cover the candidate but jack would be on the phone talking to precinct committee men and county chairman. he had his hand on politics in virtually every state. and he did it in grass voots a cliche but bottom up. by the time you get to a presidential race he probably knew more about the state than his advisers or the candidate himself. we ve got the book. i love the title of this fat man in the middle but he has