Election Day will end months of campaigning, not only by the candidates but also by a pursuing army of some 200 reporters (see THE PRESS). To represent TIME, Chief of Correspondents Murray Gart assigned two teams of Washington staffers: Dean Fischer, Strobe Talbott and Christopher Ogden to the Ford-Dole campaign; Stanley Cloud, Bonnie Angelo and John F. Stacks to Carter-Mondale--and sometimes the correspondents have switched from one campaign to the other to get a fresh perspective. For this week's issue, both candidates gave exclusive interviews to TIME (see THE NATION).

Covering such a national event is a top assignment, but behind the scenes it can also mean a struggle for survival. Three much quoted rules: "First, eat whenever you can, even if you're not hungry; second, sleep whenever you can, even if you're not tired; third, get your laundry done whenever it's possible." Survival is sometimes even more fundamental. Correspondent Cloud, a native Californian who has reported for TIME in Moscow and Saigon, still remembers with a shudder what he calls "a white-knuckle flight" during the New Hampshire primary campaign, when the pilot of a plane bearing him and Carter and a few aides could not find an airport for his small plane during a blinding snowstorm. Says Cloud: "Not even in Viet Nam under fire was I so scared."

White House Correspondents Fischer and Talbott have been just as busy following Ford from coast to coast. The logistics of the schedule, Fischer finds, can present peculiar problems, like having to surrender his luggage the night before an early-morning flight. Says he: "Sometimes I end up having to carry a toothbrush, razor and shaving cream in my raincoat pocket." Holder of a master's degree in history from the University of Chicago, Fischer has covered three presidential campaigns and feels that this one is "far and away the most interesting because of the uncertainty." Despite the pace, the correspondents can agree with one veteran newsman's observation: "The only thing worse than covering a presidential campaign is not covering a presidential campaign."

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