As our car pulled into the Sacramento Sheraton after midnight Wednesday night, following a very long day of nonstop speeches, press conferences, TV interviews, and campaign appearances, our campaign's peerless press secretary, Parker Blackman, turned to me and said with a smile, "You have an easy day tomorrow. You don't have to get up until 5 a.m. to make the local morning TV rounds before meeting with the capitol press corps."
And that actually sounded very good to me.
How come, I wondered to myself, am I doing so well on only 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night, when I am someone who normally needs a solid 7 hours of sack-time to feel refreshed?
I decided it must be the campaign regimen I'm following.
Here then are my seven hard and fast rules for surviving the rigors of the campaign trail.
- Absolutely no alcohol. Not even a sip of wine from somebody else's glass.
- No carbs. Although I must admit I broke down on the airplane and had a bag of pretzels. But it was a really tiny bag.
- Absolutely no high heels.
- Drink lots and lots and lots of water. And when you think you've drunk enough, drink another bottle
4a. Make sure you have a well-trained advance person who always knows where the closest bathroom is. - Keep plenty of blotting tissue handy for dealing with shiny patches in-between interviews. Especially if, like me, you have Greek olive oily skin - it's great for wrinkles, but bad for TV.
- An ample supply of café lattes.
- And, most importantly, it helps to no end to have a set of ideas you passionately believe in - and that you don't mind saying again and again and again and again and again and again..