[Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham (2020) is a counter-factual novel, depicting Hillary’s life if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton. It includes this description of the national press corps that perfectly matches my perception of them, both personally (I have known several) and from stories I have read.]

It really wasn’t that I loathed the press, as was often reported by members of the press; it was that I profoundly distrusted them. They were, for the most part, funny, observant, and intelligent— many had degrees from fancy universities—and I knew they were hardworking because, for much of the time, they literally kept the same schedule I did, attending the same rallies, driving between the same small towns in Iowa or New Hampshire, flying in and out on the same early-morning and late-night flights (though not literally on the same plane—at this point in the campaign, my team still flew on a relatively small Gulfstream, and it wouldn’t be until the general election that, God willing, the travelers would be invited onto my campaign’s 737).

But most political journalists were so childish, so distracted by shiny objects in the forms of gaffes or scoops or arbitrary details they imbued with meaning that simply wasn’t there. The journalists’ desire not to be bored was palpable, but campaigning, like life, was often boring. Thus, in their hunger for novelty, they read shifting alliances and enmities into minor personnel changes, described mindsets they guessed at based on posture or body language, competed with each other for meaningless scraps that they could present as breaking news.

They constructed elaborate narratives based on scant evidence. They also were self-righteous and self-congratulatory; they assumed that, in other fields, they could make salaries many times what they currently earned, but they believed that journalism was a noble calling. And yet, on a day-to-day basis, they were people who fought over electrical outlets, who were simultaneously obsessed with their—and my—campaign weight gains and with the availability of meals and snacks. They shamelessly critiqued my appearance while, in some cases (this was true of both men and women) visibly going days at a time without washing their hair or changing their clothes.

Like children, the journalists wanted to say and write whatever they wanted about me and then for me to be glad to see them, for me to like them. Unlike children, the journalists drank a lot and sometimes had romances with each other.