The Romney Bus Rolls On. And On. And On.

June 21, 2012
By Reid Cherlin

In a parking lot in Janesville, Wisconsin, the Romney press bus is idling outside Culver's, the Badger State's answer to McDonald's. It's the fourth day of a five-day bus tour, it's hot, and the only thing for lunch is Butterburger® basket meals. ("At Culver's, everything is a basket," a cheerful cashier explains.) A wire reporter extracts a fried cheese curd from a grease-stained bag, sniffs it gingerly, and swallows it with a grimace. It's only noon, and the list of daily indignities is already growing: a network embed has dropped her laptop into the aisle and shattered the screen—"because I have no room on the fucking bus!"—and there was no internet service, cell reception, or air conditioning at Romney's factory rally in Janesville. A tall, slim reporter ducks into the humming interior and sets his lunch and his DVcam on an empty seat. He asks his colleague about her upcoming travel schedule. The way he says it is: "Do you know what your life is right now?"

It is not the happiest of times aboard the Romney bus. The TV reporters are annoyed at the print reporters. The print reporters are annoyed at their lack of access to the candidate. The foreign reporters are clueless, trying to book international flights from mobile phones on a bus rapidly fleeing the last cell tower in Grant County. The veterans use their jackets and bags to block off double-seat refuges for themselves, but those, like me, who were late out of the hotel lobby sit two-by-two in the back (always the back, it seems); it's so tight that when my neighbor types I feel his tendons working. Hanging over all of this, like the dust cloud following the coach, is the growing realization among the press corps that the Romney campaign doesn't need them right now...

Read on at GQ ➝