"There is a curious relationship between a candidate and the reporters who cover him. It can be affected by small things like a competent press staff, enough seats, sandwiches and briefings and the ability to understand deadlines"
About this Quote
Politics runs on affection as much as ideology, and Steel’s line skewers the oddly domestic economy that keeps it humming. He’s describing a relationship that pretends to be adversarial but is constantly being negotiated through logistics and mood management. The “curious relationship” isn’t just about access; it’s about the low-grade, everyday dependencies that decide who gets framed as competent, who gets treated as a punchline, and which narratives survive a news cycle.
Steel’s wit lands because the “small things” he lists are aggressively unromantic: seats, sandwiches, briefings, deadlines. This is the point. Campaigns like to imagine they’re changing history; reporters like to imagine they’re holding power to account. Steel drags both back to the press riser, where irritation and convenience quietly shape “objectivity.” A competent press staff isn’t merely administrative; it’s an influence operation conducted in the key of courtesy. Enough chairs and a timely sandwich read as respect, and respect turns into patience. Patience turns into benefit of the doubt. That’s not corruption in the brown-envelope sense; it’s the subtler kind, the human kind, where treatment becomes interpretation.
The punchline is “deadlines.” It’s the one item that reveals who holds the leverage. Reporters may have the byline, but campaigns that understand the clock can steer the story simply by making it easy to file. Steel’s subtext is bleakly practical: in modern political coverage, the infrastructure of access often matters as much as the substance of what’s accessed.
Steel’s wit lands because the “small things” he lists are aggressively unromantic: seats, sandwiches, briefings, deadlines. This is the point. Campaigns like to imagine they’re changing history; reporters like to imagine they’re holding power to account. Steel drags both back to the press riser, where irritation and convenience quietly shape “objectivity.” A competent press staff isn’t merely administrative; it’s an influence operation conducted in the key of courtesy. Enough chairs and a timely sandwich read as respect, and respect turns into patience. Patience turns into benefit of the doubt. That’s not corruption in the brown-envelope sense; it’s the subtler kind, the human kind, where treatment becomes interpretation.
The punchline is “deadlines.” It’s the one item that reveals who holds the leverage. Reporters may have the byline, but campaigns that understand the clock can steer the story simply by making it easy to file. Steel’s subtext is bleakly practical: in modern political coverage, the infrastructure of access often matters as much as the substance of what’s accessed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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