The Candidate's 'Catch Me if You Can'

"We're constantly playing catch-up," one journalist says of Hillary Clinton, who can be less than accommodating when it comes to talking to reporters. (By Cheryl Senter -- Associated Press)

Snow and other late-arriving reporters talked their way in through the back door, but the room was so packed with supporters that her crew couldn't get near the former first lady, whose news conference was almost over. "We're constantly playing catch-up," Snow says.

Newsweek's Andrew Romano says the press didn't even get to take the tour when Clinton visited a Las Vegas sheet-metal factory. "The way we were herded into a small area to watch her walk into a room and meet with union officials just seemed slightly absurd," he says. When a colleague asked the staff for a chance to question Clinton, "they just kind of laughed it off."

My day-long pursuit of the senator on Monday was typical. She arrived more than an hour late, from Iowa, at a 19th-century Victorian mansion here and spoke for all of nine minutes about the importance of health care. With half a dozen cameras rolling, Clinton accepted the endorsement of pediatrician Susan Lynch, wife of the state's Democratic governor, John Lynch.

When Clinton stepped away from the microphones, Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" began blaring from the speakers, which effectively drowned out any attempted queries from the journalists sprinkled throughout the room. Battenfeld, the Boston reporter, launched his horse-race question during a brief lull between songs.

"It's kind of an art form," he said afterward. "I would have asked her about Obama, but I figured she would have turned and run."

While candidates operate in something of a bubble, their headquarters staff conducts an outside game with tougher language, and Clinton is no exception. As reporters awaited her arrival here, an e-mail arrived by BlackBerry, sparked by a Washington Post report on Obama using a political action committee to make donations to officials in early primary states. "It was surprising to learn that he has been using his PAC in a manner that appears to be inconsistent with the prevailing election laws," the Clinton release said.

After the Concord event, Clinton retreated to a previously scheduled taping with Katie Couric, her only sustained encounter that day with the national media. The CBS anchor asked how disappointed she would be if she isn't the nominee. "Well, it will be me," Clinton said. When Couric pressed, Clinton insisted -- not terribly convincingly -- that she hadn't even considered the possibility she could lose.

Reporters, meanwhile, were making their way along unmarked back roads, past moose crossings and flocks of geese, to find a home on an isolated cul-de-sac in Goffstown. There, Judy Lanza, a nurse, and her husband, Joe, a retired police officer, hosted Clinton in a small kitchen adorned with pumpkins, apple baskets, a cookie jar and a straw doll affixed to the wall.

For more than an hour, 30 journalists watched from the small, darkened living room as Clinton chatted, awkwardly at first, with the five preselected guests. Her rhetoric against health insurance companies was harsher than might have been expected. They give patients the "runaround," deny care, "slow-walk" the payment of bills, she declared. "This is all part of their business model. This is how they make money. . . . The small-business health-care market is really rigged."

From there, Clinton drifted into special education, meetings she had as first lady on religious tolerance, how she was "deeply involved" in the Northern Ireland peace process, and her plans for a "post-Kyoto agreement" on global warming. But although the meeting was staged for the assembled journalists, there was no chance for follow-up, and the event received virtually no coverage.

As Clinton made her way to the door, she observed: "All this good food -- can we feed the press?" But the press was feeling undernourished.

Campaigns often brush off national correspondents in favor of local journalists, who tend to be less critical. Clinton did hold an off-the-record session with New Hampshire reporters and spoke to an Exeter radio station on Monday. But she paid a price for her limited interaction with reporters on the 6 p.m. newscast of WMUR-TV, the state's only network affiliate.

Obama, in New Hampshire that day, was shown talking to one of the station's reporters about Oprah Winfrey's decision to campaign for him. Edwards, also in New Hampshire, was seen talking to reporters about the need for a candidate who "tells the truth." But Clinton's endorsement by the governor's wife warranted only a brief mention, with no sound bite from the candidate.

Her last major event was a potluck dinner at a cavernous union hall in the town of Brentwood. But only a handful of reporters attended and I arrived late, driving down unlighted streets in a heavy rain as confused Clinton aides kept giving me the wrong directions.

The candidate spent half an hour signing campaign posters and posing for pictures, and I persuaded her tired-looking staff to grant me a single question as she made her way out. The question: Wouldn't providing more media access help get her message out?

"We try to balance what we do every day," Clinton said. "I'm trying to reach as many voters as possible one-on-one" while also dealing with the local press, "which has a very big role to play," and making time for occasional interviews with national news outlets. "It seems I have mushrooming demands," she said. "The balancing is really intense."

With that, she was off to a waiting plane to South Carolina, while reporters headed for commercial flights to follow her there.