There really is no substitute for watching the pretenders for the job of prime minister up close as they deal with the slings and arrows of a campaign

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John Ivison has been on the road with the federal leaders’ election campaign tours for his eighth go-round, and offers a behind the scenes look at life with the boys and girls on the bus. Watch the video or read the transcript.

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Every election campaign brings me back to Timothy Crouse’s classic account of the George McGovern U.S. presidential bid in 1972, The Boys on the Bus.

Crouse said that what reporters know best, is not the voters but the tiny community of the press bus and plane, “a totally abnormal world that combines the incestuousness of New England hamlet, with the giddiness of a mid-ocean gala and the physical rigour of the Long March”.

This is my eighth general election and it’s an accurate description.

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