Adam Clymer, veteran New York Times political reporter and editor, dies at 81

Adam Clymer, who covered national politics for the New York Times and other newspapers in a career that took him from the “Boys on the Bus” era of campaign-trail reportage to the hot center of the 2000 presidential race, died Sept. 10 at his home in Washington. He was 81.

He had pancreatic cancer, said his friend Rick Berke, a former Times colleague and the executive editor of the health news website Stat.

A crusty veteran of the Washington press corps, Mr. Clymer wrote books on President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and spent decades covering the White House and the halls of Congress, where he often called lawmakers by their first names — “a reflection of how things used to be more cozy with reporters and politicians,” Berke speculated, “or, more likely, the fact that he had covered them for so long.”

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Mr. Clymer was the reporter who called George W Bush a “major league asshole” not realising a microphone was on at the time.