Walter Shapiro, a political reporter who covered 12 presidential elections for leading magazines and newspapers, puncturing conventional wisdom with unconventional insight and brightening the campaign trail with his inimitable wit, died July 21 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 77.
He was being treated for cancer and contracted covid-19 and pneumonia, said his wife, Meryl Gordon.
Mr. Shapiro spent half a century in journalism, adapting himself over the years to the needs and readership of daily newspapers, weekly magazines and online outlets for political junkies.
He was on the staff of The Washington Post Magazine in the early 1980s, later joined Newsweek and then Time magazine, wrote columns for Esquire and USA Today and wrote for websites including Politics Daily. At the time of his death, he was a staff writer for the New Republic and a columnist for the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call.
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Wherever his byline appeared, it promised, by all accounts, a reverence for boots-on-the-ground reporting and an irreverence for bluster, whether from politicians or the journalists who chronicle their doings.
Last month, in one of his last columns for Roll Call, he offered a few guidelines, based on his long experience, for reporters covering the 2024 presidential election. “Be wary of polls,” he wrote, “don’t overreact” to what pundits might say and “make sure to check your deodorant.”
The last tip, apparently, was especially for journalists crammed into the campaign buses and sweltering dog-day rallies where he had been a reliable presence every four years since Republican Ronald Reagan was on the ticket in 1980. (The reference to deodorant was also indicative of a hobby Mr. Shapiro once nurtured as a stand-up comic.)
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He was a reporter of the old school, one who took pride in showing up, whether at the site of a caucus or at a prospective candidate’s home. Joe Klein, the journalist and author of the anonymously written political novel “Primary Colors” (1996), wrote in a tribute on Substack that he and Mr. Shapiro “spent many days over the years in Iowa — years, in total, and it was almost always winter — assessing the heroes who wanted to be President.”
In 2003, before packs of reporters parachuted in, Mr. Shapiro wrote a book, “One-Car Caravan: On the Road With the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In,” about the early phase of that year’s race for the presidential nomination.
By arriving early on the trail, he got to know candidates with greater intimacy than they often permit as the campaign drags on and tightens. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who won the nomination but lost the general election, played the classical guitar for Mr. Shapiro and spoke emotionally about the comforts he found in having reached middle age.
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Mr. Shapiro readily admitted to having been wrong at times in his reporting. He made the “worst mistake” of his career, he wrote in a 2016 column for Roll Call, amid the 1984 New Hampshire Democratic primary, when he wrote the lead primary-week story for Newsweek.
The magazine went to press over the weekend but was not delivered to many subscribers until the following Wednesday, the day after voters went to the polls. Mr. Shapiro wrote in his story that former vice president Walter Mondale’s “lead in New Hampshire appears unassailable” — a prognostication made with what Mr. Shapiro confessed was “unassailable self-confidence.”
In the end, Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) defeated Mondale in an upset. (Mondale ultimately won the Democratic nomination before losing the general election in a landslide to the incumbent Reagan.)
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“You blew it,” a friend told Mr. Shapiro as exit polls began to emerge in New Hampshire.
“Three decades later, I still hear those three words every time I am tempted to make a glib prediction about the primaries,” Mr. Shapiro wrote in 2016. “That massive long-ago mistake has instilled in me a quality that is sadly too rare in today’s political journalism — humility.”
When Mr. Shapiro was not on the campaign trail, he was often reporting from Washington — or commuting between Washington and his home in Manhattan, a place he enjoyed, he once quipped, because “never once in New York on a weekend have I heard the word ‘subcommittee.’”
Walter Elliot Shapiro was born on Feb. 16, 1947, in Manhattan and grew up in Norwalk, Conn. His father was a city planner, and his mother managed the home.
After high school, Mr. Shapiro enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1970 and served as editor of the campus daily.
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His first professional job in journalism was as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly. In 1972, after returning to Michigan for graduate school, he sought the Democratic nomination for an Ann Arbor-based seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At the time, Mr. Shapiro wrote years later in Roll Call, his “only vehicle was a three-speed bicycle,” and for much of the campaign his wardrobe consisted of a single wide-lapeled double-knit suit.
He described his campaign operation as the “equivalent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a backyard musical,” but it was fueled by his impassioned opposition to the Vietnam War and his support for busing to accelerate school desegregation. The former helped him carry Ann Arbor in what he described as a landslide; the latter cost him votes in the suburbs.
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Mr. Shapiro finished second out of six candidates — and came away with an enduring respect for candidates who offer themselves up to voters.
“My long-ago political career has given me empathy for candidates,” he wrote, “especially the long-shot dreamers, who are out there with a shoeshine and a smile propelled by an abiding faith in American democracy.”
Mr. Shapiro returned to journalism, working as an editor at Washington Monthly magazine before joining the Carter administration as a press secretary to Labor Secretary Ray Marshall and later as a presidential speechwriter. It was his last hiatus from journalism.
He delved into his own family history for his 2016 book “Hustling Hitler! The Jewish Vaudevillian Who Fooled the Führer.” The volume centered on his great-uncle Freeman Bernstein, an inveterate con man who in the mid-1930s tricked the Nazi government into buying almost $150,000 in nickel — a metal badly needed for armament production — that was in fact scrap metal. According to Mr. Shapiro’s wife, the book was recently optioned for Broadway.
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Mr. Shapiro’s marriage to Barbara McGowan ended in divorce.
Besides Gordon, of Manhattan, his wife of 43 years and a magazine writer and the author of several books, survivors include a sister.
Mr. Shapiro lectured at Yale University on presidential politics and the media and continued writing until shortly before his death. He was among the commentators who in recent weeks called on President Biden to end his beleaguered campaign for reelection and to stand aside in favor of a new nominee, as Biden ultimately did the day Mr. Shapiro died.
Throughout his career, Mr. Shapiro cautioned his colleagues to guard against a trait that is common among journalists, and that in his view was valuable in moderation but harmful in excess. “Too much cynicism in covering politics,” he wrote, “is a crippling malady for reporters and pundits.”
