New Hampshire Magazine’s Rick Broussard profiles FNC’s Carl Cameron…(via FishbowlDC)

In all your years following candidates around, what’s the best thing and the worst thing you’ve experienced on the campaign trail?

One of the best and worst moments was in 1996 when I was moderating the Republican presidential debates on national TV when the lights went out.

That was a best?

We handled it OK and for the first time I really understood what it was to be in the national spotlight. And I didn’t drool all over myself.

You get accused of having a conservative bias, as does Fox News. Is that a fair and balanced appraisal?

I am a libertarian in the New Hampshire sense of the word. I’m registered as an independent. I’ve voted for Republicans and Democrats over the years and I treat every politician as subject matter. It’s a little impersonal, but what serves me best is something I learned when working on the radio in Manchester on WFEA. It was the beginning of my career and I was up at four in the morning doing radio reports. I was going to cover a house fire and my boss told me, look, it’s not a good fire or a bad fire. Just tell us how high the flames went. That’s how I cover politicians.

People who know me from before I got into media or who know me from Ch. 9 or WFEA know I’m not an ideological person. What I strive to do at Fox is put the ball on the 50 yard line and right or left, they can run with it. I come from a very liberal family. My mom has been involved in the league of Women Voters and my dad is an Ivy League professor. There are times when my employment at Fox makes their skin crawl.

TV political coverage seems to be taking a lot of hits lately. Is it up to the challenge?

The problem with TV politics is the limited amount of time we have, particularly with six plus candidates on both sides, there’s no way we can do a comprehensive story in two minutes. I try to draw in the audience with high impact reports. I put the crash at the beginning of the race so people will watch. Give them political combat up front, rather than policy substance. Give them the horse race and some name calling and then at the end we can make them eat some of the spinach of policy.