NEW YORK — With just a handful of days left in the 2008 presidential campaign, one would assume that Brit Hume, managing editor of Fox News' Washington bureau, would be preoccupied with voter turnout models and battleground state maps.
But Hume is already thinking about how he'll be spending his time after Nov. 4. Before the end of the year, the television news veteran will step down from the anchor desk and his long-running show, "Special Report."
"Family is a big piece of it," he said of his retirement plans recently. "And Christ is a big piece of it. And golf is a big piece of it."
Hume said he had long planned to cut his workload when he turned 65. His resolve was strengthened as he helmed the campaign coverage this season and found his zeal for the story ebbing.
"The absolute, indispensable ingredient is enthusiasm," he said. "I started to lose mine. This stuff exhausts me as much as it excites me."
The most draining aspect: the ugliness that has come to dominate political debate.
"The whole general tone of politics in this country has turned so sour and so bitter and so partisan," he said, his gravelly baritone more morose than usual. "It makes news, but after a while, it's dispiriting to cover it."
The rancor must be particularly harsh to offend Hume, who has been steeped in Washington stories for much of his 43 years as a journalist, covering nine presidential campaigns in the process.
His sense of 'smell'
After starting out at the Hartford Times and the Baltimore Evening Sun, Hume worked for the investigative columnist Jack Anderson, from whom he said he learned "how to smell a story that isn't right."
He took that instinct to ABC News, where he spent 23 years, including eight as the network's White House correspondent, before he was recruited by Roger Ailes to join the nascent Fox News Channel in 1996.
"From the minute he got here, he gave us instant credibility," said Ailes, the network's chief executive.
Hume's semi-retirement -- he'll be on the air 100 days a year as a senior political analyst -- marks the ongoing generational shift that has been reshaping television news over the last four years. Since voters last cast their ballot for president, new anchors have replaced NBC's Tom Brokaw, CBS' Dan Rather and ABC's Peter Jennings.
