Jack Germond Says, 'No Mas!'

Jack Germond is retiring as a political columnist for The Sun, saying this year's presidential election pushed him over the edge.

"I'm sick of column writing," the 72-year-old Germond told the Washington Post.

"I really found this campaign odious. I couldn't get up for it. The quality of the candidates and the campaign, I just found the whole thing second-rate. I didn't know how to explain to my granddaughter that I was spending my dotage writing about Al Gore and George W. Bush."

Germond has written a column for almost a quarter century with Jules Witcover, who plans to continue to write The Sun column.

Germond told the Post he will continue to appear on the syndicated Inside Washington television show and write free-lance pieces for The Sun, from which he received a "big wad of money" under a buyout offer.

Aside from that, "I'll be going to the track," Germond said.

Germond and Witcover started the column at the Washington Star in 1977, and moved to The Sun when the Star shut down four years later.

"We felt too many columns were just thumb-suckers where people set out with a set idea," said Witcover, who also co-authored four campaign books with Germond. "Our approach was to report the story and then decide how to write it. We've generally been regarded as a liberal column, but we tried not to have any clear-cut ideological identity."

Germond admits he is also feeling his age.

"Looking at the Bush transition, I'm thinking about writing about the Clinton transition eight years ago, the elder Bush transition 12 years ago. How many times I've written the same lead, I don't know," Germond said.

Paul West, The Sun's Washington bureau chief, described Germond as an "incredible resource" for the newspaper and his colleagues.

"For us here at The Sun, and especially in the Washington bureau, the greatest thrill of all has been simply to be able to work, day-by-day, with a man who is the best political reporter of his generation," West said.