Writing in the latest issue of GQ magazine, Michael Hastings describes his personal feelings about various candidates, including Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and admits that he could not be objective about the people he covered:

If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite what they tell themselves, it’s impossible to both be a part of the action and report on it objectively. In some cases, you genuinely like the candidate you’re covering and you root for him, because over the long haul you come to see him as a human being.

Hastings, a self-described “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing trust-fund bab[y],” goes on to say that he was “appalled by [the] basic ideas” of the Republicans. He blasts John McCain as "a little crazy," Rudy Guiliani as a "maniac," Mike Huckabee as a "joke" and mentions that Democrat Hillary Clinton “seemed okay” until her campaign began attacking Barack Obama.

In addition to his personal feelings against the Republican candidates, Hastings sets forth how his editors expected him to build trust with a campaign’s staff so that the magazine could later, if called for, damage the candidate:

The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You’re probably not going to get much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and nonthreatening, and over time you “build trust,” which everybody involved knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editor calls for it, you’re supposed to fuck them over…”

Hastings also hints that his opinions were shared by most of the press covering the candidates.

According to his article, Hastings left the campaign shortly before the Republican convention.

In addition to his work for Newsweek Hastings is the author of "I Lost My Love In Baghdad,” a memoir in which he describes the death of fiancé, an aid worker who was killed by a car bomb in Iraq.

His full article appears in the November 2008 issue of GQ, which features comedian Jimmy Kimmel on the cover and the headline “Vote Democrat.”