Some politicians think you have to brutalize yourself to show how well you are doing, Mr. McCain added.

He could be talking about John Edwards , who ended on Tuesday with a midnight event in the city of Atlantic, west of here, and began Wednesday with stops at 2:15 a.m., Creston, and 5:15, Centerville.

His final event of the day was set for the wholly sane hour of 8:30 p.m. (Des Moines.)

Bleary-eyed blunders

But bleary-eyed blunders are hardly restricted to a homestretch. Modern presidential campaigns start earlier than ever and involve endless news cycles, relentless fund-raising demands and coast-to-coast travel.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said he was tired and had flown all night before the debate last August in which he said that homosexuality was a choice, a remark he retracted.

Senator Barack Obama , Democrat of Illinois, blamed fatigue for his drastically overstating the death toll from tornadoes in Kansas in May. He said 10,000 people died. (12 did.)

There are going to be times when I get tired, Mr. Obama said. There are going to be times when I get weary.

Now, clearly, is one of those times. Mr. Obama, who said repeatedly on the stump last week that he received eight hours of sleep for Christmas, has seemed decidedly in need of a nap in recent days.

Although Mrs. Clinton, unlike Mr. Obama, never mentions her fatigue at campaign events, she is particularly sensitive to it, her aides say, especially at evening appearances. She has shown visible strain in recent days, as well as in an unflattering photograph that ran prominently last month in a number of news media outlets last month.

Widespread problem?

Bill Clinton was famous for requiring just two or three hours of sleep a night, a practice that Mrs. Clinton says she would want no part of in a White House of her own.

But former President Night Owl himself has said sleeplessness is partly to blame for the dysfunction of Washington. That is a little bit like Paris Hilton s blaming overexposure for the problems of Hollywood.

You have no idea how many Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate are chronically sleep deprived because of this system, Mr. Clinton said in September on The Daily Show. I know this is an unusual theory, but I do believe sleep deprivation has a lot to do with some of the edginess of Washington today.

With the caucuses upon them, candidates like to comfort themselves with the notion (or lie) that the end is in sight notwithstanding that New Hampshire holds its primary in all of five days.

I am hoping things will improve a little bit in the schedule so I can catch a few more winks, Mr. Huckabee said Wednesday, dreaming aloud.