THE 1968 campaign began with bumps for Correspondent John Austin. Covering the early phase of Richard Nixon's nomination quest, Austin was struck in the head by a 5-lb. package of confetti at a Chicago rally. Then, as he tried to keep up with a Nixon motorcade in San Francisco, he was hit by a police motorcycle. He took his wife to one political event, at Madison Square Garden. She made it through the police line easily without official credentials; he was detained, though he wore the laminated press card issued to newsmen only after they passed a federal security check.

Nothing so unsettling has happened to Austin during the preliminaries of the 1972 campaign-at least not yet. Part of a Washington-based team whose members rotate among the would-be candidates, Austin drew Edmund Muskie as his first assignment. His reporting for this week's cover story really began eight months ago when he got his first long, close look at the Senator by accompanying him to London, the Middle East and Moscow. Austin has also talked politics with Muskie from Thomas Point, Me., to Capitol Hill. The only heavy objects hitting Austin during this period were the puns that Muskie likes to mutter to those at his elbow (looking at a stone sarcophagus in Egypt, the Senator observed: "These Egyptians sure didn't take the afterlife for granite").

In his files to Associate Editor Lance Morrow, who wrote the cover story, Austin concentrated on Muskie's personality, tactics and campaign organization. Dean Fischer analyzed his legislative record. Simmons Fentress, a senior political correspondent who has been covering state and national elections from North Carolina to South Viet Nam for 20 years, assayed Muskie's overall strategy and how it relates to that of his competitors.

"Washington becomes one big political beehive with the approach of a presidential year," says Fentress. "Everything becomes timed and tooled for Election Day. The rumors get wilder than usual and the ante is raised in that perpetual con game between reporter and news source." The election is 14 wearying months off and there will be plenty of confetti, motorcycles and other hazards along the way. But for those who cover and write about politics, happy times are here again.

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