Cox, Hovell, Summers, Aigner-Treworgy and Memoli. Photo courtesy of Campus Progress.

Ana Marie Cox moderated a panel discussion with former 2008 presidential campaign embed reporters at GWU this week, in conjunction with Campus Progress and the Institute for Politics.

The first panel was made up of ABC’s Bret Hovell, former NBC embed turned “Colbert Report” researcher Adam Aigner-Treworgy, Newsweek‘s Nick Summers and former Biden embed turned RealClearPolitics White House reporter Mike Memoli.

NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Jamie Smith and former McCain campaign staffer Justin Germany rounded out the second panel.

We learned they can identify hotel chains by just the carpet, they gained and lost a second freshman fifteen, supplied campaign staffers with booze (something O’Donnell calls “a great journalism tradition”) and even managed to break some news along the way…

But would they do it again? They all agreed it’d be hard to beat the historic nature of the ’08 campaign, but answers were mixed on whether they’d go back.

“You swear you’ll never do it again, but there is a certain sexiness to being out there,” Summers said. Germany’s also in, “it’s the Superbowl of politics.” Hovell was a hard no.

Among those not receiving GWU credit to attend… Congress Daily‘s Erin McPike who covered the Romney campaign for NBC and the National Journal, msnbc.com’s Carrie Dann who was embeded in Iowa for NBC/NJ, Roll Call‘s Tricia Miller who covered the Edwards campaign for NBC/NJ and WaPo‘s Perry Bacon.