Adam Clymer, who covered congressional intrigue, eight presidential campaigns and the downfall of both Nikita S. Khrushchev and Richard M. Nixon as a reporter and editor for The New York Times and other newspapers, died early Monday at his home in Washington. He was 81.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed in March, said Dr. Michael A. Newman, who treated him. Mr. Clymer also had Parkinson’s disease and Myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular condition.

Mr. Clymer received unsought attention in 2000, when, during a presidential campaign rally, he became the target of a vulgarism by George W. Bush that was captured on a live microphone. It was not the first time he had been attacked.

Reporting from Russia for The Baltimore Sun during the Vietnam War, he was beaten at an anti-American demonstration, accused of assaulting a police officer and expelled from the Soviet Union as a “hooligan.”