Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

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Thompson and illustrated by Ralph Steadman, the book was largely derived from articles serialized in Rolling Stone throughout 1972. And the climb angle is something like 40 or 50 degrees… and then all these green lights blinking and these dials going and things buzzing and humming… and looking down seeing the lights here and there… and cities passing and mountain ranges… a wonderful way to go. HST: One of the weird unanswered questions is whether McGovern actually said1000% to anyone but Eagleton.

I suppose maybe I should have gone on television earlier with thoughtful question and answer sessions, the kind of speeches I was doing there the last few weeks. We were winning those primaries on a reform program and rather blunt outspoken statements of what we were going to do. Whose fault that is I don’t know … I found in the field a lot of confusion about who was really in charge, pushing and pulling as to where you got things cleared, who had the final authority. HST: On paper it indicates no change, but what it doesn’t show is … Nixon lost 9% of, his vote in that period of time … 9 out of the original 52. Ed: And you think that this is the kind of energy which will bring forward a new candidate in ’76 who could win?This made him a pioneer in a type of journalism he dubbed “gonzo,” wherein he often exaggerated or even made up events to hit at some kind of deeper literary truth.

Dubbing it "the mojo wire", Thompson used the nascent technology to capitalize on the freewheeling nature of the campaign and extend the writing process precariously close to printing deadlines, often haphazardly sending in notes mere hours before the magazine went to press.We’ve come to the point where every four years this national fever rises up – this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback – and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you’re talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. HST: He told me when I stopped in Denver on the way to the Super Bowl that he’d sensed it as early as September, but when I asked him when he knew, he thought for a minute and then said, “Well, I guess… it was around October 1st…” According to Pat Caddell’s polls they had known – when I say “they,” I mean the McGovern top command – had known what kind of damage the Eagleton thing had done and how terminal it was ever since September.

I talked to him earlier that day on the way from Wichita to Long Beach and I could tell… he loosened up so much that it was clear something happened in his head… This was shortly after he told a heckler in I think it was… Grand Rapids, “Kiss my ass. Ed: If you were to run for senate in Colorado and win, would you then consider running for the presidency itself? Over the next twelve months, in voluminous detail, he covered every aspect of the campaign, from the smallest rally to the raucous conventions. Thompson studies the 1972 Presidential election month by month, following both polls and candidates across the nation. Ed: I’d like to interrupt you now to ask what was the prevailing mood of the McGovern staff at this point…flying back to Sioux Falls… a day before the election, November 6th?

McGovern: So those two factors were related and the Eagleton thing upset the morale of the staff and people were blaming each other, and there was no chance to recover from the fatigue of the campaign for the nomination – we had to go right into that Eagleton battle, and so I think that – if there was a chance, at that point, to win the election – we probably lost it right there. Only two other people heard him – one was a Secret Service man, another was Saul Kohler, of the New house papers. HST: His whole image of being a… first a maverick, anti-politician and then suddenly becoming an expedient, pragmatic hack… kind of a… Well, he began talking like a used car salesman, sort of out of both sides of his mouth, in the eyes of the public, and he was no longer… either a maverick or an anti-politician… he was… he was no better than Hubert Humphrey and that’s not a personal judgment, that’s how he was perceived… and that’s an interesting word. It’s the difference between watching a football game between two teams you don’t care about, and watching a game where you have some kind of personal identity with one of the teams, if only a huge bet. Thompson still despises him and his views, but by peeling away a layer, he can expose things that lay beneath the surface.

I suspect that’s really one of the roots of the thinking of at least half of the ranking staff people in McGovern’s campaign, even now…. You might know anything about Muskie or McGovern or even Gary Hart but the sheer excitement of the campaign trail as described by Thompson beats any sports show out there.After McGovern won the nomination, he analyzes how he won it and how it caused the schizm in the democratic party. I was looking for a cab to get across the main terminal … it was about a mile away… and Sandy Berger… appeared in his car … he was one of the people who had broken down earlier . My first loss came in New Hampshire, where I felt guilty for taking advantage of one of McGovern’s staffers who wanted to bet that George would get more than 35% of the vote; and I lost when he wound up with 37.