Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Castrated? Jesus! Is nothing sacred? Four years ago Hubert Humphrey ran for President of the United States on the Democratic ticket—and he almost won.

  It was a very narrow escape. I voted for Dick Gregory in ’68 and if somehow Humphrey manages to slither onto the ticket again this year I will vote for Richard Nixon.

  But Humphrey will not be on the ticket this year—at least not on the Democratic ticket. He may end up running with Nixon, but the odds are against him there, too. Not even Nixon could stoop to Hubert’s level.

  So what will Humphrey do with himself this year? Is there no room at the top for a totally dishonest person? A United States Senator? A loyal Party Man?

  Well… as much as I hate to get away from objective journalism, even briefly, there is no other way to explain what that treacherous bastard appears to be cranking himself up for this time around, except by slipping momentarily into the realm of speculation.

  But first, a few realities: (1) George McGovern is so close to a first-ballot nomination in Miami that everybody except Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Shirley Chisholm, and Ed Muskie seems ready to accept it as a foregone conclusion… (2) The national Democratic Party is no longer controlled by the Old Guard, Boss-style hacks like George Meany and Mayor Daley—or even by the Old Guard liberal-manque types like Larry O’Brien, who thought they had things firmly under control as recently as six months ago… (3) McGovern has made it painfully clear that he wants more than just the nomination; he has every intention of tearing the Democratic Party completely apart and re-building it according to his own blueprint… (4) If McGovern beats Nixon in November he will be in a position to do anything he wants either to or with the party structure… (5) But if McGovern loses in November, control of the Democratic Party will instantly revert to the Ole Boys, and McGovern himself will be labeled “another Goldwater” and stripped of any power in the party.

  The pattern is already there, from 1964, when the Nixon/Mitchell brain-trust—already laying plans for 1968—sat back and let the GOP machinery fall into the hands of the Birchers and the right-wing crazies for a few months… and when Goldwater got stomped, the Nixon/Mitchell crowd moved in and took over the party with no argument from anybody… and four years later Nixon moved into the White House.

  There have already been a few rumblings and muted threats along these lines from the Daley/Meany faction. Daley has privately threatened to dump Illinois to Nixon in November if McGovern persists in challenging Daley’s eighty-five-man slave delegation to the convention in Miami… and Meany is prone to muttering out loud from time to time that maybe Organized Labor would be better off in the long run by enduring another four years under Nixon, rather than running the risk of whatever radical madness he fears McGovern might bring down on him.

  The only other person who has said anything about taking a dive for Nixon in November is Hubert Humphrey, who had already threatened in public—at the party’s Credentials Committee hearings in Washington last week—to let his friend Joe Alioto, the Mayor of San Francisco, throw the whole state of California to Nixon unless the party gives Hubert 151 California delegates—on the basis of his losing show of strength in that state’s winner-take-all primary.

  Hubert understood all along that California was all or nothing. He continually referred to it as “The Big One,” and “The Super Bowl of the Primaries”… but he changed his mind when he lost. One of the finest flashes of TV journalism in many months appeared on the CBS evening news the same day Humphrey formally filed his claim to almost half the California delegation. It was a Walter Cronkite interview with Hubert in California, a week or so prior to election day. Cronkite asked him if he had any objections to the winner-take-all aspect of the California primary, and Humphrey replied that he thought it was absolutely wonderful.

  “So even if you lose out here—if you lose all 271 delegates—you wouldn’t challenge the winner-take-all rule?” Cronkite asked.

  “Oh, my goodness, no,” Hubert said. “That would make me sort of a spoilsport, wouldn’t it?”

  On the face of it. McGovern seems to have everything under control now. Less than twenty-four hours after the New York results were final, chief delegate-meister Rick Stearns announced that George was over the hump. The New York blitz was the clincher, pushing him over the 1350 mark and mashing all but the flimsiest chance that anybody would continue to talk seriously about a “Stop McGovern” movement in Miami. The Humphrey/Muskie axis had been desperately trying to put something together with aging diehards like Wilbur Mills, George Meany, and Mayor Daley—hoping to stop McGovern just short of 1400—but on the weekend after the New York sweep George picked up another fifty or so from the last of the non-primary state caucuses and by Sunday, June 25th, he was only a hundred votes away from the 1509 that would zip it all up on the first ballot.

  The candidate with staff advisor Gordon Weil, author of the ill-fated “thousand dollar per person” welfare proposal—a sort of McGovernized version of Nixon’s own guaranteed income plan—but which inept presentation transformed almost instantly into a permanent albatross around the neck of the McGovern campaign. George’s apparent inability to explain or even understand his own tax reform ideas gave first Humphrey, then Nixon a club which they used to destroy one of McGovern’s prime assets: his previously untarnished image of “competence.”

  At that point the number of officially “uncommitted” delegates was still hovering around 450, but there had already been some small-scale defections to McGovern, and the others were getting nervous. The whole purpose of getting yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate is to be able to arrive at the Convention with bargaining power. Ideology has nothing to do with it.

  If you’re a lawyer from St. Louis, for instance, and you manage to get yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate for Missouri, you will hustle down to Miami and start scouting around for somebody to make a deal with… which won’t take long because every candidate still in the running for anything at all will have dozens of his own personal fixers roaming around the hotel bars and buttonholing Uncommitted delegates to find out what they want.

  If your price is a lifetime appointment as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court, your only hope is to deal with a candidate who is so close to that magic 1509 figure that he can no longer function in public because of uncontrollable drooling. If he is stuck around 1400 you will probably not have much luck getting that bench appointment… but if he’s already up to 1499 he won’t hesitate to offer you the first opening on the U.S. Supreme Court… and if you catch him peaked at 1505 or so, you can squeeze him for almost anything you want.

  The game will get heavy sometimes. You don’t want to go around putting the squeeze on people unless you’re absolutely clean. No skeletons in the closet: no secret vices… because if your vote is important and your price is high, the Fixer-Man will have already checked you out by the time he offers to buy you a drink. If you bribed a traffic-court clerk two years ago to bury a drunk driving charge, the Fixer might suddenly confront you with a Photostat of the citation you thought had been burned.

  When that happens, you’re fucked. Your price just went down to zero, and you are no longer an Uncommitted delegate.

  There are several other versions of the Reverse-Squeeze: the fake hit-and-run; glassine bags found in your hotel room by a maid; grabbed off the street by phony cops for statutory rape of a teenage girl you never saw before….

  Every once in a while you might hit on something with real style, like this one: On Monday afternoon, the first day of the convention, you—the ambitious young lawyer from St. Louis with no skeletons in the closet and no secret vices worth worrying about—are spending the afternoon by the pool at the Playboy Plaza, soaking up sun and gin/tonics when you hear somebody calling your name. You look up and see a smiling rotund chap about thirty-five years old coming at you, ready to shake hands.

  “Hi there. Virgil,” he says. “My name’s J. D. Squane. I work for Senator Bilbo and we’d sure like to cou
nt on your vote. How about it?”

  You smile, but say nothing—waiting for Squane to continue. He will want to know your price.

  But Squane is staring out to sea, squinting at something on the horizon… then he suddenly turns back to you and starts talking very fast about how he always wanted to be a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, but politics got in the way…. “And now, goddamnit, we must get these last few votes….”

  You smile again, itching to get serious. But Squane suddenly yells at somebody across the pool, then turns back to you and says: “Jesus, Virgil, I’m really sorry about this but I have to run. That guy over there is delivering my new Jensen Interceptor.” He grins and extends his hand again. Then: “Say, maybe we can talk later on, eh? What room are you in?”

  “1909.”

  He nods. “How about seven, for dinner? Are you free?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wonderful,” he replies. “We can take my new Jensen for a run up to Palm Beach… It’s one of my favorite towns.”

  “Mine too,” you say. “I’ve heard a lot about it.”

  He nods. “I spent some time there last February… but we had a bad act, dropped about twenty-five grand.”

  Jesus! Jensen Interceptor; twenty-five grand… Squane is definitely big-time.

  “See you at seven,” he says, moving away.

  The knock comes at 7:02—but instead of Squane it’s a beautiful silver-haired young girl who says J.D. sent her to pick you up. “He’s having a business dinner with the Senator and he’ll join us later at the Crab House.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful—shall we have a drink?”

  She nods. “Sure, but not here. We’ll drive over to North Miami and pick up my girlfriend… but let’s smoke this before we go.”

  “Jesus! That looks like a cigar!”

  “It is!” she laughs. “And it’ll make us both crazy.”

  Many hours later, 4:30 A.M. Soaking wet, falling into the lobby, begging for help: No wallet, no money, no ID. Blood on both hands and one shoe missing, dragged up to the room by two bellboys….

  Breakfast at noon the next day, half sick in the coffee shop—waiting for a Western Union money order from the wife in St. Louis. Very spotty memories from last night.

  “Hi there, Virgil.”

  J. D. Squane, still grinning. “Where were you last night, Virgil? I came by right on the dot, but you weren’t in.”

  “I got mugged—by your girlfriend.”

  “Oh? Too bad. I wanted to nail down that ugly little vote of yours.”

  “Ugly? Wait a minute…. That girl you sent; we went someplace to meet you.”

  “Bullshit! You double-crossed me, Virgil! If we weren’t on the same team I might be tempted to lean on you.”

  Rising anger now, painful throbbing in the head. “Fuck you, Squane! I’m on nobody’s team! If you want my vote you know damn well how to get it—and that goddamn dope-addict girlfriend of yours didn’t help any.”

  Squane smiles heavily. “Tell me, Virgil—what was it you wanted for the vote of yours? A seat on the federal bench?”

  “You’re goddamn fuckin’-A right! You got me in bad trouble last night, J.D. When I got back here my wallet was gone and there was blood on my hands.”

  “I know. You beat the shit out of her.”

  “What?”

  “Look at these photographs, Virgil. It’s some of the most disgusting stuff I’ve ever seen.”

  “Photographs?”

  Squane hands them across the table.

  “Oh my god!”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said, Virgil.”

  “No! This can’t be me! I never saw that girl! Christ, she’s only a child!”

  “That’s why the pictures are so disgusting, Virgil. You’re lucky we didn’t take them straight to the cops and have you locked up.” Pounding the table with his fist. “That’s rape, Virgil! That’s sodomy! With a child!”

  “No!”

  “Yes, Virgil—and now you’re going to pay for it.”

  “How? What are you talking about?”

  Squane smiling again. “Votes, my friend. Yours and five others. Six votes for six negatives. Are you ready?”

  Tears of rage in the eyes now. “You evil sonofabitch! You’re blackmailing me!”

  “Ridiculous, Virgil. Ridiculous. I’m talking about coalition politics.”

  “I don’t even know six delegates. Not personally, anyway. And besides, they all want something.”

  Squane shakes his head. “Don’t tell me about it, Virgil. I’d rather not hear. Just bring me six names off this list by noon tomorrow. If they all vote right, you’ll never hear another word about what happened last night.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  Squane smiles, then shakes his head sadly. “Your life will take a turn for the worse, Virgil.”

  Ah, bad craziness… a scene like that could run on forever. Sick dialogue comes easy after five months on the campaign trail. A sense of humor is not considered mandatory for those who want to get heavy into presidential politics. Junkies don’t laugh much; their gig is too serious—and the politics junkie is not much different on that score than a smack junkie.

  The High is very real in both worlds, for those who are into it—but anybody who has ever tried to live with a smack junkie will tell you it can’t be done without coming to grips with the spike and shooting up, yourself.

  Politics is no different. There is a fantastic adrenaline high that comes with total involvement in almost any kind of fast-moving political campaign—especially when you’re running against big odds and starting to feel like a winner.

  As far as I know, I am the only journalist covering the ’72 presidential campaign who has done any time on the other side of that gap—both as a candidate and a backroom pol, on the local level—and despite all the obvious differences between running on the Freak Power ticket for Sheriff of Aspen and running as a well-behaved Democrat for President of the United States, the roots are surprisingly similar… and whatever real differences exist are hardly worth talking about, compared to the massive, unbridgeable gap between the cranked-up reality of living day after day in the vortex of a rolling campaign—and the fiendish ratbastard tedium of covering that same campaign as a journalist, from the outside looking in.

  For the same reason that nobody who has never come to grips with the spike can ever understand how far away it really is across that gap to the place where the smack junkie lives… there is no way for even the best and most talented journalist to know what is really going on inside a political campaign unless he has been there himself.

  Very few of the press people assigned to the McGovern campaign, for instance, have anything more than a surface understanding of what is really going on in the vortex… or if they do, they don’t mention it, in print or on the air: And after spending half a year following this goddamn zoo around the country and watching the machinery at work I’d be willing to bet pretty heavily that not even the most privileged ranking insiders among the campaign press corps are telling much less than they know.

  July

  Fear and Loathing in Miami: Old Bulls Meet the Butcher… A Dreary Saga Direct from the Sunshine State… How George McGovern Ran Wild on the Beach & Stomped Almost Everybody… Flashback to the Famous Lindsay Blueprint & A Strange Epitaph for the Battle of Chicago… More Notes of the Politics of Vengeance, Including Massive Technical Advice from Rick Stearns & the Savage Eye of Ralph Steadman…

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light.

  —Dylan Thomas

  Sunday is not a good day for traveling in the South. Most public places are closed—especially the bars and taverns—in order that the denizens of this steamy, atavistic region will not be distracted from church. Sunday is the Lord’s day, and in the South he still has clout—or enough, at least, so that most folks won’t cross him in public. And those few who can’t make it to church will likely stay hom
e by the fan, with iced tea, and worship him in their own way.

  This explains why the cocktail lounge in the Atlanta airport is not open on Sunday night. The Lord wouldn’t dig it.

  Not even in Atlanta, which the local chamber of commerce describes as the Enlightened Commercial Capital of the “New South.” Atlanta is an alarmingly liberal city, by Southern standards—known for its “progressive” politicians, nonviolent race relations, and a tax structure aggressively favorable to New Business. It is also known for moonshine whiskey, a bad biker/doper community, and a booming new porno-film industry.

  Fallen pompon girls and ex-cheerleaders from Auburn, ’Bama, and even Ole Miss come to Atlanta to “get into show business,” and those who take the wrong fork wind up being fucked, chewed, and beaten for $100 a day in front of hand-held movie cameras. Donkeys and wolves are $30 extra, and the going rate for gangbangs is $10 a head, plus “the rate.” Connoisseurs of porno-films say you can tell at a glance which ones were made in Atlanta, because of the beautiful girls. There is nowhere else in America, they say, where a fuck-flick producer can hire last year’s Sweetheart of Sigma Chi to take on twelve Georgia-style Hell’s Angels for $220 & lunch.

  So I was not especially surprised when I got off the plane from Miami around midnight and wandered into the airport to find the booze locked up. What the hell? I thought: This is only the public bar. At this time of night—in the heart of the bible belt and especially on Sunday—you want to look around for something private.

  Every airport has a “VIP Lounge.” The one in Atlanta is an elegant neo-private spa behind a huge wooden door near Gate 11. Eastern Airlines maintains it for the use of traveling celebrities, politicians, and other conspicuous persons who would rather not be seen drinking in public with the Rabble.

  I had been there before, back in February, sipping a midday beer with John Lindsay while we waited for the flight to L.A. He had addressed the Florida state legislature in Tallahassee that morning; the Florida primary was still two weeks away, Muskie was still the front-runner, McGovern was campaigning desperately up in New Hampshire, and Lindsay’s managers felt he was doing well enough in Florida that he could afford to take a few days off and zip out to California. They had already circled June 6th on the Mayor’s campaign calendar. It was obvious, even then, that the California primary was going to be The Big One: winner-take-all for 271 delegate votes, more than any other state, and the winner in California would almost certainly be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 1972.