Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 Book

Ed: Any kind of campaign that taps that energy would...

HST: Would generate a tremendous high for everybody involved in it.

Ed: And would ultimately for you be another paramount experience- out there on the Edge?

HST: Oh, absolutely. But you know you'd be killed, of course, and that would add to it considerably- never knowing when the bullet was coming.

It's a wet and windy late January morning, with what looks like a squall outside, and it just occurred to me that Thompson would really have been looking forward to February 2020. The Super Bowl (for those readers who didn't grow up in the U.S., the Super Bowl is an annual football game of the utmost significance- practically a national holiday, a religious experience) is scheduled for Sunday, February 2nd, after all, in Miami, and the Democratic Iowa caucus will be held on the 3rd, followed in the next few weeks by the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina primary...and then of course there's Fury-Wilder II in Vegas on the 22nd, when those two extremely large individuals will attempt to disembowel each other. Lots of gambling opportunities, in other words. They've taken a bit of the fun out of sports gambling, of course, at least here in New Jersey, by legalizing it- this evidently happened sometime while I was in Russia, which I was able to infer when I came back through Newark Penn Station and saw big ads for Draftkings.com everywhere, always including that minuscule (and presumably obligatory) white text at the bottom: "Gambling addiction? Call 1-800..."- but it's also more accessible and probably safer for the average person, who will lay down money this coming weekend on either the Kansas City Chiefs (who, disconcertingly, play in Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas) or the San Francisco 49ers, the heartland vs. the West coast, and tune in to watch the game, which will be frequently interrupted by commercials such as ex-New York mayor, billionaire and current presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg's $10 million Super Bowl ad, the nature of which has been kept under the strictest secrecy. MIKE WILL GET IT DONE, is his campaign's slogan (and also what I happen to plaintively whisper to myself, often unconvincingly, when I stand in front of the mirror in the morning), and his ads are now so ubiquitous across the country that he's risen as high as ~9% nationally in recent polls, despite not being in any of the debates.

Anyway, I've gotten in the habit of re-reading this book every election year, and I've just finished it for the third time. I tried on this reading to resist the temptation to draw parallels between the book's "characters" and modern-day politicians, but there are a few that are just hard to avoid. Trump works more or less as Wallace + Nixon, Hillary Clinton is clearly Hubert Humphrey, and then there's this assessment of the Democratic front-runner, "Big" Ed Muskie (a.k.a. "The Man from Maine"), offered by Frank Mankiewicz, George McGovern's campaign director: "Nobody's really for Muskie. They're only for the Front-Runner, the man who says he's the only one who can beat Nixon- but not even Muskie himself believes that anymore..."

Right. Tell me that's not Joe Biden. Thompson hears a similar sentiment from the president of the Washington Redskins (I guess I believe that's who he was talking to anyway, you never quite know for sure with Hunter):We spent the rest of the flight arguing politics. He is backing Muskie, and as he talked I got the feeling that he thought he was already at a point where, sooner or later, we would all be. "Ed's a good man", he said. "He's honest. I respect the guy." Then he stabbed the padded seat arm between us two or three times with his forefinger. "But the main reason I'm working for him", he said, "is that he's the only guy we have who can beat Nixon"...He picked up his drink, then saw it was empty and put it down again. "That's the real issue this time", he said. "Beating Nixon. It's hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years."

I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but 'regrettably necessary' holding actions?But after a few underwhelming primary performances dissipated Muskie's aura of "electability", he sank like a stone. I posted the quote above as a reading update a few weeks ago, and someone commented: "just one more?" By which I assume the commenter meant that it's very important to beat Trump this year, just as it was very important to beat Nixon in '72, and that the Democrats should therefore nominate Joe Biden. I assume that's who the commenter meant, because that's who everyone means this year when they talk about the supposedly pragmatic choice. But...well...hold that thought.

The outcome of the '72 election would seem to back up the commenter's case. I have to admit, after all, that at least one reason I was resolved not to draw too many explicit parallels with the present day is that this book can seem pretty disheartening if taken as prophecy. And it has been taken that way- or McGovern's epic defeat (Nixon won 49 out of 50 states; McGovern got Massachusetts and DC) has been, anyway. In '72, a young and presumably idealistic Bill Clinton managed McGovern's campaign in Texas; over a decade later, in the late 80s, Clinton was a leader of the DLC, or Democratic Leadership Council, whose efforts either injected the Party with some much-needed pragmatism and common sense or sacrificed the working- and middle-classes in the quest for power, depending on how you see it. McGovern's loss (and I suppose Mondale's in '84, although that seems to be a more forgotten election- or maybe it's just that I don't know of any good books about it) still casts a shadow over any presidential candidate who is perceived as (or can be construed to be) "too far Left." So as someone who's openly behind Bernie Sanders (and if Bernie does get the nomination this year, I predict that anyone who watches cable news is going to hear McGovern's name constantly, invoked as a synonym for failure), do I perceive anything ominous in the story of an insurgent campaign that was counting on bringing an entirely new constituency of the young and disaffected into national politics, and instead suffered one of the worst beatings in political history? Never mind that 2020, like 1972, is the Year of the Rat?

Well...when you put it like that, it's certainly not encouraging. But Thompson suggests some other factors to consider, especially in the last few chapters (one of which includes an interview with McGovern). There's the fact that Nixon was saving some of his very best shots (China, the economy, Kissinger's promise that peace was "at hand" in Vietnam) for the stretch run, and then there was McGovern's selection of Missouri senator Tom Eagleton (who was known, even to McGovern, "...as a man who didn't mind taking thirteen or fourteen tall drinks now and then", and who was later revealed to have been hospitalized for "severe manic-depressive psychosis with suicidal tendencies") for VP. McGovern couldn't have done worse, Thompson writes, "with Charles Manson as a running-mate."

HST: Did you ever find out what those little blue pills were that he was eating?

McGovern: No.

HST: I think I did. It was Stelazine, not Thorazine like I heard originally. I did everything I could to get hold of the actual records, but nobody would even talk to me.

But Thompson's criticism of the Eagleton decision is only part of his broader criticism of McGovern's decision to (in political parlance) pivot, after the convention, towards the center. Notably, McGovern doesn't seem to agree that there really was any pivot at all. But why, Thompson asks him, after all that talk about "new politics", and after the Eagleton disaster, would McGovern offer the vice-presidency to Hubert Humphrey? "It seemed to be something that had to be done to get a majority coalition", McGovern answers, "but maybe not." To which Thompson replies, My own theory, which sounds like madness, is that [McGovern] would have been better off running against Nixon with the same kind of neo-radical campaign he ran in the primaries. Not radical in the left/right sense, but radical in a sense that he was...a person who would actually grab the system by the ears and shake it.It takes some effort to remember just how badly most of us (let's exempt Michael Moore) underestimated that appeal four years ago. Which is not to say that public opinion exists in a vacuum, without any rhyme or reason- but it seems like this is another "grab the system..." moment, and frankly for good reason. Is Joe Biden really the "safe", pragmatic candidate to run at such a moment? And by the way, what does it mean to be "too far Left", anyway? If Medicare-for-All routinely polls above 50% (and it has for many months, dipping below that number only recently under a barrage of fear-mongering from candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar), for example, doesn't that mean that it's not too far Left but mainstream? The fact that there's only one Democratic candidate who supports it unequivocally doesn't mean that the idea is too far Left- it means that we're not being represented by the candidates. So if Thompson's right about why McGovern lost (or at least why the loss was of such devastating proportions), a better lesson to draw might be "don't try to be everything to everybody", or maybe "something is better than nothing." For example, why has Elizabeth Warren fallen in the polls in the last few months? Why is she so far behind nationally that she's resorted to trying to smear Bernie Sanders as a sexist, when this is the same man who encouraged her- Elizabeth Warren, that is- to run for president four years ago, and later campaigned like hell for Hillary Clinton? Maybe it has to do with the fact that no one knows where she stands on a variety of issues, including M4A. Is she for it, against it, or something in between? Even people who disagree with Sanders on M4A understand that he's sincere. The only thing I know for an absolute certainty about Warren's stance on the issue is that it's not a priority for her, which means her administration would never get it done. Which also happens to be an issue that affects women (as well as men) a hell of a lot more than whatever she claims was said in a private meeting.

But Thompson's point clarifies, at any rate, that if Sanders were to get the nomination, and that's a big if, his campaign would have a choice: stick firmly to his principles or try to make a few concessions to the Clinton wing of the party, in order to insure their support. Presented with that choice, I personally think it might be wise for them to follow Thompson's advice to McGovern quoted above. The Clinton wing of the party obviously loathes Sanders, and I'm not sure they would support him against Trump anyway. Take it from Hillary Clinton herself, who isn't quite ready to say whether or not she would endorse Sanders...against Trump, remember. Good. Her refusal to endorse him might be the most galvanizing spark for his campaign yet.

HST: ...here's a question that sort of haunts me now...is whether this kind of campaign could have worked? Were the mistakes mechanical and technical? Or was it either flawed or doomed from the start...?

McGovern: I don't think there ever was a majority for the approach I was using. I think we had a fighting chance.

HST: No better than that? Even with all those new voters?

McGovern: I think we exaggerated the amount of the enthusiasm for change among young people...there really are a great number of people in this country that are a helluva lot more interested in whether the Dolphins beat the Redskins than they are in whether Nixon or McGovern ends up in the White House.

But back to that comment- "just one more time?" I know that my legion of readers have been waiting breathlessly for my best assessment of the Democrats' chances in November, so here's the way I see it at the moment. First of all, let's acknowledge that there's no guarantee that any Democrat can beat Trump in November. He's also extremely unlikely to be removed from office by the Senate- his voters don't care that he tried to extort Ukraine, which means Republican senators don't care. So that being said, which Democrat is the pragmatic choice? Well, Buttigieg is despised by young people, as well as by black and Latino voters, so he's got no shot. Bloomy isn't even on the ballot in the early states, and seems to be doing this as part of his bucket list- although he could still impact the race by taking votes away from other candidates, particularly the more moderate ones. Warren is a proven liar who's been fading for months...and frankly, I just don't think a Native American can win (this is a joke, people). That leaves Biden and Sanders.

(Review continued in comment #1, below.)