Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

When the going gets Weird, the Weird turn pro

One of you, I can't remember who, recently mentioned Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 as his or her favourite book and that got me all nostalgic so I went out and bought a new copy (my copy was tattered beyond repair). I started reading it on the bus home (with a quick stop at the liquor store for some beer and some rum in case things were unexpectedly happening on the social scene once home).

I've been closely following the lurching 2008 presidential campaigns in the US and the silly politicking between the Canadian parliamentary parties (firing a safety commissioner for enforcing safety protocols at a nuclear site, a stupid report on Afghanistan, the pig-squealing from the Conservatives because the Senate is on-schedule for examining a bill, the whole KarlHeinz Schrieber debacle, the Liberals thundering rubbish, and the NDP as toy poodles pretending to be real dogs).

My friends have been arguing and debating through emails and wine noshing about the effectiveness of each candidate for the presidential nomination in both political parties in the States.

I liked Huckabee (except for his stupid homophobic pandering to the homophobes) (not many takers in my crowd), Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich (we all agree that, within minutes of becoming president, each would be shot). We've watched and debated every move from Clinton and Obama. We're split evenly between being Mrs. Clintonites and Obamamamas (although I'm secretly rooting for Nader - shhhhh).

Hunter Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing as bi-weekly articles for Rolling Stone magazine covering the remarkably familiar elections of 1972. Richard Milhous Nixon was a hawkish US President, millions of Asians (Cambodian, Vietnamese) were dying in the American stand against 'world terrorism', then called 'communism', as did 50,000 American GIs in what was called 'the Vietnam War', although the US Congress never actually got around to declaring a war.

in 1972 half the Americans protested Vietnam and its cost in financial capital and in loss of life; the other half of Americans felt that to withdraw would demonstrate weakness in the face of encroaching communism. They claimed if 'we' didn't fight them in Asia we'd end up fighting them here.

When Thompson arrived in Washington to begin reporting the political scene he was already notorious as a slightly demented and uncontrollable agent; he drank incessantly, took all sorts of medication and narcotics to help him relax or to really focus on the matter at hand. No one could really figure out where he was coming from and they couldn't anticipate his next move. He made people nervous. He dressed like an off-duty cop but he had some decidedly counter-culture habits and moves.

He asked questions that were too blunt or too far out of the mainstream that he made everyone flinch or boil furiously; no one else asked questions like he did at these press conferences because everyone else wanted to keep working in Washington. No one wants to shit in their own nest, after all.

By a fluke the people who talked to him the most openly were the McGovern people. They were long shots who eventually got the Dem nomination against great odds. And by the time McGovern became a front runner Thompson was as 'embedded' in with that campaign as was possible for someone to be 'embedded', who ate speed like candy and drank Wild Turkey. When the campaign got respectable it was hard for their operatives to control Hunter and keep him from leaving little pools of blood that he drew with each little clackity clack of the keys of his typewriter.

Oddly, Washington hasn't changed too much since then (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Buchanan et al were in the Nixon administration).

And today the rush for the American presidency pretty much brings out the same sort of people today as it did in 1972 (the Clintons organized for McGovern as young idealists). Muskie was the heir apparent and was overtaken by a long shot candidate. The mantra then was 'who can beat Nixon'. The feeling among the Dems was that it really really mattered that this madness stop.

Well, I don't want to spoil it for you but Nixon put his boot so far up McGovern's ass that November he needed several people to help him pull it out.

However, the seeds of Nixon's destruction had already been planted and were sprouting even while Thompson was covering the campaign; BeBe Rebozo's slush fund ($200,000 in a paperbag that Nixon kept in a safe in his office), the Watergate breakin, the illegal activities of the Committee to Re-elect the President (with the fabulous acronym: CREEP), and the insane behaviour of the President (he ordered nuclear armed planes to circle the Soviet Union as part of his 'Mississippi Gambler' strategy bluffing the Soviets to call back the Chinese from their involvement in Vietnam - demonstrating that he knew absolutely nothing about the true dynamics of Sino-Russian relationships - Mao didn't take orders from the Kremlin and hadn't for 30 years at that point - but Nixon was willing to escalate a civil war in a small country in Asia into an international nuclear armegeddon).

I hate Nixon by the way just in case you're wondering.

Fear and Loathing '72 is a great book. It's great for political junkies; great for history buffs; great for fans of 'that terrible weirdness' known as Hunter S. Thompson; it's a terrible book for young and impressionable 16 year olds who, as a result of reading it, slide into a lifelong habit of intellectual questioning and alcohol consumption.