There's a certain shame in going back to books which were important in your adolescence. How did I think this was wise? How did I even think this was good? Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is an incredibly uneven book, written on the downslope of Thompson's meteoric career but still showing a guttering flicker of his genius. Stapled together out of a year of Rolling Stone columns, Thompson covers the '72 Nixon-McGovern campaign in his own inimitable style: a mix of drug fantasy experiences, rumor, straight-shooting opinion, and (verbatim?) transcripts of tape recordings with senior people.

Thompson picked Senator McGovern as his man early, the last decent man in Congress, a staunch opponent of the ongoing atrocity in Vietnam, and the catalyst of a new Youth Movement-centered democratic party to finally sink the crusty and corrupt bosses in Big Labor, ethnic machines, and imperialist warmongering before going on to crush a weak President Nixon. The early primaries are a slog, but once the convention hits, Thompson really gets into his groove. Forget the facts, nobody captures the sheer edge and obsession of a presidential race like the master of Gonzo Journalism, along with the gritty details of 1970s convention procedures and retail politics.

Of course, at the end of the day the facts do matter, and McGovern's youth coalition failed to materialize. McGovern was beaten like a dog by Nixon, losing even his own state. What's weird about this book is the way that the patterns seem to repeat in slight variation: The embattled incumbent, the decrepit party establishment, the anarchic new idealism candidate, the racist spoiler, or the way the 'thought leaders' seem to have no idea what is going on. Just change the name and the dates, and this book works in 2012 or 2016.

There's a lot of cruft in F&L '72, but when Thompson hits home, he hits home, and I'd like to preserve a few quotes here where I can find them.

"The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other on with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics."

"There are only two ways to make it in big-time politics today: One is to come on like a mean dinosaur, with a high-powered machine that scares the shit out of your entrenched opposition... The other is to tap the massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that they have a *duty* to vote."

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

Hell. Yeah. Always more, always worse.

As a political (and HST) junkie, I knew I had to eventually tackle this famous work. One thing that stands out is that HST is a pretty pragmatic guy. He is pretty liberal, but he’s not nutty liberal, and he has a pretty well-reasoned stance. On top of that, he had keen political insight. Obviously, he was an outsider, but there’s no doubt he knew his stuff. Four decades removed, we may think of HST as a self-parody, or more exactly, we’ve been fed shadows of HST parody and influence (HST’s book on the 92 election, while great in its own right pales to the monumental undertaking of this book). F&LCT72 is an astute study. It is as quoted as being the ‘least factual, most accurate’ book written on the 72 election.

Which sums it up. It is still pure Hunter, and there are times where it is hard to figure what is real and imagined. Negatives include the size of the book, which isn’t HST’s fault. It’s that Presidential campaigns are these huge slogs that take years from the first primary moves to the November election. It also probably suffers in that many of the figures from the early 70s are no longer as well known.

The book is amazing in its truths. Nixon, certainly, and the power of incumbency, but the book (and the election of that year’s)focuses on McGovern’s ill-fated campaign and whether it could have worked. It did seem that Clinton and Obama learned and were able to succeed (getting the minority vote and youth vote to the polls) with a ‘liberal’ agenda. Also, the truth that a 3rd Party like George Wallace (pre-Arthur Bremer) or indeed HST himself could stage a formidable 3rd Party run and in theory win, though the two parties would make sure that it wouldn’t happen even if it meant sacrificing themselves (a truth we have seen with John Anderson, Ross Perot, and would likely see if Rand Paul or others took up the torch).

The book starts out with a burst of energy that doesn’t slow down, and ends with a couple of essays that will blow you away (covering the election and possible 3rd Party runs; and a piece on sports journalism which is especially illuminating and predicts ESPN, I suppose) The only part I found boring was the part about conventioneering, which didn’t make sense to me, but maybe would have back in the 70s. Overall, it was sort of what I expected, but it just goes to concrete everything that made HST great, and it’s a really great campaign book too (not just a “I took a bunch of drugs and followed McGovern around” story. If I had to rate, I would say four stars for the average reader, but five for politics or HST fans

I have a longstanding affection for reading books in the locations at which the books take place. I developed this interest during an apoplectic fit of maudlin sophomoricism when, at 18, I spent the summer in Paris reading everything possible connected to 20th century literature in that city (the collected volumes of Anais Nin's diaries, Henry Miller's Parisian fantasies, even that Hemingway book that only starts in Paris (The Sun Also Rises?), all those surrealist manifestos, Andre Breton's inept fumblings at attempted narrative (Nadja, ugh), etc etc etc).

Which is all to say that it was a happy circumstance to read Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 in the city where it begins and ends. San Francisco has always been on The Edge, and is a city for which no one has had a finer-tuned appreciation than the doctor of freak power and gonzo journalism himself.

And perhaps that was the happiest circumstance about my having read this book. I guess the bottom line on this book is that it might as well have been called Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '08, cause shit still sucks. Politics is still a bummer; election years are long-term bummers punctuated by little pustules of hope, that shatter like shot all over your face eventually, and usually unexpectedly. Elections are like the kind of low-grade and sustained bummer you get from smoking your midwestern mom's weed that you found in the freezer in a Viagra promo bag. You just want to close your eyes, and feel lucky and grateful if it doesn't give you a stroke.

Another bottom line might be that, while shit still sucks, no one is having as much fun with it as Hunter did. Except maybe my mom. My parents recently installed a flat-screen TV on the wall next to their bed. My mom is completely obsessed with election coverage - "TOTAL COVERAGE", she calls it, in reference of course to Hunter S. She can give you each of 5 or 6 network outlets point spread projections for the upcoming Pennsylvania primary in real time. She knows odd and varied nuances of Michelle Obama's life story. She, like Hunter, has allowed the true infection of election coverage to take over like any other full-blown addiction. But hey, it's better than Ibogane, right Ed Muskie?

The highlight of any Hunter S. Thompson book is the mad rush he pushes onto you from the page itself, like he's just this frantic mess of nerves and drugs and true grit, and the pages vibrate with his singular intensity. And, if nothing else, FALOTCT '72 certainly shows his raw power and ability to stay on task, not in a marginal way (like his coverage of the motorcycle race in Vegas) but in true newsman fashion, you know, Getting The Story. It's like he said himself - when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. But ain't no shame in a pro eating mescaline on the press plane from Sioux City to DC....

Woah. The politics are more or less incomprehensible to me, but ocassionally things float up. It's hard to tell how much of Hunter's writing is something of a very good stylistic schtick and how much is the guy losing his mind. The writing is often great, and his loathing of Nixon so eloquent that I (with the priveledge of being from the future) almost felt bad for him at times, in a rooting for the narrative underdog way. The turn from regular, chemical junkie to political junkie is interesting and - watching the 2012 fever - familiar. There is really is just something endlessly compelling about US elections, in a purely visceral, adrenalined sort of way.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is a rollicking journey through the 1972 presidential campaign, from the Democratic primaries to Richard Nixon's landslide victory over George McGovern. The book is pure Gonzo journalism, employing Thompson's first-person writing style in which fiction is blended with non-fiction. Thompson is notably more attached to reality here than in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but you still get the feeling you are humouring someone who is truly mad whilst reading it. From the Author's Note:

"One afternoon about three days ago they showed up at my door, with no warning, and loaded about forty pounds of supplies into the room: two cases of Mexican beer, four quarts of gin, a dozen grapefruits, and enough speed to alter the outcome of six Super Bowls. There was also a big Selectric typewriter, two reams of paper, a face-cord of oak firewood and three tape recorders—in case the situation got so desperate that I might finally have to resort to verbal composition.
We came to this point sometime around the thirty-third hour, when I developed an insoluble Writer’s Block and began dictating big chunks of the book straight into the microphone—pacing around the room at the end of an eighteen-foot cord and saying anything that came into my head."

The result of this modus operandi adopted by Thompson is a hyperbolic, biased and absorbing rant for 500 odd pages. In parts, the writing is electric and would be entertaining if it stood alone from the book. However, the central focus is politics. And if politics does not remotely interest you, then I find it hard to imagine enjoying this whole book. I knew virtually nothing about the 1972 election beforehand, though I was intrigued by the campaigning process generally. Arguably, the semi-fictional writing makes it equally as readable now as then because politicians from fifty years ago may as well be fictional characters. The exaggerated descriptions make them appear more like tropes and stereotypes than actual people. Other reviewers love to make direct comparisons of the politicians in the book to ones today, which I feel broadly supports this point.

Accepting the fact that Thompson's accounts are unreliable, it is natural to wonder whether the book is only popular for its eccentric writing. Upon reading the book, this is clearly not the case. Thompson is able to strike resonance with his criticism of the political system and American values on a number of occasions. The facts of the election are not so important, as his ability to look at American society and give an honest view of it. Here is perhaps the best instance of this:

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

In the end, Nixon whoops McGovern, the Democratic candidate that Thompson was backing. Thompson offers some thoughts after the election which give insight into the climate of political apathy in the early 70s:

"The 'mood of the nation,' in 1972, was so overwhelmingly vengeful, greedy, bigoted, and blindly reactionary that no presidential candidate who even faintly reminded 'typical voters' of the fear & anxiety they’d felt during the constant 'social upheavals' of the 1960s had any chance at all of beating Nixon last year—not even Ted Kennedy—because the pendulum 'effect' that began with Nixon’s slim victory in ’68 was totally irreversible by 1972. After a decade of left-bent chaos, the Silent Majority was so deep in a behavioral sink that their only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of revulsion. All they wanted in the White House was a man who would leave them alone and do anything necessary to bring calmness back into their lives"

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is an interesting choice to pick these days. The book was long, and some of the characters and events I could not have cared less about. As a result, much of the content was not memorable. Ultimately, I wanted to get a feel for Thompson's style though, which was provided in spades. It is not a book I would widely recommend, but if you've read this far, you may find it enjoyable. 3 stars.

People often say "this book inspired me to do something." People associate books with taking an interest in political and philosophical issues, with career choices, and life styles.

"This book inspired me" has become such a cliché that we forget what an impact it must have had on the reader to affect his or her lives in some way.

Nonetheless, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 was huge inspiration in my decison to pursue a career in professional journalism.

Thompson the writer is often overshadowed by Thompson the personality. The drug/booze-addled mumbler is not the voice presented in his best writing.

In Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 Thompson uses the historic Nixon/Mcgovern contest to break American politics down to their most brutal level. Despite, his clear desire to see positive change in the system he never shies away from the ugly fact that American politics are not about ideology but gamesmanship.

And it is the game Thompson is both fascinated and repulsed by.

Hunter S. Thompson's political epic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is a spiritual sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thompson continues his scathing and satirical, as well as retrospective, critique of the sixties and early seventies. No other writer has written so well on those years.

Campaign Trail... is a scathing account of American politics and presidential campaigns. Thompson's journey centers on the McGovern-Nixon '72 election. Like a massive drug trip, the book gradually becomes more bitter and burnt out as Thompson physically and emotionally exhausts himself; the content becomes increasingly disjointed and allows Thompson to humorously digress and exaggerate the events, and he somehow manages to make it feel more truthful than the objective journalism he rips into along the way.

Don't be expecting a full-on piece of stoner psychedelic literature. Although there are moments of this (Thompson talking with disillusioned hippies was brilliant), this is a whole different animal. This is a political book, and Thompson knows his shit. It's funny, manic, angry, satirical and always entertaining.

Really deep and cool writing. RIP Hunter

Dr. Hunter Thompson will always be one of my favorite authors. Such a deep thinker, full of life and wild adventures, profanity and madness. The eerie similarities of this book and what’s happening in our time wasn’t lost on me. It feels like history is repeating itself, and it breaks my heart a literary hero like Thompson isn’t here today to call all of it out in the way only he could. Legend.

In this historic and so important election year I though it was only appropriate to re-visit this title...Miss ya Doc.

I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book so simultaneously enjoyable and frightening.

Hunter Thompson brings the same weird wit, fragmented headspace, and undeniable charm to this account of the 1972 presidential race. He's a man with political views after my own heart.