I worked on this campaign in press advance and met Hunter Thompson while doing so, so this book was a look back at that time. Hunter may have been somewhat crazy but he was a good writer and had fascinating insights, as I recall from the distance of many years.

Jesus, where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to become president?

The most striking aspect of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 to a reader in the summer of 2008 (me) is the parallel between 1972 and 2008. As an unpopular war rages, the anointed establishment candidate, replete with a massive lead in endorsements from the major players, loses the inevitable Democratic nomination to an insurgent change candidate, in part because the former has to explain away earlier support for the war the latter opposed from the start. And the Democratic nominee pulls off the feat by combining a well-oiled get-out-the-vote organization and enthusiastic fundraising with a bizarre coalition of liberal elites, disaffected working-class minorities, and the elusive “youth vote,” withstanding a last-second rules fight over the seating of disputed delegates. Of course we know how ’72 ends: McGovern blunders and gets thumped, “four more years” and all that.

It goes without saying that there are important differences between the two election years. Obama, McCain (with a little Bush thrown in), and Clinton aren’t exact duplicates of McGovern, Nixon, and the ineffective one-two punch of Muskie and Humphrey. But that doesn’t make it any less fun to read Thompson’s book as a cautionary tale, both for Obama, who might yet fall from his current lead unless he plays his cards right, and for McCain—today’s reader can easily spot Thompson’s unintentional foreshadowing that Nixon, in his landslide victory, sowed the seeds of his own downfall two years later.

But if, you know, learning practical lessons from history isn’t your cup of tea, you can still get a thrill from the Good Doctor’s gonzo style, which is admittedly tempered by its wonky subject. Certain passages are more memorable than others, such as the jigsaw puzzle of an interview that pieces together who knew what and when they knew it about the shoot-the-moon maneuver against the Anybody But McGovern movement at the credentials fight or the account of Thompson’s sudden, confident realization of Nixon’s undercurrent concession to the Democratic establishment by sticking with the ultraconservative Agnew. Fate interrupted both of these schemes before they achieved their aims, but that goes naturally with the other notable feature of Campaign Trail ’72. The volume is a stitched-together compendium of Thompson’s biweekly dispatches for Rolling Stone, penned in near real time. Because the author lacked the advantage of knowing what would happen next, the audience gets to pick out trends in optimism and pessimism, bets that paid off and those that didn’t, with a sense that the otherwise unreliable, gonzo narrator, robbed of hindsight, was being brutally honest.

Love this book! I knew nothing about American politics going into this read, but like it mentions at the beginning, it doesn't really matter. By the end of this novel, I had a real understanding of how it all worked, and how corrupt American politics really is. I'm English - not to say we're much better. I was quite moved by the effect it had on Hunter personally, and to be honest, by the end of the book it even made me feel like I'd been chewed up, ground in and spat out onto a political sidewalk myself. Great read! Recommend.

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?

As Thompson's reputation precedes him, I had no clue what to expect from this book. The drug-addled ramblings of a drunken madman, perhaps? Imagine my surprise to find his writing to be sharp, clear, keenly observant, and funny as hell.

Oh, the madman pops up now and then with lines like - ...I was bored from bad noise on the radio and half-drunk from doing off a quart of Wild Turkey between the Chicago and Altoona exit..., or I finished my double-tequila and went upstairs to my room to get hopelessly stoned by myself and pass out. And how many respected journalists can make this claim? - Random House still owes me a lot of money from that time when the night watchman beat my snake to death... And we won't even go into the part where Thompson's cigarette almost blows up Nixon's plane...

Thompson admits to being a misanthrope, but claims that what made him that way was politics - Everything that is wrong-headed, cynical & vicious in me today traces straight back to that evil hour in September of '69 when I decided to get heavily involved in the political process...

He pronounces Objective Journalism a myth, and proceeds to say exactly what he thinks of EVERYONE.

Whatever else might be said about Nixon---there is still serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for Human...

Of Humphrey, he says - They don't make 'em like Hubert anymore - but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.

It's hard to tell at times, since he hates everybody, but it appears Thompson was secretly rooting for McGovern.

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and his imprecise talk about "new politics" and "honesty in government," is one of the few men who've run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

All this came out of a man who basically just wanted a house overlooking the beach, or perhaps a measly little appointment as Governor of American Samoa. Is that too much to ask?

Next year, I plan to run off to Vegas with him! - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I think this is an important book to read right now. Bernie Sanders is a lot like George McGovern, and those of us who support these "new politics" candidates would do well to learn from the strengths and weaknesses of long-shot campaigns past. I don't make this comparison to slight Sanders, and I think it's unfortunate that McGovern's name has come to stand in for failure rather than standing up against a system represented by people like Nixon. The landslide against McGovern is an important lesson, of course, but it shouldn't be the only thing he's remembered for. He also lead a magnificent primary campaign against opponents no one thought he could beat - would it be so bad if Hillary went the way of Muskie? And while he did lose, the reasons why he lost mattered. He made a big early mistake with the Eagleton affair, gave too much ground to the center, was too indecisive, lacked personal charisma, and was up against a well-oiled, powerful political machine unconstrained by law or ethics. Some of those things a candidate has control over, and they are the opposite of the conventional wisdom that one has to move right in a general election. And maybe you disagree with my assessment here - maybe you do think the problem with McGovern was that he was too radical. But either way, grappling with the McGovern campaign is something all serious American leftists should be doing right now, and this book is a great help in that task.

Ok. So I finally read this funky political memoir written by gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson. Amusing and fast paced it just seems like the ‘72 US presidential campaign was not just from another era but another planet. But what seems odd here is that some of the most notable events of that campaign seem to be glossed over. The famous Muskie tear drop (or was it a snow flake?), the shooting of George Wallace, the backdrop of the Vietnam war and Watergate. Thompson goes down tangents and then says he doesn’t have time to discuss them and at the end the tired and stoned writer just seems to give up by pasting in transcripts of interviews he has done. But the book has its charms and insights that make it a classic campaign memoir. In the end while I might have been a little late to pick up this book the impact of that election can still be seen in the current American body politic. One could argue that the long term consequences of the 1972 election can be felt today with polarization , dirty tricks, wars without end, fighting insurgents, and “gotcha” journalism. These shadows have made bold decisions from transformational leaders a thing of the past. Part of the problem in this dated drug filled laugh along, and cavalier approach to drugs is that these days with an opioid epidemic raging, when it comes to drug use no one is laughing

Nixon was the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of America, the subversion of the working class, the abuse of minorities, the testament to pure greed for money and power, that has led the Republican Party from the sensible charity and honesty of Eisenhower, to the depths of the terrifying clown, Trump, and his obscenely evil opportunists in the wreckage of the GOP.

Hunter was here, at this moment of Nixon's criminal grab for power, close to the center of the obscenity, but only allowed to talk Football.

A sad masterpiece of who we were, and how we were deceived and enslaved.

You really have to know about your American politics in this one or you will get lost quite easily from the start. Im from England so I know nothing of American politics so suffice to say I got very lost with certain characters he was talking about and their relevancy.

But the Hunter S Thompson charm is still intact in this book like his others so I would say give it a try and see what happens for you, luckily I got this for a few bob in HMV so I wasnt too disappointed. And Hey, its Hunter S Thompson for crying out loud, it was worth it just for that.

Interesting insight into the state of American politics at the turn of the decade 1960-70 and the machinery behind a presidential campaign - especially Thompsons analysis at the end and the post-campaign McGovern interview. Difficult at times if you’re not familiar with the US electoral system, and I can’t claim to have understood every paragraph, partly due to intense political slang, partly because of a lack of contextual knowledge. Nevertheless an interesting and, in the end, a rewarding read.

(Side note: if you're a political junkie or reading this during a presidential campaign add another star)

The most surprising thing about this book wasn't that Thompson's out-of-control style had aged well (for the most part), but that he really was a very incisive political reporter. I always liked Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but a lot of his political writing (for ESPN and other outlets) I saw in the decade before he died sounded like the rehashing of an once important counter-culture icon.

Thompson's disdain for the shallow politics of America's marquee leaders is a pleasure to read for a junkie/wanna-be radical like myself and he's a bombthrower in the purest form of the word. He's not trying to pimp for a party when he calls Humphrey a tired hack and a deplorable person, he's letting the air out of people who say they can lead us because they've spent years telling us how important they are. The exhaustive detail in how McGovern's unlikely primary victory was engineered, and how he went on to lose the election, is remarkable both for the quality of the coverage and how it fits in with the moments of disruptive revelry and disquieting depression.

Thompson makes fools of major Democratic politicians, giving his press pass to a yippie who ruthlessly mocks Muskie in Florida, and the hated President, he sneaks into a Nixon Youth rally, but the real heart of the book lies in crushing disappointment of the eventual electoral result.

The book has staying power for two reasons other than the quality of the political coverage: the anger and the despair.

At one point Thompson realizes that McGovern can't win, but that his loss might tear the Deomcratic Party apart, a thought that thrills him. His desire for a clearing political brushfire still resonates today, as the creaky two-party system continues to sadly bulldoze any thoughts of fundamental change.

The flipside is the personal sadness that Thompson feels once it is clear how badly McGovern is losing and what that says about the American electorate. Thompson retained his credibility throughout the decades because he championed real outsiders and societal losers, like prisoners and drug users, and I think he really thought America might be a country that could allow space for people like that. The '68 convention might have been where he lost his innocence (when Daley's goons showed the world, and the youth, what the Democratic party really thought of dissent), but this election is where he lost his faith.

It breaks your heart a little, even if you're a politically cynical leftist like me, when he realizes the American character is not essentially something great, or even good, but: "just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

So first off: this book is important. Thompson captures a volatile time in history, both politically and socially. He covers McGovern v. Nixon well but, more importantly, he speaks to the layman's outlook on politics: the corruption, the greed, the confusion, the madness. In his drug and alcohol stupors, Thompson manages to be more honest about the American political process than anyone else. It begs the question: if it takes being that strung out to accurately describe our system, isn't it time we changed a thing or two?
That being said, Thompson's descriptions often unravel into rants, and he jumps around a lot as new ideas strike him. It is obvious he was on drugs and reading it sober was daunting at times.
For anyone into history, specifically political history, this book is a must-read. I consider this book part of the American canon not for the grace of the writing (it's more like driving on Route 66 these days: daunting and full of pot holes), but as a snapshot in what it was like to live and matter in 1972.