Damn so shitty that the American Democratic party intentionally kneecapped a left leaning candidates campaign so they didn't "lose control of the party" when he would have easily beaten his fascist opponent good thing that never happened again!

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you.
-Robinson Jeffers

Reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 during the 2016 primary season really drives home the point that the cynical view of politics is in fact the most accurate. The inner workings and machinations of a well-run campaign have so little to do with what the average person would consider "politics". Put aside any notion of policy or integrity or vision - those who campaign for high office have one goal and one goal only, which is to win that office. Deals are made for pragmatic reasons, with integrity lightly discarded; any policy or position is simply calculated to win favour with certain groups; and perception is vastly more important than vision. These are the indisputable facts, and very little has changed in the 44 years since 1972.

Moreover, this book proves conclusively that people are, in aggregate, extremely stupid. Nation-sized groups react in instinctive and irrational ways, driven by fear and ignorance. That the American people would re-elect Nixon - for the love of god, RICHARD NIXON! - for a second term in office is mind-boggling, and by a landslide no less. And they did it again in 2004 with Bush, arguably the silver medalist of terrible presidents. Here we are in 2016, with America once again poised to elect either - and I'm honestly not sure which one is the lesser of two evils - either an unqualified ignorant buffoon, or an unprincipled and unconcerned political opportunist. Anything can happen, and if history is any guide, it's likely that the American people will choose the more despicable person for their highest office.

As comprehensive, engaging, and terrifying as a book on politics can be. No doubt whoever is currently working on the equivalent for Trump may surpass it, but Fear and Loathing was strangely reassuring in the current political climate in a kind of "things can always get worse" sort of way. Thompson pulls back the curtains in this book. It is necessary reading if you want to understand the origin of a lot of modern political hackery.

The vision was to read this book during the 2012 Presidential Campaign to remind myself of the craziness that is politics. My timing was a bit off, but I was reading it during the general election. Hunter S. Thompson wrote this 40 years ago, and the tragedy is that its themes indeed are timeless: greed, power, conviction, failure, etc. etc. etc. He follows the campaign from the very early primary elections, all the way through the end of the general election. I think what keeps it so compelling – and ultimately what gives it its tragic tone – is that from the beginning Thompson was routing for McGovern, who eventually became the Democratic candidate - despite all odds - to run against Nixon in his second bid for President of the United States.

McGovern, from Thompson’s perspective, is the anti-politician, who speaks genuine words and wants genuine change in Washington. He stands for racial integration, even if it means enforcing the tragically painful busing policies that so many politicians were against (as was popular by public opinion, especially for those who sympathized with the re-establishment of Jim Crow); he stands for the end of the Vietnam War; he stands for the amnesty and pardon of any draft dodger; he stands for the anti-establishment perspective; and, for better or for worse, he is perceived as representing the hippies and radicals of the 1960’s, that many were weary of by 1972. Thompson backs him from the beginning in New Hampshire, up through the exciting craze of Democratic National Convention, which gets so incredulous in its tactics to seal the nomination and rip it from under the feet of the Democratic Party Establishment that Thompson resorts to printing the script verbatim describing the political maneuvering required for McGovern to conquer the ABM (anybody but McGovern) team. The book reads as a personal account of a race in which he was deeply committed.

It is interesting to think about how the tone of the book would be different had McGovern ran out of money and dropped out of the race early on in the campaign. Would Thompson have had such a gripping account of the inside tactics? He was openly routing for McGovern during the campaign – opinions made possible by the Gonzo journalism approach to his writing, the objectivity-be-damned, proudly biased writing that he created and perfected – and because of that political support, the insiders of the campaign embraced him at best, and at worse tolerated his presence. Thompson was essentially banned from the Muskie campaign after the fiasco on the Florida train. If Muskie has done better (ironically Thompson might have been part of his doom because of the FL train fiasco), Thompson may not have been able to speculate so much on campaign tactics or have such insightful commentary.

One thing that jumped out to me this time that didn’t last time was the volatility of Thompson’s mental state throughout the campaign. Oh okay, he can’t hold it together because of his crazy lifestyle, his love of drugs, and his need for The Edge. I felt it took away from the quality of the writing, since by the end of the book you are reading a transcribed conversation between his editor and himself, with little opportunity to read his colorful descriptions and understanding of the campaign and the results.

Then, I read this article (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...), which is an excerpt from the introduction of the 40th Anniversary Edition , written by Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone political journalist. He states that perhaps the deteriorating physical condition of Thompson throughout the campaign is due to his inexperience in the covering political campaigns. Arguably as (or more) captivating as the campaign coverage was his critique of the political correspondents and the way they cover the campaign. The bullshit of the campaign was engrained in the traditional correspondent as simple fact, facts that Hunter Thompson did not accept as fact but instead as the political bullshit that it actually was. The tale would not be as compelling if the experience was not the virgin campaign coverage that it was for Thompson.

So how did this fit into watching the 2012 campaign between Obama and Romney? It really helps you try to think in the manner that they think. You can hear one thing but know they are saying something different – that the strategists are not one, but many many steps ahead of the average follower of politics. Thompson had some great moments of obsessing about a campaign message, trying to decipher exactly what the tactic and target audience was and why they were targeting that particular audience.

A few regrets while reading this: 1) not starting it early enough to really parallel the election. I started reading 1 week before the general election instead of much earlier in the year. It would have been more exciting to read portions of his book during the primaries. 2) Not taking note of some amazing passages, most notably the passage comparing the Presidential candidates to the bull elk in rutting season.

Thank the powers that be for giving us Hunter S. Thompson to draw these colorful comparisons that are so obvious we can’t articulate them ourselves.

Gripping and inane, a fast paced trip through the world of electoral politics and cocaine dusted parties. Thompson balances thoughtful political analysis and narrative in a compelling, if graceless, blast of a writing.

In Trumpian (and post Clinton) times, this book is poignant-- at times painfully so. Good fodder for folks interested in political strategy.

It is also a good read for anyone interested in how to capture historical moments for their factual minutiae (what happened?) and their emotional heft (what was it really like though?).

I wish we had somebody now with the savage brain and twisted humor of HST to cover *gestures vaguely*

"A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything he can't handle personally he will hire out- or, failing that, make a deal. It is a difficult syndrome for most people to understand, because few of us ever come close to the kind of Ultimate Power and Achievement that the White House represents to a career politician...The presidency is as far as he can go. There is no more. The currency of politics is power, and once you've been the Most Powerful Man in the World for four years, everything else is downhill--except four more years on the same trip." (pg 357)

This passage is representative of how a large portion of this book is timeless and eriely applicable to our political atmosphere. This passage makes me think of Obama, and how we've all made him into this savior, a man who can seemingly do no wrong, but we must not forget two very important things: he is a politician, and it takes a certain kind of person to want to become the most powerful person on the planet. Now, I want him to succeed as much as the next hopeful citizen, but I feel that we have set ourselves up for inevitable
disappointment.

Hunter S. Thompson is a frantic, impassioned, cynical, moderately insane writer. These articles, originally published in Rolling Stone during the Nixon/McGovern election, showcase a unique time in American history, as the nation staggered to the end of a revolutionary decade, full of equal parts of hope, despair, violence, love, disillusionment, rebellion, and distrust. Thompson captures it all and at times, embodies it all, as he becomes a kind of anti-hero, both disgusted and ammused, both pushing away from and pulling himself towards the mad machine that is American Politics.

I found it hard to keep myself engaged towards the middle of the book. There are just so many political figures, it was hard to keep them all straight at times, who stood for what, who belonged to what party, etc. But overall, I enjoyed his style and content. I found him to be extremely smart, brutally honest, and of course, funny.

"...We've come to the point where every four years this national fever rises up- this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback- and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England- or the Queen- and have the real business of the presidency conducted by a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who is directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. 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 on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American Politics." (pg 469)

A fun trip through the 72 campaign... recommend it if you like HST or horse race politics, obvs. Sometimes it got super into the wonky politics of it all, dissecting polls and convention strategies etc, and if it wasn't doing that it was totally losing the thread while HST dived deep into some digressive tangent. Still amazing how much it rings true today though. Matt Taibbi wrote an introduction saying this book basically introduced the cliches that campaign journalists still use today, and that seems true, but it's also amazing how much politics and the media still follow the same tropes, 40 years later - as a youngster I thought these were relatively new developments, maybe arising in the 90s, but nope.

I knew it was going to be good, I just didn't know it would be this good.

There is nothing that I can add to the superlatives already heaped upon HST, so I will just say that the story he tells about his snake getting loose in his office building may now be my favorite piece of writing ever.

Seriously, if you haven't read anything by Hunter S. Thompson, go to a used book store and dive in.

Reads like a fever dream (or an acid trip). Cutting, clever and comedic in equal measure, this account of the 1972 election equally explains the 2024 election.

“Politics is a rotten, frequently degrading process that corrupts everyone who steps in it.”

In a post-election conversation I had with my Dad, he remarked that the end of 2016 felt closer to 1968 than any other time in his life. This caught my attention because I was so immersed in my own political awakening that I hadn’t stopped to think of this moment as anything but singular. So in addition to the glut of news I was consuming, I took it upon myself to focus some attention on the historical context of our current political situation. Having just finished the undeniably gonzo Hunters & Collectors, I could think of no better tour guide to the politics of the late sixties than Hunter S. Thompson.

The Thompson I was mainly familiar with not the man, but the caricature of the man - the Raul Duke of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fame. The Thompson that emerges in On the Campaign Trail is only slightly less gonzo, but a good deal more human. In the introduction, Matt Taibbi attributes the book’s enduring quality to the fact that “Thompson never lost his sense of appropriate outrage, never fell into the trap of accepting that moral compromise was somehow a sign of growth and adulthood.” You can read all the historical bullet points about the ’72 election from a wikipedia page, but Thompson goes places no encyclopedia ever could. By launching himself body and mind into covering the story, he transports the reader at an emotional, experiential level - in a way that still resonates 40+ years later.

I lost track of how many times I found myself questioning whether Thompson was writing about the 1972 election or the 2016 election. The old quote “those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it”, comes to mind. I’m as guilty as the next person, for most of my life politics was something I went out of my way to ignore. But like so many others, with my eyes now open I’ve found no shortage of things to be outraged at. What I found disheartening about On the Campaign Trail is that they are largely the SAME THINGS people were outraged about in ’72. Consider quotes like this one:

“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to their office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.”

Ultimately, I came away from this book with a greater appreciation for Hunter Thompson, but a somewhat more pessimistic view of politics. In his own words:

“The prevailing attitude among journalists with enough status to work Presidential Campaigns is that all politicians are congenial thieves and liars. This is usually true. Or at least as valid as the consensus opinion among politicians that The Press is a gang of swine.”

Resonates pretty clearly to modern ears, no? It seems to me that politicians are, and always have been, politicians - even those who claim not to be. At the end of the day, elections and campaigns are no more than a sport. It really is the will of the people that decides what legislation is enacted. But that’s so much harder to embrace than pinning our hopes and dreams on one person to come in and fix everything. Already back in ’72 Thomson pointed out:

“We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up-this hunger for the Savior, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback - and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years.”

History shows that things didn’t end happily for Nixon’s brand of politics. Only time will tell how it will play out this time. Certainly we all need to keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open. But pay attention to the people, not the politicians.

Hunter S. Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado on the so-called radical Freak Power platform. His ideas entailed ripping up the streets of Aspen and making people ride bicycles or walk where they wanted to go, changing the name to Fat City so that greedy capitalists wouldn’t come there and rape the land for profit, control but allow drug use, regulate hunting and fishing to non-residents, and de-arm the police. These ideas seem radical but they are spun from the mind of a highly ethical man who fully understands politics. His campaign ad that year stated “Hunter Thompson is a moralist posing as an immoralist. Nixon is an immoralist disguised as a moralist.” This about sums up left wing vs. right wing politics. I would vote and volunteer for anyone with that platform.

Anyway, here we sit a decade plus since he killed himself and the US is back with a highly immoral president which, I think we can all agree, Hunter S. Thompson would have loathed considerably. Reading this book in light of this is pretty revealing. He had it all figured out close to 50 years ago.

He calls out the “fat cats” who pay off both parties so they can’t lose an election. Moves on to working the Democratic nomination press pool and finds himself supporting McGovern, a principled left-winger who speaks what seems to be the truth. He falls for him and begins to openly support him. He then speaks about how controlling the TV audience is what you need to win and how he understands the “white working class” vote. Then he moves on to the Democratic Party closing ranks and supporting Nixon to prevent a populist leftist from taking power from the Party. It's all pretty current stuff. I’m spoiling nothing here. His prose combined with ideas are what you’re going to read it for. I assure you, he writes better than I do.

I could care less about the image of Hunter S. Thompson as an alcoholic drug abusing renegade. The man was a visionary who fully understood politics. At a time like this it would be wonderful to have him here but I don’t think that’s necessary. People are people. He left us his understanding of them and people continue to act like people.

If you want to understand the present, read about the past. This is some visionary shit from a hilarious and insightful man. It's just sad that people like Hunter Thompson are the ones who wind up dead in their office with a handgun in their mouth and brain matter on the ceiling - and not the amoral sociopaths who seek power.

Disclaimer: I tried to write this review sober immediately after finishing the book and I couldn’t do it. So I went home and proceeded to drink all of the beers in my fridge, as Hunter S. Thompson would do, and sat down at my computer. The review finally seemed to come together.