2023 reads, 6/12:

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

On the surface, this reads like a tamer version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although with just as much gonzo, as this novel chronicles Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 democratic primaries and the resulting race between incumbent Nixon and nominee George McGovern. Within the text, Thompson throws in his own haphazard accounts of his time as Rolling Stones’ journalist for the Democratic party.

“...back on the Campaign Trail… running late, as usual: left hand on the wheel and the other on the radio dial, seeking music, and a glass of iced Wild Turkey spilling into my crotch on every turn.”

It starts off a little slow, because like any primary race, you spend the time meeting and learning about an entire cast of politicians. But things pick up as that cast dwindles and as Thompson gets closer to the Democratic and Republican primaries, then to the race between Nixon and McGovern, and finally the resulting aftermath. It was enlightening to see how, over the course of the novel, the campaign took a toll on Thompson (which he never hid from us, remarking “…the last thing I wanted to think about was the grim, inescapable spectre of two more frenzied months on the campaign trail”). To me, that perfectly reflected the fatigue we’ve all been having these past few elections.

“Yes… and… uh, where were we? I have a bad tendency to rush off on mad tangents and pursue them for fifty or sixty pages that get so out of control that I end up burning them, for my own good.”

Thompson gives us an up-close and personal look at the election, with some comprehensive political analysis and interviews, while also remarking on the danger of running for president and bashing the American political system. This work was described as “eerily prophetic,” and while there is no one-to-one analog between present and past politicians, I certainly agreed that entire concepts and commentaries in the campaign heavily reflected that of 2016 and 2020. Of course, that could just be the fact that some things never change.

Starting, as Thompson does, with the writing itself: it’s tremendous. Sharply observed and deeply funny, especially as the book continues and the demands of coverage reduce the author to scanty notes and splenetic belches. He has a pithy turn of phrase or use of imagery on every other page that sticks in the mind: the precise combination of crass language and keen political analysis and description within half a sentence or a compound word. I barely noticed the pages go by, as the pace is terrific and expertly constructed. Given Thompson’s frequent despairing interludes about meeting deadlines with barely edited pieces forced out of him, he was either lying or an inadvertent savant. Thompson also complains about his own meandering into other topics (football, hotels, motorbikes) but I found it all very enjoyable and the train of thought got back on tracks soon enough. HST was a disciplined, passionate and very talented journalist, with less braggadocio and more tenderness than the “acid-soaked, horrid, obscene, repellent, candid, searing” (&c.) official branding suggests. The occasional and needless racial slurs really stick out here and sour the mood, but I think overall these are rare enough to be avoidable. Your mileage may vary.

The content of the book has more substance and relevance today than any western journalist covering electoral politics has managed to produce in the half-century since this work was published. To his fellow lobby hacks, Thompson’s excoriation of purported ‘objective’ journalism, polling analysis, or hoary old political concepts like ‘electability’ must read like a personal attack, even today. And on actual electoral politics, the book was disturbingly resonant. The parallels today seem unavoidable, even beyond superficial similarities and apophenia.

Given Hunter’s description of McGovern, a gentle and moral man, leading a radical and voluntaristic campaign destroyed by his commitments to his own party, I could only think of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. The campaign against them both had aspects of inner-party sabotage, an absent incumbent opponent relying on the support of both hard-right elements and liberals scandalised by their own party, and an exhausted, depoliticised electorate that was tired of the ‘issue of the day’ and wanted and end to it, by whatever means seemed most likely to succeed. When McGovern puzzled over how the growing Watergate scandal seemed never to become a problem to the republicans as the Eagleton affair became for his own campaign, or when he alluded darkly to tailored messaging campaigns run by Nixon to smear him, the resemblance became truly stifling. If you have been involved in left-wing politics and suffered a generational defeat such as this, the sense of being haunted by the past one gets from this work turns the book into gothic horror.

There are differences, to be certain. Labour unions are now little more than an afterthought, the counterculture is less significant than it was coming out of the 1960s, and the Afghanistan war (now as old as the 19-year old Vietnam war) stirs little resistance domestically. It is also unlikely that a writer such as Thompson could exist today: journalists these days are hardly able or encouraged to spread across so many disciplines, and it seems unlikely one would be kept on retainer for a major publication to miss repeated deadlines and call for the castration of major political figures.

All the more reason to read it, then. I doubt that today a work of political journalism as well-observed (let alone as well-written) as this could exist, but luckily the politics its describes has hardly changed.

I'm disappointed in myself that it took me this long to get into Hunter S. Thompson. He's a real all-American bastard, and hilarious. I also suspect we share some anxiety issues and coping mechanisms that I find touchingly sympathetic. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Scott Sowers and I think thanks to this book I'm going to have a whole-ass Hunter S. Thompson phase. I've already started Hell's Angels.

I decided to do this book first (rather than the more obvious and famous F&L in Las Vegas) because I heard some discourse back in 2016 that there are some strange, poignant parallels between the election of that year and the one from 1972. History did not repeat itself, but there were a few moments and observations from Thompson that were weirdly prophetic - he basically predicted the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. And his analysis of the voting populations rang true up, and remains accurate through the present. George McGovern denied having changed his campaign once he won the nomination, but Thompson was right that he absolutely did, and McGovern probably never had a chance in the first place. He at least might have had a less humiliating defeat if he hadn't turned corporate and tried to appeal to the old Democratic base he defeated rather than stay true to his "Politics of Love." The hippie years were a trip, man.

I was also surprised at how seriously Thompson took himself as a writer and a journalist most of the time. Having watched the Johnny Depp movie and knowing the general motifs of Rolling Stone, I took him to be a bit more of a comic, perpetually stoned fuck-up than he actually was. Further more, I've made it known to anyone who brings up the topic that I despise overly-masculine writing. Authors like John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway both piss me off and bore the hell out of me, and for a long time I was told (and I believed) it was due to some latent misandry on my part. Well, Hunter S. Thompson is even more of a macho, misogynist, bigoted asshole than both those boys put together and I love him for it. I think the difference isn't actually in the masculinity of the writers, but instead in the stoic, largely emotionless, and minimalist style of the former two compared to the highly descriptive, emotionally charged, unique, and witty approach of the latter. Granted, the main emotions Thompson describes are disgust and anger. But he portrays himself as a main character with emotional range and nuance that was probably part of the rebellion against tradition that characterized the 60s, which Hunter was clearly formed by. Given that the former two were decades older, perhaps it's merely a generational issue.

Overall, highly enjoyable. I could listen to Scott Sowers call people pigs and assholes all day.

On the surface, the presidential election of 1972 was boring. The electoral map certainty shows this fact, as incumbent Richard Nixon demolished his democratic opponent George McGovern in one of the most complete landslides in modern US history. It joins the annals of LBJ in 1964 & Reagan in 1984. The 1972 election proved so consequential that it altered how the democratic party did campaigns, by shying away from candidates on the left axis in favor of more centrist candidates. It all stemmed from 1972.

Yet, below the surface, there was a lot of drama in the race. 15 democrats (the most candidates until the Republicans in 2016) threw their hat in the ring. The 1972 convention in Miami wasn't the bloodshed of 1968, but a procedural nightmare that forced it's candidate to give his nomination speech at 2:45 am. A scandal involving vice-president Thomas Eagleton forces him from the race and drags down McGovern all the way to Election Day. All the while, a small scandal known as Watergate began with the break-in to the DNC headquarters in July.

Taking you through all of this is Hunter S. Thompson, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine who covered the campaign. Through his eyes in the "gonzo journalism" style he takes you through the election in the only way he can, with numerous side tangents, slightly offensive language, and no-nonsense tells it like it is prose. If you're looking for an academic, non-biased account of the 1972 election, Thompson is not your man. Yet, that's what makes the book unique and charming. You certainly learn a lot about the candidates (despite Thompson's exaggerations or outright lies about some claims, with jntention), and are hit with insightful analysis all the while.

Thompson does not shy away from his favorability toward McGovern. He openly insults Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, and Richard Nixon in the book. But, again, this is written from his perspective on the Campaign Trail.

Long story short, readers will be in for a rollicking ride as Thompson takes you through a "boring" election in an entertaining fashion. As one of the most famous reviews of the book states: "It's perhaps the most accurate and least factual campaign books ever written"