276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

£6.495£12.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

And right smack in the middle of rush-hour traffic in Washington, right straight across the island … up over this huge bump, in a driving rain, he made a highspeed U-turn right over the island and back into the other lane, and cars were skidding at us, coming sideways and fishtailing, trying to avoid us … That was the kind of mood the McGovern people were in. and accurately and insightfully illustrates their place in not only the election, but in America during the early 1970's.

Ah, Jesus… here we go again: Another flashback… the doctors say there’s no cure for them; totally unpredictable, like summer lightning in the Rockies or sharks on the Jersey Shore… unreeling across your brain like a jumble of half-remembered movies all rolling at once.Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 is a 1973 book that recounts and analyzes the 1972 presidential campaign in which Richard Nixon was re-elected President of the United States. But in terms of those that just took a walk, you know, and really came out for Nixon, I’m really not interested in seeing those people brought back into the Democratic party.

At that point True Davis was the president of a bank owned by the United Mine Workers in Washington.

Thompson’s personal physician we determined that for esthetic, historical, and contractual reasons The Work would have to be finished at all costs. He was perceived, then, as a dingbat – not as a flaming radical – a lot of people seem to think that was one of the images that hurt him. After McGovern won the nomination, he analyzes how he won it and how it caused the schizm in the democratic party. It was totally impossible to recover from that… the damage was so great particularly among the younger voters where McGovern’s potential strength lay.

People you’d never expect to break down … stumbled off the plane in tears, and… it was… I don’t know like a … funeral after a mass murder or something… there was no way to describe it, a kind of … falling apart. I suspect that’s really one of the roots of the thinking of at least half of the ranking staff people in McGovern’s campaign, even now…. The keys jingled like a giant tambourine on every takeoff… They were taped next to each other in a solid row along both top racks above the seats.McGovern was perceived as a cold-hearted, political pragmatist who dumped this poor, neurotic, good guy from Missouri because he thought people wouldn’t vote for him because they were afraid that shock treatments in the past might have some kind of lingering effect on his mind. 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’s 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. So that was what… five o’clock Eastern Time… No seven Eastern Time, excuse me… and four California time… It was really all over by then. HST: Well, that doesn’t mean another candidate with the same views as McGovern might not have been able to win … or even a candidate with views more radical than McGovern’s. Which is probably why I made that disastrous bet, although there wasn’t a reporter in the press corps who thought that George would lose by more than ten points… except Joe Alsop; he said McGovern wouldn’t get more than 40% of the vote.

Usually I’m suspicious of these “history repeats itself” cliches, but sub “Trump” in for “Nixon” in the above passage and it reads just as true and grimly entertaining. To think that after all that stuff in California, that we might possibly end up with a McGovern/Humphrey ticket. But this was the most depressing experience I’ve had in a long, long time… Far more depressing than, for instance, than getting beaten myself, in any kind of political race in Colorado. HST: Yeah, but then the punishment would be the greatest too… it’s much more fun to run a political campaign than it is to be the candidate. McGovern ended up turning to the center in the general election, but simultaneously failed to win over Nixon voters while alienating himself from the coalition Thompson dubs the “Freak Power Ticket” that got him there in the first place.

After Anderson had broken the story both on the radio and in his column… his syndicated column… he got desperate for the records because he knew he was going to be challenged. I thought that it wasn’t just a matter of personality differences with me or ideological differences with me. After a decade of left-bent chaos, the Silent Majority was so deep in a behavorial sink that their only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of revulsion. If the election had been close Illinois would have been critical, and with Daley coming around there was at least a possibility that Illinois would go for McGovern.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment