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Edited on Sun Feb-20-05 11:55 PM by WilliamPitt
from 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail' (collected for my new book):
"Objective Journalism is a hard thing to come by these days. We all yearn for it, but who can point the way? As for mine...well, my doctor says it swole up and busted about ten years ago. The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid much attention to it until one of those known, heavy, out-front shoplifters came into the place...but when that happened, everybody got so excited that the thief had to do something quick, like buy a green popsicle or a can of Coors and get out of the place immediately. So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here - not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms."
"My seat companion for the flight from Washington to San Francisco was Edward Bennet Williams, the legendary trial lawyer, who is also president of the Washington Redskins. He is backing Muskie, and as he talked I got the feeling that he thought he was already at a point where, sooner or later, we would all be. 'Ed's a good man,' he said. 'He's honest. I respect the guy.' Then he stabbed the padded seat arm between us two or three times with his forefinger. 'But the main reason I'm working for him,' he said, 'is that he's the only guy we have who can beat Nixon.' He stabbed the arm again. 'If Nixon wins again, we're in real trouble.' He picked up his drink, saw it was empty and put it down again. 'That's the real issue this time.,' he said. 'Beating Nixon. It's hard to even imagine how much damage those bastards will do if they get another four years.'
"How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but 'regrettably necessary' holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me at the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same."
"Once they let you get away with running around for ten years like a king hoodlum, you tend to forget now and then that about half the people you meet live from one day to the next in a state of such fear and uncertainty that about half the time they honestly doubt their own sanity. These are not the kind of people who really need to get hung up in depressing political trips. They are not ready for it. Their boats are rocking so badly that all they want to do is get level long enough to think straight and avoid the next nightmare."
"The assholes who run politics in this country have become so mesmerized by the Madison Avenue school of campaigning that they actually believe, now, that all it takes to become a Congressman or a Senator - or even a President - is a nice set of teeth, a big wad of money, and a half-dozen Media Specialists."
"I went to Nixon's Inauguration. Washington was a sea of mud and freezing rain. The mood of the crowd was decidedly ugly. You couldn't walk 50 feet without blundering into a fistfight. The high point of the parade, of course, was the moment when the new President's car passed by. But it was hard to be sure which one it was. The Secret Service ran a few decoys down the line, apparently to confuse the snipers and maybe draw some fire...but nothing serious happened: just the normal hail of rocks, beer cans and wine bottles...so they figured it was safe to run the President through. Nixon came by - according to the TV men - in what appeared to be a sort of huge, hollowed-out cannonball on wheels. It was a very nasty looking armored car, and God only knows who was actually inside it."
"There are very few members of the establishment press who will defend the idea that things like aggressive flatulence, forced feedings of swill, or even a barely-muted hostility on the part of the candidate would justify any kind of drastic retaliation by a professional journalist - and certainly nothing so drastic as to cause the Democratic front-runner to cut short a major speech because some dangerous freak wearing a press badge was clawing at his legs and screaming for more gin."
"How long, O Lord...How long? Where will it end? The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasing likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct."
"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 the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place."
"Back at the Pfister lobby, I ran into Dave Aylward, a veteran of both the New Hampshire and Wisconsin campaigns, although less than a year out of Dartmouth. 'There's only one thing that worries me about being out front,' he said. 'The hacks. When McCarthy took Wisconsin in '68, the hacks were getting on board before anyone knew what was happening and they were saying, OK, kids, the fun's over, we'll run it from here, get lost. And the kids had just racked up 56 percent for McCarthy in this state. If it happens again this time, they can have the campaign. I'll just pack my bags and split.'"
"Only a lunatic would do this kind of work: twenty-three primaries in five months; stone drunk from dawn till dusk and huge speed-blisters all over my head. Where is the meaning? That light at the end of the tunnel?"
"The Wayfarer was Gene McCarthy's headquarters for the New Hampshire primary in 1968; and it was also McGovern's - unofficially, at least - in the winter of '72. The recent history of the place suggests that it may be something like the Valley Forge of presidential politics. Or maybe the Wayfarer's peculiar mystique has to do with the nature of the New Hampshire primary. There is nothing else quite like it: an intensely personal kind of politics that quickly goes out of style when the field starts narrowing down and the survivors move on to other, larger, and far more complex states. The New Hampshire primary is one of the few situations in presidential politics where the candidates are forced to campaign like human beings, on the same level with the voters."
"Vietnam veterans like Ron Kovic are not welcome in Nixon's White House. They tried to get in last year, but they could only get close enough to throw their war medals over the fence. That was perhaps the most eloquent anti-war statement ever made in this country, and that Silent March on the Fontainebleau on August 22 had the same ugly sting to it. There is no anti-war or even anti-establishment group in America today with the psychic leverage of the VVAW. They are golems, come back to haunt us all."
"It is a nervous thing to consider: Not just four more years of Nixon, but Nixon's last four years in politics - completely unshackled, for the first time in his life, from any need to worry about who might or might not vote for him the next time around. If he wins in November, he will finally be free to do whatever he wants...or maybe 'wants' is too strong a word for right now. It conjures up images of Papa Doc, Batista, Somoza; jails full of bewildered 'political prisoners' and the constant cold-sweat fear of jackboots suddenly kicking your door off its hinges at four A.M."
"I hung up and drank some more gin. Then I put a Dolly Parton album on the tape machine and watched the trees outside my balcony getting lashed around in the wind. Around midnight, when the rain stopped, I put on my special Miami Beach nightshirt and walked several blocks down La Cienega Boulevard to the Losers' Club."
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