Clinton’s Fear and Loathing, McGovern Style
March 1st, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Someone far more prescient than I reads Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 every election year.
It seemed like a decent thing to do so I joined The Cause.
While I can only imagine how eerie reading this book must have been in 2004 with “Beating Nixon” carrying strong but inevitably doomed parallels to “Beating Bush,” Thompson’s work has proved truly foreboding and relevant in regards to our current ’08 Campaign and All Politics in general:
“Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business…”
“There are only two ways to make it in big-time politics today: One is to come on like a mean dinosaur, with a high-powered machine that scares the shit out of your entrenched opposition…and the other is to tap the massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy.”
HST’s journalistic political tour de force is proving far more germane now that The New York Times is reporting how past George McGovern campaign workers are throwing their support into Hillary Clinton’s ring.
It’s not that history repeats itself, it’s just that nothing ever changes.
This election is so frustrating.
I’m not excited about any of the candidates.
I only read it every four years, not yearly – to coincide with the presidential elections. Reading it every year would be far to depressing. You will make me seem far more obsessive than I choose to allow myself to appear with that sort of slander.