Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72

Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72

Mass Burial for Political Bosses in New York ... McGovern over the Hump ... The Death by Beating of a Six-Foot Blue-Black Serpent ... What Next for the Good Ole Boys? ... Anatomy of a Fixer ... Treachery Looms in Miami ...

It is now clear that this once small devoted band has become a great surging multitude all across this country—and it will not be denied.

—George McGovern, on the night of the New York primary

the Day After the New York primary I woke up in a suite on the twenty-fourth floor of Delmonico's Hotel on Park Avenue with a hellish wind tearing both rooms apart and rain coming in through all the open windows . . . and I thought: Yes, wonderful, only a lunatic would get out of bed on a day like this; call room service for grapefruit and coffee, along with a New York Times for brain food, and one of those portable brick-dome fireplaces full of oil-soaked sawdust logs that they can roll right into the suite and fire up at the foot of the bed.

Indeed. Get some heat in the room, but keep the windows open—for the sounds of the wind and the rain and the far-off honking of all those taxi horns down on Park Avenue.

Then fill a hot bath and get something like Memphis Underground on the tape machine. Relax, relax. Enjoy this fine rainy day, and send the bill to Random House. The budget boys won't like it, but to hell with them. Random House still owes me a lot of

money from that time when the night watchman beat my snake to death on the white marble steps ledding up to the main reception desk.

I had left it overnight in the editor's office, sealed up in a cardboard box with a sencential mouse but the mouse understood what was happening, and terror gave him strength to goaw a hole straight through the side of the box and escape into the bowels of the building.

The snake followed, of course—through the same hole—and somewhere around dawn, when the night watchman went out to check the main door, he was confronted with a six-foot blue black serpent slithering rapidly up the stares flicking its tongue at him and hissing a warning that he was sure—according to his own account of the incident—was the last sound he would ever hear.

The snake was a harmless Blue Indigo that I d just brought back from a reptile farm in Florida but the watchman had no way of knowing, he had never seen a snake. Most natives of Manhattan Island are terrified of all animals except cockroaches and poodles so when this poor ignorant bastard of a watchman suddenly found himself menaced by a hissing, six foot serpent coming fast up the stairs at him from the general direction of Cardinal Spellman's quarters just across the courtyard he said the sight of it made him almost crazy with fear, and at first he was totally paralyzed

Then, as the snake kept on coming, some primal instinct shocked the man out of his trance and gave him the strength to attack the thing with the first weapon he could get his hands on—which he first described as a steel broom handle, but which further investigation revealed to have been a metal tube jerked out of a nearby vacuum cleaner.

The battle apparently lasted some twenty minutes a terrible clanging and screaming in the empty marble entranceway, and finally the watchman prevailed. Both the serpent and the vacuum tube were beaten beyond recognition, and later that morning a copy editor found the watchman slumped on a stool in the basement next to the terror machine, still gripping the mangled tube and unable to say what was wrong with him except that something horrible had tried to get him, but he finally managed to kill it.

The man has since retired, they say. Cardinal Spellman died and Random House moved to a new building. But the psychic scars remain, a dim memory of corporate guilt that is rarely mentioned except in times of stress or in arguments over money. Every time I start feeling a bit uneasy about running up huge bills on the Random House tab, I think about that snake—and then I call room service again.

State Vote Aids M'Govern: Senator's Slates Win By Large Margin In The Suburbs

That was the Times's big headline on Wednesday morning. The "3 A's candidate" (Acid, Abortion, Amnesty) had definitely improved his position by carrying the suburbs. The bulk of the political coverage on page one had to do with local races—"Ryan, Badillo, Rangel Win: Coller is in Close Battle"... "Delegates Named"... "Bingham Defeats Scheuer; Rooney Apparent Winner."

Down at the bottom of the page was a block of wire-photos from the National Mayors' Conference in New Orleans—also on Tuesday—and the choice shot from down there showed a smiling Hubert Humphrey sitting next to Mayor Daley of Chicago with the Mayor of Miami Beach leaning into the scene with one of his arms around Daley and the other around Hubert.

The caption said, "Ex-Mayor Is Hit With Mayors." The "details, Page 28" said Humphrey had definitely emerged as the star of the Mayors' conference. The two losers were shown in smaller photos underneath the Daley/Humphrey thing. Muskie "received polite applause," the caption said, and the camera had apparently caught him somewhere near the beginning of a delayed Ibogaine rush: his eyes are clouding over, his jaw has gone slack, his hair appears to be combed back in a da.

The caption under the McGovern photo says, "He, too, received moderate response." But McGovern at least looked human, while the other four looked like they had just been trucked over on short notice from some third-rate wax museum in the French Quarter. The only genuinely ugly face of the five is that of Mayor Daley:

He looks like a potato with mange—at es the face of a man who would see nothing wrong with telling his son to go out and round up a gang of thugs with bullhorns and kick the shot out of anybody stupid enough to challenge the Major of Chicago's night to name the next Democratic candidate for President of the United States

I stared at the front page for a long time there was something wrong with it but I couldn't quite fix on the problem until yes I realized that the whole front page of the June 21st New York Times could just as easily have been dated March 8th the day after the New Hampshire primary

"Pacification was failing again in Vietnam Defense Secretary Melvin Laird was demanding more bombers itt was beating another illegal stock sales rap but the most striking similarity was in the overall impression of what was happening in the fight for the Democratic pres dental nomination

Apparently nothing had changed. Muskie looked just as sick and confused as he had on that cold Wednesday morning in Manchester four months ago. McGovern looked like the same tough but hopeless underdoer—and there was nothing in the face of either Daley or Humphrey to indicate that either one of those corrupt and vicious old screws had any doubt at all about what was going to happen in Miami in July. They appeared to be very pleased with whatever the Major of Miami Beach was saying to them.

An extremely depressing front page at first glance—almost rancid with a sense of deja vu. There was even a kennedy story. Will he or Won't he?

This was the most interesting story on the page if only because of the timing Teddy had been out of the campaign news for a few months but now—according to the Times's R W Apple Junior—he was about to make his move

Cits Councilman Matthew J. Troy Junior. will announce today that he is supporting Senator Edward M. Kennedy for the Democratic vice presidential nomination informed sources said last night. Mr. Troy, a long time political ally of the Kennedy family, was one of the earliest supporters of Senator George McGovern for the Presidency. As such, he would be unlikely to propose a running mate for the South Dakotaan unless both men had indicated their approval.

Unlikely.

Right. The logic was hard to deny. A McGovern/Kernsticket was probably the only sure winner available to the Democrat this year, but beyond that it might solve all of Kennedy's problem with one stroke. It would give him at least four and probably eight years in the spotlight; an unnaturally powerful and popular president with all the advantages of the office and very few of it: risks. If McGovern ran wild and called for the abolition of Fin Enterprise, for instance, Kennedy could back off and shake his had sadly . . . but if McGovern did everything right and won a second term as the most revered and successful President in the nation's history, Teddy would be right there beside him—the other half of the team; so clearly the heir apparent that he would hardly have to bother about campaigning in public in 1980.

Don't worry, boys, we'll weather this storm of approval and come out as hated as ever.

—Saul Alinsky to his staff shortly before his death, June 1972

The primaries are finally over now: twenty-three of the goddamn things—and the deal is about to go down. New York was the last big spectacle before Miami Beach, and this time McGovern's people really kicked out the jams. They stomped every hack, ward-heeler, and "oid-line party boss" from Buffalo to Brooklyn. The Democratic Party in New York State was left in a frightened shambies.

Not even the state party leader, Joe Crangle, survived the McGovern blitz. He tried to pass for "uncommitted"—hoping to go down to Miami with at least a small remnant of the big-time bargaining power he'd planned on when he originally backed Muskie—but McGovern's merciless young streetfighters chopped Crangle down with the others. He will watch the convention on T.V, along with Brooklyn Party boss Meade Esposito and once-powerful Bronx leader Patrick Cunningham.

Former New York Governor Averell Harriman also wound up on the list of ex-heavies who will not attend the convention. He too was an early Muskie supporter. The last time I saw Averell he was addressing a small crowd in the West Palm Beach railroad station—framed in a halo of spotlights on the caboose platform of Big Ed's "Sunshine Special" . . . and the Man from Maine was standing tall beside him, smiling broadly, looking every inch the winner that all those half-bright party bosses had assured him he was definitely going to be.

It was just about dusk when Harriman began speaking, as I recall, and Muskie might have looked a little less pleased if he'd had any way of knowing that—ten blocks away, while Ave was still talking—a human threshing machine named Peter Sheridan was cagerly hitting the bricks after two weeks in the Palm Beach jail on a vagrancy rap.

Unknown to either Big Ed or Peter, their paths were soon destined to cross. Twelve hours later, Sheridan—the infamous wandering Boohoo for the Neo-American church—would board the "Sunshine Special" for the last leg of the trip into Miami.

That encounter is already legend. I am not especially proud of my role in it—mainly because the nightmare developed entirely by accident—but if I could go back and try it all over again I wouldn't change a note.

At the time I felt a bit guilty about it: having been, however innocently, responsible for putting the Demo front-runner on a collision course with a gin-crazed acid freak—but that was before I realized what kind of a beast I was dealing with.

It was not until his campaign collapsed and his ex-staffers felt free to talk that I learned that working for Big Ed was something like being locked in a rolling boxcar with a vicious 200-pound water rat. Some of his top staff people considered him dangerously unstable. He had several identities, they said, and there was no way to be sure on any given day if they would have to deal with Abe Lincoln, Hamlet, Captain Queeg, or Bobo the Simpleminded

Many strange Muskie stories, but this is not the time for them. Perhaps after the convention, when the pressure lets off a bit—although not even that is certain, now: Things are getting weird.

The only “Muskie story” that interests me right now is the one about how he managed to con those poor bastards into making him the de facto party leader and also the bosses' choice to carry the party colors against Nixon in November. I want to know that story, and if anybody who reads this can fill me in on the details,

Later in iunt

by all means call at once care-of Reilne Store San Francisco

The Muskie nightmare is beginning to look more and more like a major political watershed for the Democratic Party. When Big Ed went down he took about half of the national power structure with him. In one state after another—each time he lost a primary—Muskie crippled and humiliated the local Democratic power-mongers. Governors Mayors, Senators, Congressmen Big Ed was supposed to be their ticket to Miami, where they planned to do business as usual once again, and keep the party at least viable, if not entirely healthy. All Muskie had to do, they said, was keep his mouth shut and act like Abe Lincoln.

The bosses would do the rest. As for that hare brained bastard McGovern he could take those reformist ideas he'd been working on and jam them straight up his ass. A convention packed wall to wall with Musk's delegates—the rancid cream of the party as it were—would make short work of McGovern's Boy Scout bullshot.

That was four months ago before Muskie began crashing around the country in a stupid rage and destroying everything he touched. First it was booze then Reds and finally over the brink into Ibogaine and it was right about that time that most of the Good Ole Boys decided to take another long look at Hubert Humphrey. He wasn't much they'll agreed on that—but by May he was all they had left.

Not much for sure Any political party that can't couch up anything better than a treacherous brain damaged old vulture like Hubert Humphrey deserves every beating it gets They don't hardis make 'em like Hubert any more—but just to be on the safe side he should be castrated anyway

Castrated? Jesus' Is nothing sacred? Four years ago Hubert Humphrey ran for President of the United States on the Democratic ticket—and he almost won

It was a very narrow escape I voted for Dick Gregory in '68, and if somehow Humphrey manages to shutter onto the ticket again this year I will vote for Richard Nixon

But Humphrey will not be on the ticket this year—at least not on the Democratic ticket. He may end up running with Nixon but the odds are against him there, too. Not even Nixon could stoop to Hubert's level.

So what will Humphrey do with himself this year? Is there no room at the top for a totally dishonest person? A United States Senator? A loyal Party Man?

Well ... as much as I hate to get away from objective journalism, even briefly, there is no other way to explain what that treacherous bastard appears to be cranking himself up for this time around, except by slipping momentarily into the realm of speculation.

But first, a few realities: (1) George McGovern is so close to a first-ballot nomination in Miami that everybody except Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Shirley Chisholm, and Ed Muskie seems ready to accept it as a foregone conclusion . . . (2) The national Democratic Party is no longer controlled by the Old Guard, Boss-style hacks like George Meany and Mayor Daley — or even by the Old Guard liberal-manque types like Larry O'Brien, who thought they had things firmly under control as recently as six months ago . . . (3) McGovern has made it painfully clear that he wants more than just the nomination; he has every intention of tearing the Democratic Party completely apart and re-building it according to his own blueprint . . . (4) If McGovern beats Nixon in November he will be in a position to do anything he wants either to or with the party structure . . . (5) But if McGovern loses in November, control of the Democratic Party will instantly revert to the Ole Boys, and McGovern himself will be labeled “another Goldwater” and stripped of any power in the party.

The pattern is already there, from 1964, when the Nixon/Mitchell brain-trust—already laying plans for 1968—sat back and let the G.O.P machinery fall into the hands of the Birchers and the right-wing crazies for a few months... and when Goldwater got stomped, the Nixon/Mitchell crowd moved in and took over the party with no argument from anybody... and four years later Nixon moved into the White House.

There have already been a few rumblings and muted threats along these lines from the Daley/Meany faction. Daley has privately threatened to dump Illinois to Nixon in November if McGovern persists in challenging Daley's eighty-five-man slave delegation to the convention in Miami... and Meany is prone to

muttering out loud from time to time that maybe Organized Labor would be better off in the long run by enduring another four years under Nixon rather than running the risk of whatever radical madness he fears McGovern might bring down on him

The only other person who has said anything about taking a dive for Nixon in November is Hubert Humphrey, who has already threatened in public—at the party's Credentials Committee hearings in Washington last week—to let his friend Joe Aloto the Mayor of San Francisco throw the whole state of California to Nixon unless the party gives Hubert 151 California delegates—on the basis of his losing show of strength in that state's winner take-all primary.

Hubert understood it along that California was all or nothing. He continually referred to it as "The Big One" and "The Super Bowl of the Primaries" but he changed his mind when he lost one of the finest flashes of T.V journalism in many months appeared on the C.B.S evening news the same day Humphrey formally filed his claim to almost half the California delegation. It was a Walter Cronkite interview with Hubert in California a week or so prior to election day. Cronkite asked him if he had any objections to the winner take all aspect of the California primary and Humphrey replied that he thought it was absolutely wonderful.

"So even if you lose out here—if you lose all 271 delegates—you wouldn't challenge the winner,r take-all rule? Cronkite asked

"Oh my goodness no Hubert said That would make me sort of a spoilsport wouldn't it?"

On the face of it McGovern seems to have everything under control now Less than twenty four hours after the New York results were final chief delegate monster Rick Stearns announced that George was over the hump The New York blitz was the clincher pushing him over the 1350 mark and mishing all but the flunsiest chance that anybody would continue to talk seriously about a "Stop McGovern movement in Miami The Humphrey/Muskie axis had been desperately trying to put something together with aging diehards like Wilbur Mills George Meany and Mayor Daley—hoping to stop McGovern just short of 1400—but on the weekend after the New York sweep George picked up another fifty or so from the last of the non primary state eaucuses and by Sun dav, June 25th he was only a hundred votes away from the 1509 that would zip it all up on the first ballot

At that point the number of officially 'uncommitted' delegates was still hovering around 450 but there had already been some small scale defections to McGovern and the others were getting nervous. The whole purpose of getting yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate is to be able to arrive at the Convention with bargaining power. Ideology has nothing to do with it.

If you're a lawyer from St Louis for instance and you manage to get yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate for Missouri you will hustle down to Miami and start scouting around for somebody to make a deal with which won't take long because every candidate still in the running for anything at all will have dozens of his own personal fliers roaming around the hotel bars and buttonholing Uncommitted delegates to find out what they want

If your price is a lifetime appointment as a judge on the U.S Circuit Court, your only hope is to deal with a candidate who is so close to that magic 1509 figure that he can no longer function in public because of uncontrollable drooling. If he is stuck around 1400 you will probably not have much luck getting that bench appointment but if he's already up to 1499 he won't hesitate to offer you the first opening on the U.S Supreme Court and if you catch him peaked at 1505 or so you can squeeze him for almost anything you want.

The game will get heavy sometimes You don't want to go around putting the squeeze on people unless you're absolutely clean No skeletons in the closet no secret vices because if your vote is important and your price is high the Fixer Man will have already checked you out by the time he offers to buy you a drink If you bribed a traffic-court clerk two years ago to bury a drunk driving charge the Fixer might suddenly confront you with a photostat of the citation you thought had been burned

When that happens you're fucked Your price just went down to zero and you are no longer an Uncommitted delegate

There are several other versions of the Reverse-Squeeze the fake hit and run glassine bags found in your hotel room by a maid; grabbed off the street by phony cops for statutory rape of a teenage girl you never saw before. . . .

Every once in a while you might hit on something with real style, like this one: On Monday afternoon, the first day of the convention, you—the ambitious young lawyer from St. Louis with no skeletons in the closet and no secret vices worth worrying about—are spending the afternoon by the pool at the Playboy Plaza, soaking up sun and gin/tonics when you hear somebody calling your name. You look up and see a smiling, rotund chap about thirty-five years old coming at you, ready to shake hands.

“Hi there, Virgil,” he says. “My name's J. D. Square. I work for Senator Bilbo and we'd sure like to count on your vote. How about it?”

You smile, but say nothing—waiting for Square to continue. He will want to know your price.

But Squane is staring out to sea, squinting at something on the horizon . . . then he suddenly turns back to you and starts talking very fast about how he always wanted to be a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, but politics got in the way. . . . "And now, goddamnit, we must get these last few votes. . . ."

You smile again, itching to get serious. But Square suddenly yells at somebody across the pool, then turns back to you and says: "Jesus, Virgil, I'm really sorry about this, but I have to run. That guy over there is delivering my new Jensen Interceptor." He grins and extends his hand again. Then: "Say, maybe we can talk later on, eh? What room are you in?"

“1909.”

He nods. “How about seven, for dinner? Are you free?” “Sure.”

“Wonderful,” he replies. “We can take my new Jensen for a run up to Palm Beach … It's one of my favorite towns.”

“Mine too,” you say. “I've heard a lot about it.”

He nods. “I spent some time there last February . . . but we had a bad act, dropped about twenty-five grand.”

Jesus! Jensen Interceptor; twenty-five grand . . . Square is definitely big-time.

"See you at seven," he says, moving away.

The knock comes at 7:02—but instead of Square it's a beau-

tiful silver harred young girl who says J D sent her to pick you up "He's having a business dinner with the Senator and he'll join us later at the Crab House"

'Wonderful wonderful—shall we have a drink?'

She nods 'Sure, but not here. We'll drive over to North Miami and pick up my girlfriend but let's smoke this before we go"

"Jesus" That looks like a cigar

"It is she laughs 'And itll make us both crazy"

Many hours later + 30 A.M Soaking wet falling into the lobby, begging for help No wallet no money no I.D Blood on both hands and one shoe missing dragged up to the room by two bellboys

Breakfast at noon the next day half sick in the coffee shop— waiting for a Western Union money order from the wife in St Louis. Very spotty memories from last night.

Hi there, Virgil

I D Square still grinnail. "Where were you last night, Virgil? I came by right on the dot, but you weren't in."

"I got mugged—by your girlfriend"

"Oh? Too bad I wanted to nail down that ugly little vote of yours"

“Ugly? Wait a minute That girl you sent, we went some place to meet you.”

'Bullshit' You double-crossed me. Virgil' If we weren't on the same team I might be tempted to lean on you"

Rising anger now, painful throbbing in the head "Fuck you, Square" I'm on nobody's team! If you want my vote you know damn well how to get it—and that goddamn dope addict girlfriend of yours didn't help any "

Square smiles heavily "Tell me Virgil—what was it you wanted for the vote of yours? A seat on the federal bench"

"You're goddamn fuckin'-A right! You got me in bad trouble last night, J D When I got back here my wallet was gone and there was blood on my hands" “I know. You beat the shit out of her.”

"What?"

“Look at these photographs, Virgil. It's some of the most disgusting stuff I've ever seen.”

“Photographs?”

Square hands them across the table.

"Oh my god!"

“Yeah, that's what I said, Virgil.”

“No! This can't be me! I never saw that girl! Christ, she's only a child!”

“That's why the pictures are so disgusting, Virgil. You're lucky we didn't take them straight to the cops and have you locked up.” Pounding the table with his fist. “That's rape, Virgil! That's sodomy! With a child!”

“No!”

“Yes, Virgil—and now you're going to pay for it.”

"How? What are you talking about?"

Square smiling again. “Votes, my friend. Yours and five others. Six votes for six negatives. Are you ready?”

Tears of rage in the eyes now. “You evil sonofabitch! You're blackmailing me!”

“Ridiculous, Virgil. Ridiculous. I'm talking about coalition politics.”

“I don't even know six delegates. Not personally, anyway. And besides, they all want something.”

Square shakes his head. "Don't tell me about it, Virgil. I'd rather not hear. Just bring me six names off this list by noon tomorrow. If they all vote right, you'll never hear another word about what happened last night."

"What if I can't?"

Square smiles, then shakes his head sadly. “Your life will take a turn for the worse, Virgil.”

Ah, bad craziness... a scene like that could run on forever. Sick dialogue comes easy after five months on the campaign trail. A sense of humor is not considered mandatory for those who want to get heavy into presidential politics. Junkies don't laugh much; their gig is too serious—and the politics junkie is not much different on that score than a smack junkie.

The Hueh is very real in both worlds for those who are into it—but anybody who has ever tried to live with a smack punkie will tell you it can't be done without coming to grips with the spike and shooting up yourself

Politics is no different. There is a fantastic adrenaline high that comes with total involvement in almost any kind of fast moving political campaign—especially when you're running against big odds and starting to feel like a winner.

As far as I know I am the only journalist covering the 72 presidential campaign who has done any time on the other side of that gap—both as a candidate and a backroom pol on the local level—and despite all the obvious differences between running on the Freak Power ticket for Sheriff of Aspen and running as a well-behaved Democrat for President of the United States the roots are surprisingly similar and whatever real differences exist are hardly worth talking about compared to the massive unbridgeable gap between the cranked up reality of living day after day in the vortex of a rolling campaign—and the fiendish rahtastard tedium of covering that same campaign as a journalist from the outside looking in

For the same reason that nobody who has never come to grips with the spike can ever understand how far away it really is across that gap to the place where the smick junkie lives there is no way for even the best and most talented journalist to know what is really going on inside a political campaign unless he has been there himself.

Very few of the press people assigned to the McGovern campaign for instance have anything more than a surface under standing of what is really going on in the vortex or if they do they don't mention it in print or on the air And after spending half a year following this goddamn zoo around the country and watching the machiners at work I'd be willing to bet pretty heavily that not even the most privileged ranking insiders among the campaign press corps are telling much less than they know

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Fear and Loathing in Miami Old Bulls Meet the Butcher A Dreyay Saga Direct from the Sunshine State How George McGovern Rin Wild on the Beach & Stomped Almost Everybody Flashback to the Famous Lindsay Blueprint & A Strange Epitaph for the Battle of Chicago More Notes on the Politics of Vengeance, Including Massive Technical Advice from Rick Stearns & the Savage Eye of Ralph Steadman

Do not go gentle into that good night Rage Rage' Against the diving of the light —Dylan Thomas

Sunday is not A Good Day for traveling in the South Most public places are closed—especially the bars and taverns—in order that the den zens of this steamy atavistic region will not be distracted from church Sunday is the Lord's day and in the South he still has clout—or enough at least so that most folks won't cross him in public And those few who can't make it to church will likely stay home by the fan with iced tea and worship him in their own way

This explains why the cocktail lounge in the Atlanta airport is not open on Sunday night. The Lord wouldn't dig it.

Not even in Atlanta which the local chamber of commerce describes as the Enlightened Commercial Capital of the New South" Atlanta is an alarmingly liberal city by Southern standards—known for its "progressive" politicians nonviolent race re lations, and a tax structure aggressively favorable to New Business. It is also known for moonshine whiskey, a bad biker/doper community, and a booming new porno-film industry.

Fallen pompon girls and ex-cheerleaders from Auburn, 'Bama, and even Ole Miss come to Atlanta to "get into show business," and those who take the wrong fork wind up being fucked, chewed, and beaten for $100 a day in front of hand-held movie cameras. Donkeys and wolves are $30 extra, and the going rate for gang-bangs is $10 a head, plus "the rate." Connoisseurs of pomo-films say you can tell at a glance which ones were made in Atlanta, because of the beautiful girls. There is nowhere else in America, they say, where a fuck-flick producer can hire last year's Sweetheart of Sigma Chi to take on twelve Georgia-style Hell's Angels for $220 & lunch.

So I was not especially surprised when I got off the plane from Miami around midnight and wandered into the airport to find the booze locked up. What the hell? I thought: This is only the public bar. At this time of night—in the heart of the bible belt and especially on Sunday—you want to look around for something private.

Every airport has a "V.I.P Lounge." The one in Atlanta is an elegant neo-private spa behind a huge wooden door near Gate 11. Eastern Airlines maintains it for the use of traveling celebrities, politicians, and other conspicuous persons who would rather not be seen drinking in public with the Rabble.

I had been there before, back in February, sipping a midday beer with John Lindsay while we waited for the flight to L.A. He had addressed the Florida state legislature in Tallahassee that morning; the Florida primary was still two weeks away, Muskie was still the front-runner, McGovern was campaigning desperately up in New Hampshire, and Lindsay's managers felt he was doing well enough in Florida that he could afford to take a few days off and zip out to California. They had already circled June 6th on the Mayor's campaign calendar. It was obvious, even then, that the California primary was going to be The Big One: winner-take-all for 271 delegate votes, more than any other state, and the winner in California would almost certainly be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 1972.

Nobody argued that. The big problem in February was knowing which two of the twelve candidates would survive until then. If California was going to be the showdown it was also three months and twenty three primaries away—a long and grueling struggle before the field would narrow down to only two Ed Muskee of course would be one of them. In late February it was not possible to find out how everything favorite that even press wizard in Washington had already exceeded him the nomination. At that point in the campaign the smart money scenario had the Ed waming comfortably in New Hampshire finishing a strong second to Wallace a week later in Florida then naming it in Wisconsin on April 4th. New Hampshire would finish McGovern the said and Hubert's ill advised Comeback would die on the vine in Florida Jackson and Chisholm were left only London and Wiltman. The quick brown fox can who had only recently switched parties But he had already caused a mild shock wave on the Democratic side by beating McGovern badly—and holding Muskee to a stand-off—with an eleventh hour Kennedy's campaign in non primary Arizona the first state to elect delegates Lindsay's lieutenants saw that success in Arizona as the first spark for what would soon be a firestorm Their blueprint had Lindsey compounding the momentum by finishing a strong third year. The media was on the other hand, but the party, who destined to be the first to beat the ageing Muskee in Wisconsin—which would set the stage for an early Right/Left showdown in Massachusetts a crucial primary state with 102 delegates and a traditionally liberal electorate The key to that strategy was the idea that Muskie could not hold the Center because he was basically a candidate of the Democratic Right like Scoop Jackson and that he would move in stuntively in that direction at the first sign of challenge from his left—which would force him into a position so close to Nixon that eventually not even the Democratic centrists would tolerate him. There was high ground to be seized on The Left. Lindsey felt and whoever seized it would fall here to that far flung leaderless army of Kennedy/McCarthy zealots from 1968 along with

25 million new voters who would naturally go 3 to 1 against Nixon—unless the Democratic candidate turned out to be Hubert Humphrey or a Moray Eel. This meant that almost anybody who could strike sparks with the “new voters” would be working off a huge and potentially explosive new power base that was worth—on paper, at least—anywhere between 5 percent and 15 percent of the total vote. It was a built-in secret weapon for any charismatic Left-bent underdog who could make the November election even reasonably close.

Now, walking down a long empty white corridor in the Atlanta airport on a Sunday night in July, I had a very clear memory of my last visit to this place—but it seemed like something that had happened five years ago, instead of only five months. The Lindsay campaign was a loose, upbeat trip while it lasted, but there is a merciless kind of "out of sight, out of mind" quality about a losing presidential campaign... and when I saw Lindsay on the convention floor in Miami, sitting almost unnoticed in the front row of the New York delegation, it was vaguely unsettling to recall that less than six months ago he was attracting big crowds out on Collins Avenue—just one block east of his chair, that night, in the Miami Beach convention hall—and that every word he said, back then, was being sucked up by three or four network T.V crews and echoed on the front pages of every major newspaper from coast to coast.

As it turned out, the Lindsay campaign was fatally flawed from the start. It was all tip and no iceberg—the exact opposite of the slow-building McGovern juggernaut—but back in February it was still considered very shrewd and avant-garde to assume that the most important factor in a presidential campaign was a good “media candidate.” If he had Star Quality, the rest would take care of itself.

The Florida primary turned out to be a funeral procession for would-be “media candidates.” Both Lindsay and Muskie went down in Florida—although not necessarily because they geared their pitch to T.V; the real reason, I think, is that neither one of

them understood how to use T.V or maybe they knew, but just couldn't pull it off. It is hard to be super-convincing on the tube if everything you say reminds the T.V audience of a Dick Cavett commercial for Alpo dogfood. George McGovern has been widely ridiculed in the press as the idea of anti media candidate. He looks wrong, talks wrong and even acts wrong—by conventional T.V standards. But McGovern has his own ideas about how to use the tube. In the early primaries he kept his T.V exposure to a minimum—for a variety of reasons that included a lack of both money and confidence—but by the time he got to California for the showdown with Hubert Humphrey McGovern a T.V campaign was operating on the level of a very specialized art form. His thirty minute biography—produced by Charley Guggenheim—was so good that even the most cynical veteran journalists said it was the best political film ever made for television and Guggenheim's sixty second spots were better than the two film. Unlike the early front runners, McGovern had taken his time and learned how to use the medium—instead of letting the medium use him.

Sincerely is the important thing on T.V. A presidential candidate should at least seem to believe what he's saying — even if it's all stone crazy. McGovern learned this from George Wallace in Florida and it proved to be a very valuable lesson. One of the crucial moments of the 72 primary campaign came on election night in Florida, March 14th when McGovern—who had finished a dismal sixth behind even 1 mdsay and Musk—refused to follow Big Ed's sour example and blame his poor showing on that Evil Racist Monster, George Wallace who had just swept every county in the state. Moments after Musk had appeared on all three networks to denounce the Florida results as tragic proof that at least half the voters were ignorant dupes and maze, McGovern came on and said that although he couldn't agree with some of the things Wallace said and stood for he sympathized with the people who'd voted for 'The Governor' because they were 'angry and fed up' with some of the things that are happening in this country.

"I feel the same way," he added. "But unlike Governor Wallace I've proposed constructive solutions to these problems."

Nobody applauded when he said that The two hundred or

so McGovern campaign workers who were gathered that night in the ballroom of the old Waverly Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard were not in a proper mood to cheer any praise for George Wallace. Their candidate had just been trounced by what they considered a dangerous bigot—and now, at the tail end of the loser's traditional concession statement, McGovern was saying that he and Wallace weren't really that far apart.

The root of the War with magic was a cynical, stoutistic instance for knowing cre�-up which issues would help it fall off of beermind to the world. The workers of the world were very hard to understand that by how long down from the podium that he had an instant, overnight cure for all their worst afflictions Tates? Nigrys? Army worms kilhine the turnp erop? Whittier at it versus Wallace assured his supporters that the solution was actually real simple and that the only reason they had any hassle with the government at all was because those greedy blockstructers in Washington didn't want the problems solved so they wouldn't be put out of work. It was the only truth that the Wizards would be the only reason to understand the problems—much less come up with any honest solutions—but the Fighting Little Judge has never lost much sleep from guilt feelings about his personal credibility grip Southern politicians we not made that way. Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who'd been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg rains and spending the rest of their lives in English prisons. The Brownman was working with the leading them year after year, and there were too dangerous to be turned loose on the streets of London—so, rather than overload the public hanging schedule, the King's Minster of Gaol decided to put this scum to work on the other side of the Atlantic, in The Colonies, where cheap labor was much in demand. Most of these poor bastards and up in what is now the Deep South because of the wretched climate. No settler with good benefit there was plenty of opportunity around Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—and by British standards the climate in places like South Carolina and Georgia was close to Hell on Earth swamps alligators, mosquitoes, tropical disease — till this plus a boiling sun all day long and no way to make money unless you had a land grant from the King.

So the South was sparsely settled at first, and the shortage of skilled labor was a serious problem to the scattered aristocracy. of would-be cotton barons who'd been granted huge tracts of good land that would make them all rich if they could only get people to work it.

The slave-trade was one answer, but Africa in 1699 was not a fertile breeding ground for middle-management types... and the planters said it was damn near impossible for one white man to establish any kind of control over a boatload of black primitives. The bastards couldn't even speak English. How could a man get the crop in, with brutes like that for help?

There would have to be managers, keepers, overseers: white men who spoke the language, and had a sense of purpose in life. But where would they come from? There was no middle class in the South: only masters and slaves ... and all that rich land lying fallow.

The King was quick to grasp the financial implications of the problem: The crops must be planted and harvested, in order to sell them for gold—and if all those lazy bastards needed was a few thousand half-bright English-speaking lackeys in order to bring the crops in ... hell, that was easy: Clean out the jails, cut back on the Crown's grocery bill, jolt the liberals off balance by announcing a new "Progressive Amnesty" program for hardened criminals.

Wonderful. Dispatch royal messengers to spread the good word in every corner of the kingdom; and after that send out professional pollsters to record an amazing 66 percent jump in the King's popularity ... then wait a few weeks before announcing the new 10 percent sales tax on ale.

That's how the South got settled. Not the whole story, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is the Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out.

Indeed. With a bit of imagination you can almost hear the cranky little bastard haranguing his fellow prisoners in London's infamous Hardcase jail, urging them on to revolt:

“Lissen here, you poor fools! There's not much time! Even now—up there in the tower—they're cookin up some kind of cruel new punishment for us! How much longer will we stand for it? And now

they want to ship us across the ocean to work like slaves in a swamp with a bunch of goddesses Hottentots!

We won't go! It's asmine! We'll tear this place apart before we'll let that thieving old faggot of a king send us off to work next to Africans!

"How much more of this misery can we stand boys? I know you're fed next up to here with it. I can see it in your eyes—pure misery! And I'm tellin' you we don't have to stand for it! We can send the king a message and tell him how we feel. I'll write it up myself and all you boys can sign it or better still. I'll go talk to the king personally! All you boys have to do is dig me a little tunnel under the wall over there behind the gallows and I'll _ _"

Right That bottom line never changes You folks be sure and come to see me in the White House you hear? There'll be plenty of room for my friends after I clean house but first I need your vote folks and after that I'll

George Wallace is one of the worst charlatans in politics but there is no denying he is talent for converting frustration into energy. What McGovern sensed in Florida however—while Wallace was stomping him, along with all the others—was the possibility that Wallace appealed instinctively to a lot more people than would actually vote for him. He was stirring up more anger than he knew how to channel. The frustration was there, and it was easy enough to convert it—but what then? If Wallace had taken himself seriously as a presidential candidate—as a Democrat or anything else—he might have put together the kind of organization that would have made him a genuine threat in the primaries, instead of just a spoiler.

McGovern, on the other hand, had put together a fantastic organization—but until he went into Wisconsin he had never tried to tap the kind of energy that seemed to be flowing, perhaps by default, to Wallace. He had given it some thought while campaigning in New Hampshire, but it was only after he beat Muskie in two blue-collar, hardhat wards in the middle of Manchester that he saw the possibility of a really mind-bending coalition: a weird mix of peace freaks and hardhats, farmers and film stars, along with urban blacks, rural chicanos, the "youth vote"... a coalition that could elect almost anybody.

Muskie had croaked in Florida, allowing himself to get crowded over on the Right with Wallace, Jackson, and Humphrey—then finishing a slow fourth behind all three of them. At that point in the race, Lindsay's presumptuous blueprint was beginning to look like prophecy. The New Hampshire embarrassment had forced Muskie off center in a mild panic, and now the party was polarized. The road to Wisconsin was suddenly clear in both lanes, fast traffic to the Left and the Right. The only mobile hazard was a slow-moving hulk called "The Muskie Bandwagon," creeping erratically down what his doom-stricken Media Manager called "that yellow stripe in the middle of the road."

The only other bad casualty, at that point, was Lindsay. His Wisconsin managers had discovered a fatal flaw in the blueprint: Nobody had bothered to specify the name of the candidate who would seize all that high ground on the Left, once Muskie got knocked off center. Whoever drew it up had apparently been told that McGovern would not be a factor in the later stages of the

race. After absorbing two back-to-back, beatings in New Hampshire and Florida, he would run out of money and he dragged off to the nearest glue factory, or, failing that, to some cut rate retirement form for old liberals with no charisma. But something went wrong, and when Lindsay arrived in Wisconsin to seize that the high ground on the Left that he knew, from his blueprint was waiting for hurs—he found it already occupied sealed off, and well guarded on every perimeter, by a legion of hard-cycle fanatics in the pay of George McGovern to the power of 1. Gene Pokorny McGovern's 25 year-old field organizer for Wisconsin, had the whole state completely wired. He had been on the job full time since the spring of 71—working off a blueprint remarkably similar to Lindsay's. But they were not quite the same. The main difference was painfully obvious yet it was clear at a glance that with drains had been done from the same theory. Muker would fail early on. Because The Center was not only indefensible but probably nonexistent and after that the Democratic race would boil down to a quick civil war a running death-battle between the Old Guard on the Right and a gang of Young Strangers on the Left. The name-slots on Lindsay's blueprint were still empty, but the working assumption was that the crunch in California would come down to Muskie on the Right and Lindsay on the Left. Pokorny's drawing was a year ago so older than Lindsay, and all the other freeChinese text all the way to California, where the last two slots said McGovern and "Humphrey" The only other difference between the two was that Lindsay's was usings, while Pokorny's had a signature in the bottom right-hand corner. "Hart, Muskiewicz & McGovern—architects" Even Lindsay's financial backers saw the handwriting on the wall in Wisconsin. By the time he arrived, there was not even any low ground on the Left to be seized. The Lindsay campaign had been keyed from the start on the assumption that Muskie would at least have the strength to retire McGovern before he abandoned the center. It made perfect sense, on paper—but 1972 had not been a vintage year for paper wisdom, and McGovern's breakthrough victory in Wisconsin was written off as "shocking" and "freakish" by a lot of people who should have known better.

Wisconsin was the place where he found a working model for the nervous coalition that made the rest of the primary campaign a downhill run. Wisconsin effectively eliminated every obstacle but the corpse of Hubert Humphrey—who fought like a rabid skunk all the way to the end; cranked up on the best speed George Meany's doctors could provide for him, taking his cash and his orders every midnight from Meany's axe-man Al Barkan; and attacking McGovern savagely, day after day, from every treacherous angle Big Labor's sharpest researchers could even crudely define for him.

It was a nasty swansong for Hubert. He'd been signing those I.O.U's to Big Labor for more than twenty years, and it must have been a terrible shock to him when Meany called them all due at the same time.

But how? George Meany, the 77-year-old quarterback of the "Stop McGovern Movement," is said to be suffering from brain bubbles at this stage of the game. Totally paralyzed. His henchmen have kept him in seclusion ever since he arrived in Florida five days ago with a bad case of The Fear. He came down from A.F.L-C.I.O headquarters in Washington by train, but had to be taken off somewhere near Fort Lauderdale and rushed to a plush motel where his condition deteriorated rapidly over the weekend, and finally climaxed on Monday night when he suffered a terrible stroke while watching the Democratic Convention on T.V.

The story is still shrouded in mystery, despite the best efforts of the five thousand ranking journalists who came here to catch Meany's last act, but according to a wealthy labor boss who said he was there when it happened, the old man went all to pieces when his creature, Hubert Humphrey, lost the crucial "California challenge."

He raged incoherently at the Tube for eight minutes without drawing a breath, then suddenly his face turned beet red and his

head swelled up to twice its normal size. Seconds later—while his henchmen looked on in mute horror—Meany swallowed his tongue, rolled out of his chair like a log, and crawled through a plate glass window.

The confrontations with the Old Guard seldom come in public. There are conversations on the telephone, plans are laid, people are put to work, and it's done quietly. California is a classic. There will never be a case in American politics of such a naked power grab—straight power no principle straight opportunism. I wasn't aware of it. I thought it was a purely defensive move to protect themselves against attack. He were naive. It never occurred to me that anybody would challenge California—until the last 36 hours before the credentials committee meeting. Then we really got scared when we saw the ferents of their attack.

~George McGovern talking to Life reporter Richard Meryman in Miami

What happened in Miami was far too serious for the kind of random indulgence that Gonzo Journalism needs. The Real Business happened as usual on secret numbered telephones or behind closed doors at the other end of long hotel corridors blocked off by sullen guards. There were only two crucial moments in Miami —two potential emergencies that might have changed the outcome —and both of them were dealt with in strict privacy.

The only real question in Miami was whether or not McGovern might be stripped of more than half of the 271 delegates he won in the California primary—and that question was scheduled to come up for a vote by the whole convention on Monday night. If the "A.B.M Movement" could strip 151 of those delegates away, McGovern might be stopped—because without them he had anywhere from 10 to 50 votes less than the 1509 that would give him the nomination on the first ballot. But if McGovern could hold his 271 California delegates, it was all over.

The "A.B.M Movement" (Anybody but McGovern) was a coalition of desperate losers, thrown together at the last moment by Big Labor chief George Meany and his axe man, Al Darkan Hubert Humphrey was pressed into service as the front man for A.B.M, and Massachusets

pening, at the time. When McGovern's young strategists deliberately lost that vote, almost everybody who'd watched it—including Walter Cronkite—concluded that McGovern didn't have a hope in hell of winning any roll-call vote from that point on: which meant the A.B.M could beat him on the California challenge, reducing his strength even further, and then stop him cold on the first ballot.

Humphrey's campaign manager, Jack Chestnut, drew the same conclusion—a glaring mistake that almost immediately became the subject of many crude jokes in McGovern's press room at the Doral, where a handful of resident correspondents who'd been attached to the campaign on a live-in basis for many months were watching the action on T.V with press secretary Dick Dougherty and a room full of tense staffers—who roared with laughter when Cronkite, far up in his soundproof booth two miles away in the Convention Hall, announced that C.B.S was about to switch to McGovern headquarters in the Doral, where David Schounacher was standing by with a firsthand report and at least one painfully candid shot of McGovern workers reacting to the news of this stunning setback.

The next scene showed a room full of laughing, whooping people. Schoumacher was grinning into his microphone, saying: "I don't want to argue with you, Walter—but why are these people cheering?"

Schoumacher then explained that McGovern had actually won the nomination by losing the South Carolina vote. It had been a test of strength, no doubt—but what had never been explained to the press or even to most of McGovern's own delegates on the floor, was that he had the option of "winning" that roll-call by going either up or down . . . and the only way the A.B.M crowd could have won was by juggling their votes to make sure the South Carolina challenge almost won, but not quite. This would have opened the way for a series of potentially disastrous parliamentary moves by the Humphrey-led A.B.M forces.

“We had to either win decisively or lose decisively,” Rick Stearns explained later. “We couldn't afford a close vote.”

Stearns, a 28-year-old Rhodes Scholar from Stanford, was McGovern's point man when the crisis came. His job in Miami—working out of a small white trailer full of telephones behind the Convention Hall—was to tell Gary Hart, on the floor, exactly how many votes McGovern could muster at any given moment on any question—and it was Stearns who decided after only ten out of fifty states had voted on the South Carolina challenge. that the final tally might be too close to risk. So he sent word to Hart on the floor, and Gary replied "Okay if we can't win big—let's lose it."

The old bulls never quit until the young bulls run them out. The old bulls are dead, but don't forget that the young bulls eventually become old bulls too.

—James H. Rowe ' an old professional from F.D.R's days ' in Tim Magazine

The next time I saw Rick Stearns after he croaked the Humphrey/Meany squeeze play on Monday night was out on the beach in front of the Doral on Saturday afternoon. He was smoking a cigar and carrying a tall plastic glass of beer—wearing his black and red Stanford tank shirt. I sat with him for a while and we talked as the Coast Guard cutters cruised offshore about a hundred yards from the beach and National Guard helicopters and jets thundered

overhead It was the first time in ten days I did had a chance to feel any sun and by midnight I was burned drunk and unable to get any sleep—waking up every fifteen minutes to rub more grease on my head and shoulders

What follows is a 98 percent verbaum transcript of my tape recording of that conversation. The other 2 percent was deleted in the editing process for reasons having to do with a journalist's obligation to protect his sources—even if it sometimes means protecting them from themselves and their own potentially disastrous indiscretions.

H.S.T I was reading Haynes Johnson's thing in the Washington Port about how you won South Carolina. He mainly had it from Humphrey's side; he cited the fact that it fooled almost everybody. He said only a few McGovern staffers knew.

Stearns No that's not true The guys in the trailer operation knew The floor leaders the ones who paid attention knew but some of them were just following instructions

Hist That was it more or less?

Stearns That was it although if you have that many people who know chances are

H.S.T Well I was standing with Tom Morgan. Lindsay's press secretary. I don't know if anybody told him but he figured it out. Then I went out in the hall and saw Tom Briden the columnist. He said: Oh Jesus! Terrible! A bad defeat." Then I was really confused.

Stearns Johnny Apples of the New York Times rushed out and filed the story which went to [Time] Managing Editor] Abe Rosenthal Rosenthal was sitting watching Walter Cronkite sputter on about the great setback the McGovern forces had you know the terrible defeat. So he killed Apples' story.

H.S.T Jesus

Stearns Apple got on the phone to Rosenthal and they had a shouting match for thirty minutes that ended with Apple resigning from the N.Y Times

H.S.T Czart'

Stearns But he was hired back at the end of the next day They never ran his story but he was hired back at what I assume was a substantial increase in his salary

H.S.T: There was a reference in Johnson's story to a private discussion on Sunday. He said you'd explained the strategy twenty-four hours earlier.

Stearns: Let's see. What could that have been? The floor leaders meeting?

H.S.T: He didn't say. You saw it coming that early? Sunday? Or even before that? When did you see the thing coming?

Stearns: It became clear during the maneuvering that went on the week before the Convention when we were trying to define several key parliamentary points.

H.S.T: You'd seen this coming up all the week before during this maneuvering with Larry O'Brien and James G. O'Hara, the convention parliamentarian?

Stearns: Well, I'd seen it as of Thursday when we began to get some idea of how O'Brien and O'Hara intended to rule on the two issues, but as early as then we were going over a whole war game of possible parliamentary contingencies. The Humphrey camp would have never turned to procedural chicanery if they'd really had a working majority on the floor. The essential point is that procedure is the last defense of a vanishing majority.

Stearns: First, who could vote, under the rules, on their own challenge? Did the rule which says a delegate can vote on anything but his own challenge mean that the 120 McGovern delegates from California not being challenged would be able to vote? We contended that they could. Eventually the chairman agreed.

The second and most important question was the question of what constituted a majority—whether it was a constitutional majority, or, as we originally contended, a majority of those present-and-voting. The chair's decision on that was a compromise between the two rules—that the majority would be determined by those eligible to vote. And he ruled then that since everyone but 153 bogus delegates from California were eligible, the majority on the California question would be 1433. So, in other words, we won the first point on who could vote. On the second point we came up with a compromise which was really to our advantage.

H.S.T What did you lose on that?

Stearns Well the only thing we lost was that, if it had been present and voting, it would have meant that we could have picked up extra votes by urging people just not to vote if they were caught between pressures from labor on one hand and us on the other and couldn't find any way out of the dilemma, they could leave, and their absence then would lower the majority

On the third issue we

[Helicopter]

H.S.T Damn' Fuck' I can't believe those fuckin' helicopters! I'll leave it on the tape just to remind me how bad it was

Stearns The L.E.A.A [the Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Act]

H.S.T Oh, it's one of those pork barrel

Stearns One thing Jerry and Abbie did for the city of Miami was to beef up the technology of the police department with that grant Miami got to buy all this stuff

Well the third point—which we lost and which we were arguing obviously because it was in our interest—was that the challenges ought to be considered in the order of the roll-call. This would have put California first and would have avoided the problem entirely of course. On that the chair ruled against us, and I think fairly. He followed the precedent of the last Conventions which was that challenges were to be considered in the order in which the Credentials Committee had discussed them. That meant that we had South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky—four possible test cases—coming before we got to the California vote.

Stearns Kentucky we got withdrawn, eliminating one of them [Dr James] Cashin's Alabama challenge was the same challenge he brought in 68 It's not a very attractive challenge A lot of people felt that they had been misted by Cashin in '68 including blacks, and were not disposed to work for him again He was trying to get Wallace thrown out of the Convention Wallace's slate had been openly elected Alabama was one of the first states in the country to comply with the reform rules Voters happened to choose Wal-

lace delegates. [Airplane] So we knew the Alabama challenge would be defeated on a voice vote. On Georgia, Julian Bond and Governor Jimmy Carter worked out a compromise. South Carolina was the only possible test vote to come up before the California challenge.

There were two procedural issues that the Humphrey coalition wanted to settle on the South Carolina challenge. The first was that question of who could vote. The chair ruled that there were nine South Carolinian women who had not been challenged, who would be entitled to vote on the challenge. It is a thirty-two-member delegation, which meant that there were then twenty-three South Carolinians who were disqualified.

The second area of challenge—and the most troublesome—is what constituted a majority. That was what the Humphrey people went after first. The maneuvering that was going on! There was only one way that the question of what constituted a majority could arise, and that was if either side prevailed in the range of 1497 to 1508 votes. If either side prevailed by more than a constitutional majority, 1509, the question is moot.

It sounds impossible to maneuver a vote into that area, but in fact it's very easy if you have a Humphrey delegation controlled as well as Ohio. Ohio passed and passed and passed. All Frank King, their chairman, had to do was sit there, add correctly, cast the vote accordingly and we would have been in that area. ^{2} Not only that, we would have been sucked into that area with an artificial vote from the Ohio delegation, which means that on the procedural test

[Helicopter]

H.S.T: You son of a bitch!

Stearns: If we'd let ourselves be sucked into that trap, I think

we would have lost both the procedural tests

Hist 1 see They could lend you votes on one roll-call then take them back on the next one

Stearns A bogus count. If you look at the tally on the South Carolina challenge the Minnesota delegation on which Humphrey had thirty five hard-core votes went 56-to-8 for the South Carolina challenge so there were at least thirty five votes that the Humphrey coalition could have manipulated. In Ohio Humphrey had as many as eighty votes that could have been cast any way that Humphrey forces chose to cast them.

So our problem was to maneuver ourselves around the Ohio delegation in a way that the Ohio votes could not be cast to force us into a test vote on California before we got to the real issue. And remember to win a procedural test on California it would only require turning out 1433 votes but South Carol my would have had to have 1497 votes to win the same procedural question as to who could vote and what constituted a majority.

Hist That's why you wanted to put the showdown all till California?

Stearns The numbers were much better for us on California than they were on South Carol n1

Hist 1 was asking {McGovern pollister} Pat Caddell why you didn't just want to get it over with and he was running back and forth on the floor and just said: Well we want to wait for Calt forma. But he never explained why

Stearns It was the difference in what was the working majority on the floor. Plus it's much harder to hold delegates on procedural questions since they don't understand the significance of a party-mentary point. Everyone had gotten clear enough instructions on how to handle California that I think they were aware of the procedural problem if it had arisen with the California vote which it did.

My instructions to our floor leaders and to our delegation chair men was that on the first twelve talhes we would go all out to win the South Carolina minority report challenges. Perhaps not all out We would go out to win but not to the extent of jeopardizing votes we had on the California challenge. If there was somebody whose support we knew we had on California but weren't sure if he would be able to withstand pressure from labor, Humphrey, or whoever else, they were not to bother the guy. We didn't want to sacrifice votes on California. But that aside, we went after that challenge. That didn't quite work, because I had a number of passes in the first twelve states that reported, which meant that I put off the decision another eight or nine tallies.

H.S.T: The passes weren't for political reasons, but because they couldn't make up their minds?

Stearns: Well, one for political reasons—that was the Ohio delegation, which was passing so it could put itself in the position of voting last, so it could maneuver the vote and throw us into the procedural test. The others, just because it took a long time to get the counting done in the delegation.

H.S.T: What was the women's angle? It was talked about like it was some kind of shameful trip or something.

Stearns: The Women's Caucus was disputing the fact that only nine members of the thirty-two-member delegation were women. The women made the South Carolina Minority Report their test vote to the Convention. I personally don't think they had a terribly good case.

Their case was based on a misunderstanding of the McGovern guidelines. The misunderstanding was thinking that quotas had somehow been established. What the McGovern commission argued was that quotas would be imposed if the state did not take effective steps to see that women were represented in reasonable proportions. That is, they had to take down all the barriers to women being elected, but there was no guarantee in the guidelines that because a woman was a woman, she was necessarily going to be elected. The guidelines attempted to give women the same chance of election that men had, removing some of the obstacles that kept them off slates in the past.

It was not a terribly good challenge in the first place, but no credentials challenge has ever really been decided strictly on the justice and merits of the challenge. They all come down to essentially political questions and in that case the Women's Caucus

made what was in effect a weak challenge into a political issue. So it had to be treated seriously. This is why we set out at the beginning to try to win it, to try to see if we had the votes to win it the first time around.

Hist greater than ou re so ying it was sort of forced on you?

Stearns Well it was, but I don't think the Women's Caucus really understood the significance of an early test vote. I would have much preferred that they would have picked—well they had a much better case in Hawaii for example because the challenge came up after both the California and Illinois decisions. If we had to have a test vote on a women's issue, I'd rather they had picked a stronger case. Hawaii, which also would have moved the test vote after California.

Hist Why did they insist on being first?

Stearns I'm not sure of the process they went through to pick South Carolina but they had chosen it and that made the issue of South Carolina one that we had to respond to as a political question

H.S.T But they weren't somehow hooked into the Chisholm/Humphrey Stop McGovern thing in order to get some bargaining power?

Stearns I think there may have been some thought of that— the fact that it was to come first would give them some leverage with us that they might otherwise not have had But my intentions were to win that California challenge

[Also on the beach is Bill Dougherty Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota longtime McGovern crony and a key floor leader who worked under Stearns Forty two years old he is wearing trunks and a short sleeves shirt and staring at the surf]

Dougherty You know this is the first time I've ever seen the ocean. Oh I saw it out in California but not like this. Not close up

11th Were you over there for the Democratic National Committee meeting yesterday morning [Friday]?

Dougherty Shut I never got out of bed all day yesterday I'm on the national committee I've got McGosem really passed at me I never showed up I couldn't move I absolutely couldn't move

iuli

jesterday I was sick I was just sick, physically

Hist Well, there's a lot of people that are sick

Stearns I've never been as exhausted as I was on Wednesday night [after McGovern's nomination, but six or so hours before the series of staff conferences that led to Eagleton's selection as the V.P nominee].

Dougherty I was going home yesterday, but I couldn't get to the airport. No shit. I didn't sleep at all between Saturday and Wednesday, I think it was good and I don't think I ever sat down until yesterday, "cause I was working hotels.

Stearns I got two hours of sleep in three days

U.S.T This had been the least fun to me of all the things since I've been on this trip. It seems like it would have been at least this is the first time I've been on the beach except at night or around dawn—when I came down to swim a few times.

[Tape halts momentarily here then jumps to preparations for the Convention]

Stearnt Gary Hart and I came down in May to talk to Southern Bell and outline the communications equipment we wanted for the Convention. See we ran a two-tier operation. We had 250 whips on the floor people we did selected from each delegation to make sure that somebody was talking to the individual delegates. We had one person in every row of the Convention giving instructions somewhere. Then we had our floor leaders Bill Pierre Salinger, and so on and then our delegation chairmen. We had two ways to get to them. We had a booster room here at the hotel which was plugged into the Scope system. You'd call it at a whip level.

H.S.T Which color phone did that come into?

Dougherty White

IfST And you had a different color A red phone?

Dougherty Blue phone

Stearns We had a blue phone for the floor leaders and delegation chairmen

Hist Who was there in the boiler room at the {Doral Beach/ McGov Headquarters} hotel?

Sainson There were ten people The western director was Barbara Mehenne Doug Coulter did the Mountain States Judy Harrington did the Plains States Scott Lilly did the Central States.

Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky. Gail Channing did Ohio and Michigan. Laura Mizelle did the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware area. Tony Babb did the New York delegation, Puerto Rico; and Alan Kriegle did the New England States. They were in charge of the whips who were on the floor. They had worked for over a year in Washington as the liaison with regional areas of the campaign, handling the detail work, running to the delegates... the group we had in the trailer were the best of our field organizers.

H.S.T: Were the hotel boiler room phones wired right to the floor, or into the trailer?

Stearns: Right to the floor . . . I had a point-to-point line between them and me. Then that red phone in the office, I'd pick that up and it rang automatically at the hotel.

Dougherty: We on the floor could get either place.

H.S.T: Was it completely triangular?

Stearns: Oh no. We oversaw a full communications system. You could go anywhere with the communications we had.

H.S.T: There wasn't one main nexus where everything had to go through?

Stearns: There was a switchboard here at the Doral. The way instructions went out is that I would stand up in the back of the trailer and shout No and then pick up that red phone which would ring automatically [on the floor & in the Doral "situation room"] and someone would pick it up and I'd say No and then everyone knew that they were to instruct everyone to vote no on that. That way you had two tries at making sure the instructions got through.

Dougherty: David Schoumacher of C.B.S has a film of you in the trailer with a cigar in your mouth shouting No They're gonna run it Sunday night.

Stearns: When will it be on?

Dougherty: I think Sixty Minutes. He said you got a cigar in your mouth. He said, "Boy, Dougherty, does this spoil the grassroots flavor of your campaign." Of course, Schoumacher just loves it.

H.S.T Let's get back You came down in May to set up your communications

Stearns We had to protect the communications system in the trailer and the communications system in the hotel, so we traced the telephone lines and there were two points where it was vulnerable. In the Convention center it was behind five link fences and pretty well guarded, but you had open manhole cover. The telephone lines here are laid very close to the surface—it's an artificial peninsula and you hit water if you dig any deeper than twelve feet—so anyone who could open a manhole cover could get into any of the telephone lines.

H.S.T If they knew where they were

Stearns If you knew where they were But chances are any manhole cover you pick up in this city you're gonna find telephone lines laid under it We pointed that out to Southern Bell and they suggested that we would the manhole cover short which we agreed to The only other vulnerable point was in the hotel itself There is a switching room at the backside of the hotel behind the room where all the press equipment was set up That was the other vulnerable spot. So we had an armed guard placed on that A guy with an ate could have demolished that communications system in thirty seconds

Daugherty You can do some of those things at a Convention, 'cause everybody forgets about it five days after it happens Once the vote goes in they don't recall any situation even where the crookedest of things may have changed it There's no protest. There have been terrible things that happen at Conventions

If St Yeah, I'm surprised this thing went off as well as it did. You were dealing with a gang of real scum, the kind of people Barkan and Meany & those A.F.L-C.I.O people could have brought in

Stearns Well, they did They brought them in, but we beat them

H.S.T I mean people with axes—that kind of thing

Stearns Oh, yeah, they wouldn't have hesitated if they'd had the chance

Dougherty: I'll tell you, one of the things we had going for us: You know how tough it is to keep communications going in one camp? The Stop McGovern movement had to keep communications going in four camps—try to coordinate all the communications of four camps at a national convention...

We could have won the South Carolina challenge if we were absolutely sure of every vote. We were getting votes out of places like Minnesota that we never expected. But we had Ohio waiting with a delegation that Humphrey ... I mean they had eighty or ninety votes with which they could have done the same thing we did.

H.S.T: Was that Humphrey's accordian delegation—Ohio?

Stearns: Yes. With the eighty or ninety Humphrey delegates, Frank King could have sat up and read any set of figures he wanted. We had a few delegations like that, too, as you saw in the last moments of that challenge.

H.S.T: Oh yeah, but I forget which ones...

Stearns: Colorado, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Rhode Island. In the last seven or eight minutes of that challenge we didn't even bother to poll the delegations; I was just reading the numbers that we expected them to cast. That was the best moment of the Convention: when [ex-Governor of Nebraska] Frank Morrison's first instructions were to cut that vote down to 14 and then Bill came rushing up the aisle to take four more.

Dougherty: No, it was 17, and then I changed it to 14. I was whispering right in his ear. They got a shot of that on T.V, I guess.

Stearns: I heard.

H.S.T: Was the Humphrey guy standing next to you? When you came up to Morrison, was there somebody there who knew what you were saying to him?

Dougherty: Johnny Apple [New York Times reporter] caught me.

H.S.T: Kirby [Jones, McGovern press assistant] said that King was aware that one of your people was on him.

Dougherty: Oh, they were aware of it on the floor.

Stearns: That was Dick Sklar standing next to King. He was

our liaison for the Ohio delegation He and Frank king did not get along

Dougherty That South Carolina deal with me who loves politics and this is my third Convention it was so great it was like getting your first piece of ass

Stearns [flinching] Bill can describe it better than I can—I mean I can tell you what it was like sitting in the trailer—but Bill can describe it from working on the floor

Dougherty: Oh it was perfect. When I got the word to shave I had about ten minutes. I couldn't go to the other side after the first night, cause I damn near got in a fist fight with the Governor. See he moved in—you know he moved in a couple of alternates on us and I wouldn't let him do it. And God he got madder in hell and he never spoke to me the rest of the Convention. So I had to go way over to the other side because I couldn't use that girl cause she was sitting right next to the Governor and I had to lean over him to talk to her. And he was ready to punch me every time I leaned over.

So I ran clear out the other side and got ahold of our whip then I came back around and got ahold of Mondragon and Ortez or whatever his name is I told him I wanted to get as many votes as I could get and it wasn't very many

H.S.T When did you suddenly decide to start shaving?

Dougherty) Oh Kansas was the key

Stearns Yeah we counted it down to Kansas and then made the decision at this point that we were not going to win with a working majority of our own

H.S.T How far along is that?

Stearns That was the eleventh or twelfth vote

Dougherty But see you didn't know the real count because Ohio would pass

Steart Right Ohio would pass is what screwed us up So I had to wait for another four or five votes We had our New York delegation pass

H.S.T What number was Ohio?

Stearns: Ohio was, I think, eleven.

Dougherty: Kansas was eleven, wasn't it?

Stearns: That's right, Kansas.

Dougherty: Frank King, with his Ohio delegation, has passed on every roll-call since . . .

H.S.T: It's sort of a political habit. You always want to have that leverage at the end, I suppose.

Dougherty: In the legislature you get the same thing, you get guys who pass all the time and wait to see how the vote is.

Stearns: But the question was whether we would throw New York's votes behind the challenge or hold New York out—but when they held out Ohio, I gave instructions to our New York delegates to pass the first time.

H.S.T: That gave you a helluva cushion, right?

Stearns: Yeah, there was a lot to work with there.

Dougherty: Then we started shaving.

Stearns: Then we heard a few more votes just to get a better sense of where things were going, and then the instructions went out to start cutting.

Dougherty: Sec, we were afraid the Humphrey forces were gonna start going the other way, which, if they were really coordinated, they could have done.

H.S.T: Well, wait a minute. What would have happened then?

Stearns: The game that was going on was to see who could push who over the 1509 mark first. If they'd pushed us up above 1509 with a lot of bogus votes, it would have been very hard to persuade our people to cut back then, 'cause if you think you've won, then the instinct is to go out and fight for every vote you can get your hands on. We tried to hold the obvious switches to the end. We started cutting votes at that point—hold the obvious ones to the end and suddenly throw a lot of votes on them, push them up over 1509, and then at that point the only way they can get out from under that is by abandoning one of their own. Governor West of South Carolina. They would have had to throw him to the wolves at that point.

Hist What do you mean by the? You people have been around longer than I have What do you mean—exactly what would they have done to Governor West?

Dougherty Well, they'd have to abandon him on the South Carolina challenge by changing their vote

Stearns Once they'd gone over 1509, they would have seated Governor West's delegation

Dougherty So to get back down under they'd have had to abandon him

Stearns When it really came down to it, they had less guts than we had. We were willing to sell out the women, but they weren't willing to sell out a Southern governor.

H.S.T When did king figure it out?

Stearns Well I think we were ahead of them almost from the beginning. It turned out our strategy confused them almost as much as it may have confused our own supporters.

H.S.T Johnson in the Post said it confused Jack Chestnut [Humphrey's campaign manager] Johnson said the Humphrey people bought it completely, they were sitting there with him watching it on T.V

Stearns Oh, they did. His sides interpreted it as a great victory. What confused them was the fact that we went out to win it at the beginning. They've been reading the columnists for a month about undisciplined unculy McGovern delegates and I think once they saw us start to win the South Carolina challenge, I think they relaxed. That was just what they wanted us to do. We needed to set out to win for some political reason because we couldn't sell out the women completely. If there was a chance to win it then we had the obligation to try and win.

Dougherty What did Chestnut say to Humphrey?

Stearns He sud ' We've given a great setback to McGovern " But Humphrey was smarter Humphrey said ' No they ran that deliberately

H.S.T Yeah, Humphrey said "They're pulling it back." There was a T.V pool reporter with him at the hotel I was watching Humphrey's face, and, Jesus, it just turned to wax. He looked the worst I've ever seen him—which makes me very happy, that son of a bitch. He should be buried with his head down in the sand. I've never been so disgusted with a human being in politics.

Dougherty: One thing, Humphrey isn't dumb. He's got a bunch of dumb guys around him.

Stearns: He's smart—he's been around a long time. He was the only one of that group who knew what was going on.

H.S.T: According to Johnson, they thought they had it locked up until about halfway through—then all of a sudden they realized

Stearns: Yeah, but we really did try to win at first, and I think they relaxed then. But with Ohio coming in, we had thirty bogus votes from Minnesota on that total. Maybe a few others—I have to go over the totals again—but Minnesota was what I caught, and then we had Ohio holding out to the end.

Stearns: King passed twice to make sure that his was the last vote that was cast. At that point I was trying to cut our total down to the point where no matter how he cast those votes, no matter how or what they did with those Ohio votes, there was no way they could push us into that area [where the Convention would have been forced to decide what constituted a majority—thus imperiling McGovern's chance for a first-ballot victory].

H.S.T: So you just wanted to get as low as you could, once you decided to go down?

Stearns: Well, I didn't want to go as low as I could, I wanted a good vote for the women's challenge, but I wanted it just low enough that there was nothing King could do to re-write it.

H.S.T: So it had to be almost 80 votes low.

Stearns: Yeah, I think we came in at about 1420 or 1430. And we were prepared to go lower. The number that I was aiming to get us down to was about 1410 and we had those lined up, but as we started taking the votes off, finally King gave up and went ahead and cast his vote. I think we cut it down to the figure where King couldn't win, and I think he realized that.

Hist When you say dropping it down now, you mean changes? Dougherty When we had time, we shaved them and shaved again

Stearns Yeah we cut them as they were cast and we were ready to change them after

11th Did you have to go back and do it? I've forgotten

Stewart A few of them we did. We went back to Wisconsin Wisconsin originally came through at 54, then we cut it down to 37 Oregon came through at 31 and we cut it down to 17 or whatever the figure was. I had Rhode Island ready too. I mean they would have moved all 22 votes.

H.S.T You were hung between 1410 and a possible 1500

Steans What I was aiming for was the figure at which Ohio could not have made a difference

H.S.T Yeah but the most you could have gotten—if you hadn't had that option of losing when you saw you might not win—you think it was about 1500°

Stearns Well my feeling was that on the issue of the challenge itself we were stuck at around 1500. That was clear from the beginning and it would have been distressous. To keep them from playing with the vote we had to show them that we had the disc pline on the floor that there was nothing they could do at that point.

Dougherty But it got tougher to hold that discipline as it went along.

Hist What Gary Hart was quoted as saying was that you couldn't afford to let them know you had control of the floor. It that right?

Stearns No, I think it's just the opposite. We wanted them to think that we had the control. Otherwise we would have been shifting votes all night.

If I.S.T How long did it at fencing with King go on? Did he luck you up at any time?

Sears No. that was their one attempt at that.

11th All he did was pass since?

Stearns No Ohio passed three times, but I think they realized the fourth time they came around that it was hopeless. They knew we had control.

H.S.T: He didn't really make any moves except passing.

Stearns: He kept passing. His strategy was to have Ohio cast their votes last so they could manipulate Ohio votes in a way that would have thrown us into the procedural test.

Dougherty: We had some hard votes in Ohio, too—ones they couldn't move.

Stearns: Right, they couldn't move our Ohio votes, and as we began cutting that figure down, we finally got to the point where they realized we'd cut it down to zero if we had to.

H.S.T: So his thing was mainly just waiting.

Stearns: To wait until the truth began to dawn on them, that we controlled the votes on the floor.

Dougherty: What we couldn't afford—hell, it became so obvious—we didn't want to get the women mad at us.

Stearns: Bill's point is very good: It got harder as you went along because the more that vote was pushed to 1509, the more our delegates wanted to go for a majority. That's just what the Humphrey coalition was trying to lure us into, trying to go all out to win the thing, win it with their votes which could have been pulled out from under us, and at that point psychologically to get our supporters to change would have almost been impossible.

Dougherty: I was getting nervous, myself.

Stearns: I know, I was getting all those phone calls back, but...

Dougherty: The delegates were all bitchin' at me. And I was pissed off.

H.S.T: Why?

Dougherty: I was so worried about our delegates gettin' pissed off, 'cause they're all such a great bunch of nonpolitical professionals. I thought, "Ooh shit!" 'Cause, jeez, they got mad at me when I started shaving votes on some of those delegations. You know, "What are you trying to do?" and all that... I didn't have time to explain it. I just had to be hard and say, "Goddamn it! That's the way it's gonna be!"

H.S.T You mean the delegates themselves didn't know what was going on?

Dougherty Number 1 Shut they weren't aware

Stearns Well, our whips knew I held a briefing session with them on Monday, and I spent an hour and a half going over the possible parliamentary contingencies

Dougherty But the average delegate didn't know

Stearns There were perhaps 250 people on the floor who had a good idea of what was going on There were another 50 or 60 who had a pretty complete idea of what was going on And then there were about 20 who knew what was going on

H.S.T Did state-level leaders like Diane White or Dick Perchlick in the Colorado delegation know what was happening ^{1}

Stearns No

Hist That's amazing. Amazing you could do it. It must have been hell on the floor.

Stearns It was That one woman in Nebraska got so damn mad Oh God she was mad' But after they saw what it led to in the California vote then we had a couple of days where we could say almost anything and people realized we weren't trying to

Dougherty That's when they learned discipline

Hist Well Jesus It was really a helluva gamble then wasn't given the kind of delegates that were there

Stearns Yeth but you had to take it. We had a nomination at stake

Hist What was the point then in sending Monkiewicz and Salinger and Hart out to call it a terrible defeat on the floor? After it was over—not before but after

Dougherty Well on account of the women

Stearns We sure didn't want to get the women angry for us on the California challenge

Dougherty The women didn't catch on though They still haven't it so complicated that they haven't figured it out Stearns: I felt sort of guilty about what we'd done to the Women's Caucus. Afterwards I went around the trailer saying how bad I felt that we'd done it, but ...

H.S.T: What was the long-range effect of that, anyway? Was it just a symbolic thing that you'd done?

Dougherty: McGovern never did have that women's meeting yesterday. You know the Women's Caucus called me up and I was in bed. I just hung up. I said, "I can't help it," and I hung up.

Stearns: They called me at 7:30 in the morning after I'd just

gone to bed, and my response was, "If you really have to meet with him, I'll arrange it, but the fact that you want to meet with him at 10:00 when the Democratic National Committee is going to convene and elect its first woman chairman in the history of the party shows us how wrong you've been all along; all you're interested in is the form, not the substance. The substance is going to happen over at the National Committee meeting and if you want to do something meaningful, you should go there at 10:00." So whoever it was hung up. Maybe they went to the committee meeting. Silly.

uly

I mean, they want to meet with McGovern while they're electing their first woman national chairman of the party

Dougherty: The one that was rustin' all the hell was the delegate from South Dakota

Stearns She caught me about 7:00 in the coffee shop as I was finally getting breakfast

Dougherty You know what she's done for the Democrats? Nothin', ever For George McGovern or anything I really chewed her out on the floor I said, "Instead of going around startin' all this trouble, you should be goin around putin' out the fires"

H.T.S What was the loss then? What did the women suffer?

Doughert) That wasn't what they complained about They were complaining that there wasn't enough input from women in the campaign

Hist Was there any permanent damage done? Any tangible damage?

Dougherty No 1 don't think so

Hist The networks must have caught on at some point. I remember I went somewhere and crime back and saw Mike Wallace saying what a brilliant move it had been

Dougherty. I went back to that airlines lounge in the hall, and watched T.V a little but and had coffee after I finished all that sweater' And Cronkite is on there saying that McGovern forces have suffered a serious setback and all of a sudden they switched him to the Doral Hotel. There's David Schoumacher who says, "Well, I'm sorry Walter, maybe they suffered a serious defeat, but when they lost, everybody in the boiler room cheered."

Hist That probably will go down in the annals of political history Jesus' What an incredibly byzantine gig Imagine trying to understand it on T.V—not even Machiavelli could have handled that

Stearns It was the greatest moment in my political career I'd say I've spent four years studying for the ten minutes on that vote—being able to make the right decision in that circumstance. Learning the names of all those delegates how they'd been chosen, how the whole thing was put together, what the parliamentary situation might be

Hist What are the most obvious things that could have gone

wrong? In the trailer, on the floor, or at the Doral boiler room...?

Stearns: Well, the most obvious thing that could have gone wrong was if we'd lost control of the Convention. The other issue at stake on that South Carolina vote was whether or not we could control our own delegates and whether we could impose the discipline that was going to lead to a working majority that could nominate George McGovern.

H.S.T: Without them even knowing what you were doing.

Stearns: That was the whole question the press was raising right before the Convention. The Humphrey campaign had all this fantastic strategy about how McGovern supporters, because they were ideologically inclined to proportional representation, would desert us on the California issue and then they'd cut us apart from the black caucus by releasing delegates to Chisholm and the women would come running at us in another direction. So the question was whether we could keep control, and that was the most important thing that could have gone wrong, just a complete inability...

H.S.T: What would have been the first manifestation?

Stearns: Well, South Carolina.

H.S.T: No, I mean, even while it was going on. If somebody just stood up and told you to fuck off...?

Stearns: You mean if Bill had gone to Pat Lucy and said, "We want you to cut back to 37 on this" and Pat had turned around to his delegation and said, "I need 20 people to step forward and change their votes." And people said, "Go to hell..."

H.S.T: You didn't think that that could have happened?

Stearns: Oh yeah, it could have happened. But we had a bunch of delegates down here that wanted to win...

Dougherty: After Tuesday night though, they got...

Stearns: They got a little restless. I mean after Monday night, they were willing to follow us anywhere, because they realized what we'd done...

H.S.T: On the Daley challenge ^{4} they didn't. That was Monday night, wasn't it? What caused that? Why did some of them desert you on the Daley thing?

Stearns: You mean on the compromise? Our hard-core supporters didn't desert us. We pulled exactly...

Dougherty: We needed a two-thirds vote from the whole Convention on that one.

Stearns We pulled exactly the vote of absolutely loyal supporters we had. The people who screwed us on that were the Humphrey and Muskie people who were still convinced that they were gonna win. We got Singer and Jackson to agree to publicly announce the compromise.

Doughert) Let me tell you this story I was on the floor with John Bailey [Chairman of the Connecticut delegation, and past Chairman of the Democratic National Committee] right when Frank Morrison had the deal in his hand to give it

See, you could divide that motion in two, parliamentary-wise, and I asked Bailey to give it, to make the motion to suspend the rules. If Bailey made the motion for two-thirds to suspend the rules, I think it would have passed. Then I did have Frank Morrison make the motion to seat both delegations and it only takes a majority to do that.

Hist So if you separated the two motions you could have got it.

Dougherty. See (if John Bailey had made the motion to suspend the rules I wanted to divide the question have John Bailey make the motion to suspend the rules then have Frank Morrison make the motion to have the compromise, and it only would have taken a majority on the compromise see And we could let some of our

people vote the other way and we still could have won it.

H.S.T: Why didn't Bailey make it?

Dougherty: I was talking to him right on the phone while we were gettin' ready to do it. I was right there on Frank Morrison's phone, and he says, "I won't do it, because the Mayor [Daley] hasn't agreed to it."

And I says, "This is the only chance, John, this is the only chance we've got, otherwise we're gonna kick him right out of the Convention." I pleaded with him, I said to him, "For the good of the Democratic Party." And he wouldn't do it.

Stearns: The Humphrey coalition's last hope at that point was that we would be willing to sell out Singer and Jackson, who came through for us and did everything we asked them to do on that California vote and on the compromise.

H.S.T: Why did Singer and Jackson go for the compromise? Were they just thinking about carrying Illinois in November?

Stearns: They're politicians.

Dougherty: You remember me on the floor. I was mad, because I thought those guys, Jackson and Singer, wouldn't support it either, but they did! See, that just killed any chance Daley had of being seated.

Stearns: That's when I decided to go all out for Jackson. When they kept their word on that, then that's fine with me—we'd keep our word, too.

Dougherty: I'll tell you this. I wanted Daley in that Convention so bad I could taste it.

Stearns: He should have been there.

Dougherty: There's a legal question on it, too. I mean those guys, the Jackson delegation, weren't exactly legally seated, if you really want to be honest about it. I guess they were on the reform rules but there was nobody running against them

Stearns I agree The Daley side had a good argument. The Jackson side had a good argument, and the compromise would have settled the whole thing

The problem at that point was to convince the Humphrey coalition that the compromise was the only way they were going to keep Daley in the Convention. But they wouldn't believe us. Their last hope was that we would not keep that agreement, that we would sell out Singer and Jackson so that then they could have come back on the majority report and at that point carry a disaffected Illinois delegation because whether Daley had been seated or not at that point the Singer/Jackson delegation would have gone on voting until a majority report had passed.

H.S.T I don't follow that

Stearns Temporary rule votes until you get all through the credential challenges. That is those 151 unseated delegates from California went on voting right to the end of the evening until the majority report was passed. The same was true of Illinois the Singer/Jackson delegation would have voted right to the end regardless of whether Daley had been seated or not. The last hope the Humphrey people had was that we would desert Jackson that is betray our word on that agreement and then be able to use that Illinois delegation plus the 151 votes from California to defeat the passage of the majority report on credentials which would have put us right back at the beginning again. But we kept our word

Hist I didn't know that Even the people who had been un-seated could vote on the final passage

Stearns They would vote on the passage of the final report. And if we did not keep our word—of Jackson had been unseated—he might be angry enough to go out and by that point we would have also offended the women and would have offended the blacks, and then they could have put together enough of a vote to defeat the passage of the majority report (which would have cost McGovern 151 delegates for "the California challenge"—and probably doomed his chance for the nomination). But by the time we finished that night, they were so demoralized that they just let it go through on a voice vote. They lost their approval to the Light On the next morning. ing, Muskie and Humphrey were through.

H.S.T: According to the Haynes Johnson story, they pretty well gave up at the end of the South Carolina roll-call. They knew it.

Stearns: It was obvious. But even as late as the nomination roll-call, I had an A.F.L-C.I.O guy come up to me and tell me that we only had 1451 votes for the nomination. What he was telling me was my own figure, from our absolutely hard count on the California thing, not realizing we just seated 151 delegates from California to take the total up to 1600.

H.S.T: How important was O'Hara's ruling then? What accounts for the worry over O'Hara's ruling? And the tremendous spread that you got in the end? O'Hara's ruling wouldn't matter, it would appear.

Dougherty: Yeah, it would have. If he'd ruled different, we wouldn't . . . it kinda broke things, and we needed a break at that point.

Stearns: You not only deal with numbers at a Convention, you deal with psychology.

Dougherty: When a train starts leaving the station...

Stearns: If people think you're gonna lose, votes can just melt away.

Dougherty: See, just like on the Eagleton vote, there were all kinds of rumors around the floor that we didn't have the votes.

H.S.T: Yeah, I was on the floor. People were trying to leave.

Stearns: We didn't turn it on at that point because we knew we had the votes, and if we turned it on, we would have destroyed the atmosphere for McGovern's presentation.

H.S.T: For good or ill.

Dougherty: It's the first time in the history of this country that the presidential nominating speech was given at three o'clock in the morning.

Stearns: It was one of the best hours in the history of the Democratic Party, that hour. I almost cried.

H.S.T: That was the best speech I've ever heard him give. I've been following the campaign ever since way back in New Hampshire, and that's the best I've ever heard him speak.

Dougherty: He had 126 guys writing his speech for him, but I think he wrote the final draft himself.

H.S.T Whose idea was it to put in the line about you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore? I thought that was the best part of the

Stearns That was his I want those doors open and that war closed was also his idea

just That was a good shot at Nixon. I saw it was almost over so I decided to flee. I was in the cab listening to it on the way back and the cab driver—a total strainer—just turned around and laughed as if I understood somehow too.

H.S.T Where are you going now?

Stearns I'm getting my assignments these days from the New York Times There are things that I read about in the Times before anybody talked to me As I understand it from Jim Naughton's latest story I'm supposed to take the states west of the Mississippi

H.S.T Is that in today?

Stearns It was in the Times yesterday. First I ever heard of it. It really pissed me off. I mean somebody ought to tell me before

Dougherty) That's George McGovern for ya

Stearns Yeah but if you got time to talk to Jim Naughton you got time

Dougherty What about Dick Stout's Newsweek story?

Stearns I didn't see that

Dougherty Did you see that one Monday? About Dick Dougherty being press secretary and Mankiewicz traveling, Hart being in charge of the campaign

Stearns Oh yeah they had you in there as a seasoned political pro

Dougherty Yeah He got that in Maryland the day I was out there with McGovern I found out it was gonna be in there So I went to Dick Stout and I said Where in the hell did you get that?" Dick Stout said he ran into Fred Dutton comin outta the bank in Washington and Fred told him the whole deal Then Dutton came to me and he said "I wonder if Cunningham [McGovern's administrative assistant] and those guys know about it." So I said "I haven't heard anything about it"

When I got in town I got ahold of Dick Dougherty [McGovern's press secretary] and told him the whole deal and he said For chrisokes So he got ahold of Dick Stout and found out exactly

how much was gonna be in that story and then I went to Gary and I said, "Here's what's gonna be in Newsweek on Monday. I think some of these guys should be aware." Cunningham wasn't even aware, or any of them. But that's typical George McGovern, you know.

[Garbled conversation. Whistling. Clicks. Airplane.]

H.S.T: You taking off today?

Stearns: No, I think not. If my luck holds, I'll catch a late flight back to Washington tomorrow. Today I feel like sitting out here on this beach and drinking for awhile.

It was somewhere around eight-thirty or nine on Sunday evening when I dragged myself onto a plane out of Miami—headed for Atlanta and L.A. The '72 Democratic Convention was over.

McGovern had wrapped it up just before dawn in Friday, accepting the bloody nomination with an elegant, finely crafted speech that might have had quite an impact on the national T.V audience (Time correspondent Hugh Sideley called it "perhaps as pure an expression as George McGovern has ever given of his particular moralistic sense of the nation") but the main, middle-American bulk of the national audience 即 fends with other many around midnight, and anybody had plued to the tube at 3:30 A.M Miami City was probably too strong to twisted to recognize McGovern anyway. A few hundred ex-Muskes/Humphrey/Jackson delegates had lugged long enough to cheer Ted Kennedy's bland speech, but they started drifting away when George came on—hurrying out the exits of the air-conditioned hall into the muggy darkness of the parking lot to fetch up a waiting cash and go back to whichever one of the sixty-five official convention hotels they were staying in helping to find the few best step-out of a party at home one were drank before the last a few hours end of the day. But when he was on one of the afternoon planes back to St. Louis Altonna, Bitte By sundown on Friday's the "political hotels" were almost empty. In the Doral Beach—McGovern's ocean front headquarters hotel—Southern Bell Telephone workers were dragging what looked like about five thousand miles of multicolored wires junction boxes, and cables out of the empty Press Operations complex on the mezzanine. Dawn in the lobby a Cuban wedding (Martinez Hernandez 8:30 to 10:30) had taken over the vast, oromely sculptured Banquet Room that ten hours earlier had been jammed with hundreds of young "catered-looking" employees. The long-standing training of the local team most unlikely to the historical of American politics — it was a quest party, by most Convention standards free beer for the troops being your own grass, guitar mustels working out here and there, but not much noise. No whooping & shouting, no madness

The atmosphere at the victory party was not much different from the atmosphere of the Convention itself: very cool and efficient, very much under control at all times ...get the job done, don't fuck around, avoid violence, shoot ten seconds after you see the whites of their eyes.

It was a McGovern party from start to finish. Everything went according to plan—or almost everything; as always, there were a few stark exceptions. Minor snarls here and there, but not many big ones. McGovern brought his act into Miami with the same kind of fine-focus precision that carried him all the way from New Hampshire to California... and, as usual, it made all the other acts look surprisingly sloppy.

I was trapped in the Doral for ten days, shutting back & forth

between the hotel and the Convention Hall by any means available taxi my rented green convertible and occasionally down the canal in the fast white staff taxi speedboat that McGovern's people used to get from the Doral to the Hall by water whenever Collins Avenue was jammed up with sight-seer traffic — and in retrospect I think that boat trip was the only thing I did all week that I actually enjoyed — I wrote was a lot of talk on the press about " the spontaneous outburst of fun and games on Thursday night—when the delegates, who had been so deadly serious for the first three sessions, suddenly ran wild on the floor and delayed McGovern's long awaited acceptance speech until 3:00 A by tying the convention in knots with a long outburst of frivolous squabbling over the vice president's nomination Newsweek described it as a comic interlude a burst of silhouette on the part of the delegates whose taut bonds of decorum and discipline seemed suddenly to snap now that it didn't make it so. There was not much laughter in Miami on the floor or any where else and from where I stood that famous comic interlude on Thursday night looked more like the first scattered signs of mass Fatigue Hysteria of the goddamn thing didn't end soon. What the press mustkost for relaxed levity was actually a mood of ugly restlessness that by 3 AM on Friday was bordering on rebellion. All over the floor I saw people caving in to the lure of booze and in the crowdly scale between the Cal forma and Wisconsin delegates to the amming freak with a bottle of liquid T.H.C was giving free hits to anybody who still had the strength to stick their tongue out. After four hours of listening to a seemingly endless parade of shameless digbats who saw no harm in cading some free exposure on national T.V by non-nating each other for vice-president about half the delegates in the hall were beginning to lose control. On the floor just in front of the New York delegation leaning against the low empty V.I.P box once occupied by Munnel Humphrey a small group of members who once worked for the Lindsay campaign was sharing a usual in her full of crushed amyls with a handful of new found friends. Each candidate was entitled to a fifteen minute nominating speech and two five-minute seconding speeches. The nightmare dragged on for four hours, and after the first forty minutes there was not one delegate in fifty, on the floor, who either knew or cared who was speaking. No doubt there were flashes of eloquence, now and then: Probably Mike Gravel and Cissy Farenthol said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances . . . but on that long Thursday night in Miami, with Senator Tom Eagleton of Missouri waiting nervously in the wings to come out and accept the vice-presidential nomination that McGovern had sealed for him twelve hours earlier, every delegate in the hall understood that whatever these other seven candidates were saying up there on the rostrum, they were saying for reasons that had nothing to do with who was going to be the Democratic candidate for vice-president in November . . . and it was not going to be ex-Massachusetts governor "Club" Peabody, or a grinning dimwit named Stanley Arnold from New York City who said he was The Businessman's Candidate, or some black Step'n'Fetchit-style Wallace delegate from Texas called Clay Smothers.

But these brainless bastards persisted, nonetheless, using up half the night and all the prime time on T.V, debasing the whole convention with a blizzard of self-serving gibberish that drove whatever was left of the national T.V audience to bed or the Late Late Show.

Thursday was not a good day for McGovern. By noon there was not much left of Wednesday night's Triumphant Warrior smile. He spent most of Thursday afternoon grappling with a long list of vice-presidential possibilities and by two, the Doral lobby was foaming with reporters and T.V cameras. The name had to be formally submitted by 3:59 P.M., but it was 4:05 when Mankiewicz finally appeared to say McGovern had decided on Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri.

There is a very tangled story behind that choice, but I don't feel like writing it now. My immediate reaction was not enthusiastic, and the staff people I talked to seemed vaguely depressed—if only because it was a concession to "the Old Politics," a nice-looking

Catholic boy from Missours with friends in the Labor Movement. His acceptance speech that might was not memorable—perhaps because it was followed by the long awaited appearance of Ted Kennedy, who had turned the job down

Kennedy's speech was not memorable either. "Let us bury the hatchet, etcetera and Get Behind the Ticket." There was something hollow about it, and when McGovern came on he made Kennedy sound like an old tuner.

Later that night, at a party on the roof of the Doral a McGovern

staffer asked me who I would have chosen for V.P and finally, after long brooding I said I would have chosen Ron Dellums, the black congressman from Berkeley

"Jesus christ!" he said "That would be suicide!"

I shrugged

"Why Delluns?" he asked

'Why not' I said 'He offered it to Mayor Daley before he called Eagleton'

"No" he shouted 'Not Daley' That s a lie"

"I was in the room when he made the call," I said "Ask anybody who was there—Gary, Frank, Dutton—they weren't happy about it, but they said he'd be good for the ticket."

He stared at me. "What did Daley say?" he asked finally.

I laughed. “Christ, you believed that, didn't you?”

He had, for just an instant. After all, there was a lot of talk about “pragmatism” in Miami, and Illinois was a key state . . . I decided to try the Daley rumor on other staff people, to see their reactions.

But I never got around to it, I forgot all about it, in fact, until I flipped through my notebook on the midnight jet from Atlanta. I came across a statement by Ron Deilums. It depressed me, for some reason, but it seems like a good way to end this goddamn thing. Dellums writes pretty good, for a politician. It's part of the statement he distributed when he switched his support from Shirley Chisholm to McGovern:

The great bulk of that coalition committed to change, human freedom and justice in the country has moved actively and powerfully behind the candidacy of Senator McGovern. That coalition of hope, conscience, morality and humanity—of the powerless and the voiceless—that did not exist in 1964, that expressed itself in

outrage and frustration in 1968 and in 1972 began to form and welded itself imperfectly but courageously and lifted a man to the brink of the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States and within a short but laborious step from the Presidency of the United States. The coalition that has formed behind Senator McGovern has battled the odds bafled the pollsters and beat the bosses. It is my conviction that when that total coalition of the victims in this country is ever formed this potential for change would be unheralded for it could pose a real alternative to expediency and status quo politics in America.

Dear Hunter —Ron Delums July 9, 1972

[Postscript]

Friday August 11 National Broadcasting Company Inc Thirty Rockefeller Plaza New York N.Y 10020 Circle 7 8300

Because we share a fear and loathing for things which aren't true I point out that it isn't true that I was taken in by the McGoverns on the South Carolina challenge in Miami Beach

While they were still switching votes I said on the air that they might be trying to lose it deliberately We had the floor people try to check this out and they ran into a couple of poolroom lars employed by McGovern who said yas yas it was a defeat etc, but a little while later Doug hiker got Pat Lucey to tell it all (Lucey called headquarters for permission first as Kiker waited)

We were pleased that we got it right. Adam Clymer of the Sun called the next day with congratulations. I think the reason most people thought we blew the story is that C.B.S blew it badly. I guess I should have gone through the night pointing out what happened but we got involved in the California roll call and a lot of other stuff and suddenly it was dawn.

Other than that I enjoyed your convention piece and let's have a double Margarita when we next meet

J Chanceilot Dear John.....

Sept 11 '72 Owl Farm Woody Creek Colorado

You filthy skunk-sucking bastard! What kind of gall would prompt you to write me a letter like that sac of pus dated August 11? I checked your story—about how N.B.C had the South Carolina trip all figured out—with Mrs. Lucey (Pat wouldn't talk to me, for some reason), and she said both you & Kiker were so fucked up on drugs that you both kept calling it "the South Dakota challenge," despite her attempts to correct you. She was baffled by your behavior, she said, until Mankiewicz told her about you and L.S.D-25. Then, about an hour later, Bill Daughtery (sp?) found Kiker on his knees in the darkness outside McGovern's command trailer, apparently trying to choke himself with his own hands ... but, when Bill grabbed him, Kiker said he was trying to un-screw his head from what he called his "neck-pipe," so he could "check the wiring" in his own brain.

But I guess you wouldn't remember that episode, eh? Fuck no, you wouldn't! You dope-addled fascist bastard. I'm heading east in a few days, and I think it's about time we got this evil shit cleared away. Your deal is about to go down, John. You can run, but you can't hide. See you soon. . . .

Hunter S. Thompson

2

Immediately After the Democratic Convention I flew to Los Angeles and spent several days hanging around the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Then I went back to Woody Creek to prepare for the ordeal of returning to Miami Beach for the Repul lean Convention in August. Not much seemed to be happening on the political front. That sleepless week in Miami had left the entire McGovern staff in a state of exhaustion. Most of them disappeared in their own directions for a week, or so of vacation. The plan was for McGovern's key staff will order to convene ten days herce for strategy sessions at the Sivan Lake Lodge outside Custer South Dakota. Since the press would be barred from these confidential meetings I saw no point in going over there just to hang around and let drunk ever night with a lunch of reporters.

The only people who knew at that point that all he'll was about to break loose at the Sylvan Lake Lodge were Hart, Mankiewicz, and McGovern. When a notice appeared on the bulletin board in the Lodge press room announcing a joint McGovern/Eagleton press conference on Tuesday, it didn't cause much of a stir. But most of the reporters went anyway because there was nothing else to do. On Wednesday every paper in the country carried a story similar to this one below, which appeared on the front page of the Washington Post:

Eagleton Reveals Illness Hospitalized 3 Times in '60s For 'Fatigue'

By William Greider Washington Post Staff Writer

Kuster, S.D., July 25—Senator Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, unexpectedly revealed today that he was hospitalized three times between 1960 and 1966 for psychiatric treatment, suffering from “nervous exhaustion and fatigue.”

Under questioning, he said the illness involved “the manifestation of depression” and that twice he received electric shock therapy, which he described as a recognized treatment for that type of ailment.

Senator George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, promptly expressed full confidence in Eagleton and said he will discourage any talk of dumping Eagleton from the ticket.

Eagleton revealed his medical history after reporters for the Knight Newspapers had confronted McGovern staff members with accounts of it.

I left immediately for Custer, driving at top speed in a rebuilt Hudson Hornet. About four hours later, less than twenty miles from the 12,000-foot summit of Loveland Pass, the Hornet developed a fire in its electrical system and I was forced to abandon it. By that time I had already heard on the radio that Eagleton had left for Hawaii and McGovern had gone into seclusion. So I went back home and followed the Eagleton story for the next few days on television. There was plenty of speculation but not much in the way of hard news. Meanwhile over in Custer the linear press was becoming more and more dismayed at the way McGovern was handling the situation:

Vacation Ordeal Good Vibrations at Lodge Jarred by News of Eagleton

By William Greider Washington Post Staff Writer

custer s b July 28—The people who run George McGovern a campaign for the presidency were all gathered after dinner one night in the pine paneled lobby of their resort lodge singing folk songs.

“Amazing Grace” This Land Is Your Land “Shenandoah” Good vibrations all around

The candidate stood easily among them not demanding to be the center of attention like so many politicians McGovern sang softly himself while his research man John Holum played guitar Even raspberry newspaper reporters found themselves leaning into the circle humming along

The Rev Walter Fauntroy the black preacher politician from the District of Columbia sang in his high tenor of that serene biblical promise There Is a Balm in Gilead "

They came out here to the Black Hills to plot strategy for the fall campaign yet they put great store in such moments of personal warmth. We shall overcome they sang as if good feeling among themselves was as crucial as any of those charts about where to find 270 electoral votes.

That was last weekend. Before the Eagleton business. Before the big bad headlines the alarmed phone calls and telegrams

Now McGovern dines privately in cabin 22 with his family no more mingling with the reporters and tourists up at the lodge The press has his cabin staked out and the Secret Service agents keep them at a distance What began as a vacation mixed with political activity is ending as an ordeal

The Democratic nominee will be back in Washington Sunday "He's going to stay home and rest" press secretary Dick Dougherty advised reporters today. Rest up from his holiday " he added dryly.

The Black Hills in the western end of South Dakota are a proper

setting for "Gunsmoke" or "Bonanza," with magnificent pine-covered mountains lined by heroic bluffs of stone and narrow trails which wind among the eroded spires of rock. It doesn't seem right for high political drama, but McGovern is facing it all with the public coolness of a western gunfighter.

McGovern probably chose this spot to help promote the tourist business of his home state and, during the first week of his visit, he cooperated with the ritual appearances.

He went horseback riding, wearing a silk ascot and looking only slightly more at ease than some of the mounted reporters and staff aides who followed him up the trail.

The next day, he airily signed a photograph which showed his profile alongside the four presidential faces carved on Mount Rushmore—"From George McGovern, the fifth man."

Everyone was loose. The hoard of reporters and T.V crews were camped about eight miles away at the Hi Ho Motel in Custer, probably to give the nominee some privacy. But each evening, they would gather at the Sylvan Lake Lodge to mingle freely with the man and his staff, to share the grand view of Harney's Peak and the "hail storms," a pioneer drink served in mason jars.

Then, without any warning, it became the bleak hills. Senator Thomas Eagleton flew in with his entourage on Tuesday and made his public admission about the past psychiatric problems.

“A gutsy performance,” said Fred Dutton, a senior advisor, reserving judgment on the political impact.

“It could turn into a plus,” said Bill Dougherty, the lieutenant governor of South Dakota. His hopefulness was not widely shared.

McGovern went to play tennis, shirtless, with his teacher, Washington tennis pro Allie Ritzenberg.

The reporters bombarded everyone with questions. For a day or so, McGovern and Dougherty and the others tried to answer them. No, he was not dumping Eagleton. As of now. Well, did that mean he might? No, it didn't mean that.

Allie Ritzenberg went back to Washington, so did most of the campaign staff. Dutton and Dick Dougherty stayed on to counsel the candidate, but mostly to fend off the reporters. The questions got nastier.

The candidate became more remote, no more interviews, his

press conference cancelled Finally, when the Eagleton story wouldn't go away, he issued a public notice to his campaign staff, telling them to keep their mouths shut on the subject

But George McGovern flew a B 24 in World War 2 and his friends insist that he still does his best thinking when the flak is heavy. At least he remained cool.

When an aide called him yesterday to report that Jack Anderson had added new accusations against Eagleton, the candidate replied "Do you know how to paddle a canoe? and invited the aide to join the family in a canoe trip on Sylvan Lake

That afternoon, he appeared at the movie house in Custer to see a promotional showing of 'The Candidate' a movie which depicts an idealistic young man converted to a cosmetic politician, trading ideals for glamour

There was scattered applause in the Harney Theater when one character exclaimed "Politics is bullshit' McGovern and his family laughed hardest when a political manager in the film instructed the press secretary Get all the reporters on the press bus and drive them over the nearest cliff

On his last night in South Dakota McGovern relaxed and chatted again with reporters and agreed that his vacation had been something of a fiasco. It's not what I had in mind he said. "What I wanted was a time for reflection.

This morning good to his word McGovern showed up for the annual tourist parade which Custer stages to commemorate the discovery of gold in the valley on French Creek nearly one hundred years ago He and Mrs McGovern wore buckskin jackets and brown stetsons but the Secret Service had them rule in a closed car, not on horses

' Let's just talk about the Discovery Days parade," McGovern told a reporter

A horse dyed yellow led the line of march which included blue and red horses too. The security helicopter circling over the tiny town added excitement. The floats followed McGovern. "The Massacre of the Metz Family," by the Custer Lumber Co. "Our Discovery of Gold" by the Young Homemakers Extension Club

Dutton wearing a dowdy cowboy hat, cheered the press corps as it pulled by beside McGovern's car. The line of tourists and Custer citizens complained. “You're spoiling our view,” a lady yelled from the curb.

Past the Monster Mansion, past the How the West Was Won Museum. At the Gold Pan Saloon, McGovern got out to shake hands.

“How's your vacation, Mrs. McGovern, hectic?” a girl asked. Eleanor McGovern sighed. “Yes it is.”

The parade ended at the east end of Custer in front of Scott's Rock Shop, which sells rocks. The senator and his wife accepted gifts from the mayor, a squirrel and book ends of rose quartz, a local mineral.

“It's been very pleasant for us to be out here,” McGovern assured the mayor.

Then the Democratic presidential nominee mingled with tourists from all over Florida, Utah, Illinois, Rhode Island. Rhode Island?

“One of my first visits is going to be to Providence,” McGovern told the man from there. “We'll probably be in there next month.”

It sounded as if he could hardly wait.

The McGovern Image Candor of Democratic Nominee Viewed as Chief Casualty of Eagleton Affair

By James M. Naughton Special to the New York Times

Washington, July 30—The biggest political casualty in the Eagleton affair may prove to be not Senator Thomas F. Eagleton but the man who chose him to seek the Vice Presidency. In the five days since Senator Eagleton disclosed a history of treatment for nervous exhaustion and depression, Senator George McGovern appears to have undone much of his effort over the last 18 months to establish an image as an unusually candid Presidential candidate.

The Democratic nominee declined on Tuesday even to consider Senator Eagleton's offer to withdraw from the ticket, saying that its make-up was irrevocably set. Three days later, he began orches-

trating an attempt to persuade Mr Eagleton to withdraw from the ticket

McGavern Comments

Having asserted on Tuesday that "there is no one sounder in body, mund and spirit than Tom Eagleton," Mr McGovern was telling reporters "board his chartered campaign plane last night that " the one thing we know about Eagleton is that he has been to the hospital three times for [mental] depression"

The Democratic Presidential nominee publicly admonished his staff to stop gossiping about what effect Mr. Eagleton's disclosure might have on the Democrats' chances in November. A day later, he contrived through his staff to assemble a group of reporters for a casual discussion on the same subject.

Mr McGovern appeared even to distillusioned members of his campaign staff, to be saying one thing and doing another—which was the charge he had been preparing to make in the campaign against President Nixon

In the Democratic primaries Senator McGovern managed to convey the impression that he was somehow not a politician in the customary sense—that he was more open more accessible, more attuned to the issues and more idealistic than other candidates.

Pro-Tagleton Calls

But his reaction to Mr. Eagleton's disclosure may have seriously impaired that image. When newspapers appeared yesterday morning with articles about Senator McGovern's apparent decision to reassess Mr. Eagleton's candidacy telephone calls began inundating the McGovern headquarters here to brick Mr. Eagleton. One McGovern worker said that there were "tons" of pro-Eagleton calls and that the instructions were not to make that information public.

It all seemed to illustrate as have other events since Mr McGovern won the Democratic nomination, that he is, after all, a politician

"Above all else, George McGovern is a very practical, pragmatic man," said George 5 Cunningham deputy campaign manager and a political associate of Mr McGovern since 1955.

The South Dakota Senator won the nomination with a grassroots campaign that went around the party professionals, but now he has installed Lawrence F. O'Brien, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, on the eighth floor of McGovern headquarters and has given Mr. O'Brien the coveted title of campaign chairman.

Daley Is Courted

It was Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine who faltered in the primaries by relying on the big names in the Democratic establishment to win the nomination for him. But now it is Mr. McGovern who is energetically courting the big-city machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley in Chicago and implying that the only issue separating him from former President Lyndon B. Johnson is the Vietnam war.

Despite a pledge to give "unequivocal" support to an attempt to put more women on the South Carolina delegation to the Democratic National Convention, Mr. McGovern allowed his operatives to throw some votes against the women's challenge rather than risk a parliamentary showdown that might have imperiled his own nomination. But a McGovern staff study theorizes that, for the first time, wives are equal to husbands in influencing the political attitudes of spouses, and the Senator unabashedly named Mrs. Jean Westwood of Utah to the high visibility post of party chairman.

Closed Door Session

When Mr. McGovern went to Houston last June to meet with disgruntled Democratic Governors, he was pressed to explain why the session would be held behind closed doors. After months of pledging to end secrecy in government, how could he square a secret meeting, Mr. McGovern was asked.

“I can't square it,” he replied. “Sometimes I'm just going to have to be inconsistent.”

No one could say without absolute certainty today that Mr. Eagleton would be removed from the ticket when he and Mr. McGovern meet tomorrow to consider the question. But while Mr. Eagleton was traveling on the West Coast last week, Mr. McGovern's staff was said to be imploring the Presidential nominee to dump his running mate.

At the time, Mr. McGovern was vacationing in the Blacks Hills of his native South Dakota. On Friday, Mr. McGovern saw a special screening of the recent movie, "The Candidate," in which

Darh Interlude

an idealistic office-seeker is cosmetized by practical politicians on his staff

Mr McGovern did not like the film It showed he said some of the sicker side of American politics

The McGovern Course By William Greider Washington Post Staff Writer

July 31—George McGovern confronting a political crisis which could destroy his candidacy for the White House moves like a sailboat headed down the bay

First he tacks in one direction and this is reported. Then he tacks back the other way and that too is reported. But the reports of these movements do not necessarily reveal where he is ultimately headed.

McGovern apparently wants it that way. Let others seem to speak for you. Hint at your intentions but don't state them directly. Retreat move forward. Shave the angle of your words. Keep your objective sufficiently flexible so that it you must you can always change it.

In the old politics this sort of maneuvering was an accepted technique for approaching tough decisions euphemistically known as "keeping your options open. The new politics of the McGovern campaign which likes to frown on the old ways will have to think of something different to call it.

The South Dakota senator has always insisted that he is above all a pragmatic politician and his handling of the Eagleton crisis confirms his description. Beneath the exterior of the earnest and open man, there is a cautious tactician more calculating than either his hard boiled critics or his starry eyed admirers have admitted.

He began by embracing his running mate Senator Thomas Eagle ton promising full support for the man who had just disclosed to the world that three times earlier on his career he had been hos pitalized with psychiatric problems Never mind said McGovern who invested he would have chosen Easleton even if he had known

McGovern held to that heading Tuesday and Wednesday

both in his own comments and in statements released through his press secretary. But an avalanche of negative comment was building up, both from newspaper editorial writers and from McGovern supporters.

On Thursday, the sailboat turned about—though not so dramatically that one could say McGovern had reversed directions. The senator cancelled a press conference, which meant he did not think it wise to repeat all of his lines about full support for Eagleton.

His staff people, both in Washington and South Dakota, began to speak more freely about the “disaster” confronting them and even the inevitability of Eagleton withdrawing. McGovern issued an order telling the staff people to keep mum.

At that point, the presidential nominee might have been content to keep quiet and let opinions develop naturally over the weekend. Except Eagleton was picking up signals too. As McGovern's staff began raising the possibility of changing horses, Eagleton kept charging forward. He would never step down he said on Friday afternoon.

Never? That is a strong word to use in politics and obviously it needed strong corrective action from McGovern's end of the seesaw. What McGovern did was either very slick or very clumsy. The people who watched still are not quite sure which.

First, his press staff distributed the text of a speech which McGovern would deliver Saturday night before the South Dakota state convention of Democrats. It contained one lukewarm paragraph about Eagleton, revealing that McGovern was now "deliberating" on what he had previously considered a closed question. That would tell the press not to take Eagleton's declarations at face value, but the speech wasn't for release until Saturday evening.

McGovern apparently decided to send a stronger message to his running mate, via the media. It was the last night of the senator's two-week vacation in the Black Hills and, though he had been dining privately with his family, McGovern decided to eat that night at the Sylvan Lake Lodge.

He told his press secretary, Dick Dougherty, to pass the word discreetly to reporters who were staying in Custer, S. D., eight miles away.

Darh Interludf

Most of the reporters did not get the word, but a lot of them figured on their own it was prudent to dine at the lodge on the last night, just in case he broke his two-day silence. So, with a few tourists thrown in, this group sat in the Dakota Room, eating buffalo steaks and watching one another. Indian pictographs depicting "The Legend of the White Buffalo," surrounded them on the walls.

McGovern ate enthusiastically, as he always does. Then, rather casually, he was standing at the table where The Washington Post, the Chicago Daily News and United Press International were eating.

"Are you fellas glad to be getting home?" he asked then sat down for social chat-chat about the Black Hills The reporters were wondering in their own minds whether it would be offensive to probe the Eagleton thing when McGovern settled it for them. He brought it up.

It had been a terrible business he said ruined his vacation, upset the campaign planning. How was he to know the Missouri senator had been in the hospital three times?

McGovern went on to explain that a decision would have to be made and it would mostly be up to Eogleton to withdraw if he realized that public opinion was against him. The tone was more precise than the words—implying that McGovern fully expected Eseleton to withdraw, gracefully rather than imminent the cannulation.

He was gone in a few moments. The reporters discussed briefly among themselves the question of whether it was proper to quote a casual dinner conversation. Very briefly. Then they took out notepads and began trying to reconstruct what McGovern had said. Ever so casually, they slipped off to the lobby telephones, no point arousing all those other reporters.

Meanwhile McGovern sat down with C.B.S and his family and repeated much the same conversation elaborating on a few points

At another table, Time Magazine was dining with Newsweek, watching one another on the night before their magazines close for publication. McGovern came over to join them.

Knight Newspapers and the Wall Street Journal were sitting at another table, but they decided to join the circle. So did The New York Times who was eating with McGovern's staff the one table which McGovern did not visit. Newsweek had a tape recorder

hidden on his lap under the table, but when he replayed it later all that could be heard was organ music and the clatter of dishes.

The candidate expanded further on the same theme, adding some negative remarks which made the signal even stronger. When he departed, the reporters at first eyed other newsmen with suspicion, eager to protect what they thought was exclusive. In a moment, they got the picture. It was McGovern who was using the social chatter, not them.

There were only two telephones in the lobby. The New York Times had to race down the mountain eight miles to phone in the story. Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun was dining in Custer, heard about the table-hopping and raced up the mountain. The Associated Press was with his children at Mount Rushmore, but another A.P man caught up with the story.

All of them filed stories stating with varying degrees of emphasis that McGovern had changed his position and might now abandon Eagleton as a running mate. Only The Los Angeles Times had a stronger story. The L.A. Times had been invited to McGovern's cabin before dinner and emerged with a story which said flatly "it was learned" that McGovern had decided to dump Eagleton.

The next day, McGovern tacked again, though still headed in the same general direction. The question of Eagleton's future, he said in a press statement, needed "a proper period of evaluation."

“Rumors and reports of any decisions having been reached on this question are misleading,” he said.

籠

Down & Out in the Fontaineblecu Nixon Sells Out the Party Goldwater on the Comeback Trail, Agnew in '76 Mankiewicz Amok; Midnight Violence at The Wayfarer The Origins of Eagleton, Death Rattle for the New Politics Can a Bull Elk in the Rut Pass through the Eye of a Camel? A Vicious Attack on the Demonstrators "These People Should Go Back Where They Belong"

Life gets heavy here on the Beach from time to time. So I paid $270 each for my six packs and then wheeled my big red Chevy Impala convertible back home to the Fontainebleau, about forty blocks north through the balmy southern night to the edge of the fashionable section. need the car again tonight?" he asked.

“Probably,” I said. “But not for a while. I'll be up in the room until about midnight.” I looked at my watch. “The Rams-Kansas City game is on in three minutes. After that, I'll work for a while and then go out for something to eat.”

He jerked the car door open, sliding fast behind the wheel to take it down to the underground garage. With his hand on the shift lever he looked up at me: "You in the mood for some company?"

“No,” I said. “I'm way behind. I'll be up all night with that goddamn typewriter. I shouldn't even take time to watch the game on T.V.”

He rolled his eyes and looked up at what should have been the sky, but which was actually the gold-glazed portico roof above the entrance driveway: "Jesus, what kind of work do you do? Hump typewriters for a living? I thought the convention was over!"

I paused, tucking the wet beer bags under the arm of my crusty brown leather jacket. Inside the lobby door about twenty feet away I could see what looked like a huge movie-set cocktail party for rich Venezuelaans and high-style middle-aged Jews: my fellow guests in the Fontaineblecau. I was not dressed properly to mingle with them, so my plan was to stride swiftly through the lobby to the elevators and then up to my hide-out in the room.

The Nixon convention had finished on Thursday morning, and by Saturday the hundreds of national press/media people who had swarmed into this pompous monstrosity of a hotel for Convention Week were long gone. A few dozen stragglers had stayed on through Friday, but by Saturday afternoon the style and tone of the place had changed drastically, and on Sunday I felt like the only nigger in the Governor's Box on Kentucky Derby Day.

Bobo had not paid much attention to me during the convention, but now he seemed interested. "I know you're a reporter," he said. "They put 'press' on your house-car tag. But all the rest of those guys took off yesterday. What keeps you here?"

I smiled. “Christ, am I the only one left?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, there's you and two others. One guy has that white Lincoln Continental—

“He's not press,” I said quickly. “Probably one of the G.O.P advance men, getting things settled with the hotel.”

He nodded. "Yeah, he acted like he was part of the show. Not like a reporter." He laughed. "You guys are pretty easy to spot, you know that?"

“Balls,” I said. “Not me. Everybody else says I look like a cop.”

He looked at me for a moment, tapping his foot on the accelerator to keep the engine up. "Yeah," he said. "I guess so. You could pass for a cop as long as you kept your mouth shut."

“I'm usually pretty discreet,” I said.

He smiled. "Sure you are. We've all noticed it. That other press guy that's still here asked me who you were the other day, when you were bad-mouthing Nixon..."

“What's his name?” I was curious to know who else in the press corps would endure this kind of shame and isolation.

“I can't remember now,” Bobo said. “He's a tall guy with grey hair and glasses. He drives a blue Ford station wagon.”

I wondered who it could be. It would have to be somebody with a very compelling reason to stay on, in this place. Everybody with good sense or a reasonable excuse had left as soon as possible. Some of the T.V network technicians had stayed until Saturday, dismantling the maze of wires and cables they'd set up in the Fontainebleau before the convention started. They were easy to spot because they wore things like Levis and sweatshirts—but by Sunday I was the only guest in the hotel not dressed like a P.R man for Hialeah Racetrack on a Saturday night in mid-season.

It is not enough, in the Fontainebleau, to look like some kind of a weird and sinister cop; to fit in here, you want to look like somebody who just paid a scalper $200 for a front row seat at the Johnny Carson show.

Bobo put the car in gear, but kept his foot on the brake pedal and asked: "What are you writing? What did all that bullshit come down to?"

"Jesus," I said. "That's just what I've been trying to put to

gether upstairs You're asking me to compress about two hundred hours of work into sixty seconds

He grinned "You're on my time now Give it a try Tell me what happened"

I paused in the driveway shifting the beer bags to my other arm, and thought for a moment " Okay," I said ' Nixon sold out the party for the next twenty years by setting up an Agnew/Kennedy race in '76, but he knew exactly what he was doing and he did it for the same reason he's done everything else since he first got into politics—to make sure he gets elected.

He stared at me not grasping it

I hesitated trying to put it all in a quick little capsule. Okay, I said finally "the reason Nixon put Agnew and the Goldwater freaks in charge of the party this year is that he knows they can't win in 176—but it was a good short term trade they have to stay with him this year which will probably be worth a point or two in November—and that's important to Nixon because he thinks it's going to be close. Fuck the polls. They always follow reality instead of predicting it. But the real reason he turned the party over to the Agnew Goldwater wing is that he knows most of the old line Democrats who just got stomped by McGovern for the nomination wouldn't mind seeing George get taken out in 172 if they know they can get back in the saddle if they're willing to wait four years.

Bobo laughed understanding it instantly. Pimps and hustlers have a fine instinct for politics. 'What you're saying is that Nixon just cashed his whole check," he said. "He doesn't give a flying fuck what happens once he gets re-elected—because once he wins, it's all over for him anyway, right? He can't run again."

'Yeah,' I said, pausing to twist the top off one of the ale bottles I'd been pulling out of the bag. "But the thing you want to understand is that Nixon has such a fine understanding of the way politicians think that he knew people like Dalcy and Meany and Ted Kennedy would go along with him—because it's in their interest now to have Nixon get his second term, in exchange for a guaranteed Democratic victory in 1976."

“God damn” he said “That's beautiful! They're gonna trade him four years now for eight later, right? Give Nixon his last trip in '72, then Kennedy moves in for eight years in '76 Jesus, that's so rotten I really have to admire it.” He chuckled “Boy, I thought I was cynical”

"That's not cynical," I said. "That's pure, nut-cutting politics. And I advise you to stay out of it, you're too sensitive."

He laughed and hit the accelerator leaping away with a sharp screech of rubber and just barely missing the tail-light of a long gold Cadillac as he turned down the ramp

I pushed through the revolving door and crossed the vast lobby to the elevators still sipping my ale as I thought about what I'd just said. Had Nixon really sold the party down the river? Was it a conscious act or pure instinct? Had he made a deal with Meany during one of their golf games? Was Dolay in on it? Ted Kennedy? Who else?

I finished the ale and dropped the empty bottle into a huge spit toon full of blue gravel. Two elderly women standing next to me looked disgusted but I ignored them and wandered over to the door of the world renowned Poodle bar and cocktail lounge. It was almost empty. An imitation Glenn Miller band was playing the Tennessee Waltz but nobody was dancing. Three nights ago the Poodle had been so crowded that it was difficult to get through the door. Every high powered, hot rod journalist in the western world had made the scene here last week. At least that's what Sally Quinn told me, and she knows about things like that.

I went back to the elevators and found one ready to go. The sight of my ale bottle in the spittoon reminded me of Nixon again.

Who else might be in on that deal? I picked a Miami Herald off a stack in the rear of the elevator, then handed the matron a dollar

"Twenty five cents" she said briskly bringing the car to a stop at my floor but before she could hand me the change I stepped out and waved back at her " Nevermind " I said, " I'm rich " Then I hurried down the hall to my room and bolted the door The game had already started, but there was no score. I dumped my ale bottles in the styrofoam cooler, then opened one and sat down to watch the action and brood on Nixon's treachery. But first I concentrated on the game for a while. It is hard to understand how somebody else thinks unless you can get on their wavelength; get in tune with their patterns, their pace, their connections... and since Nixon is a known football addict, I decided to get my head totally into the rhythm of this exhibition game between the Rams and Kansas City before attempting the jump into politics.

Very few people understand this kind of logic. I learned it from a Brazilian psychiatrist in the Matto Grosso back in 1963. He called it "Rhythm Logic," in English, because he said I would never be able to pronounce it in the original Jibaro. I tried it once or twice, but the Jibaro language was too much for me—and it didn't make much difference anyway. I seemed to have an instinct for Rhythm Logic, because I picked it up very quickly. But I have never been able to explain it, except in terms of music, and typewriters are totally useless when it comes to that kind of translation.

In any case, by the end of the first quarter I felt ready. By means of intense concentration on every detail of the football game, I was

able to 'derail' my own inner brain waves and re pattern them temporarily to the inner brain wave rhythms of a serious football fanatic. The next step, then, was to bring my 'borrowed' rhythms into focus on a subject quite different from football—such as presidential politics.

In the third and final step I merely concentrated on a pre-selected problem involving presidential politics and attempted to solve it subjectively although the word 'subjectively,' at this point, had a very different true meaning Because I was no longer reasoning in the rhythms of my own inner brain waves, but in the rhythms of a football addict

At that point it became almost unbearably clear to me that Richard Nixon had in fact sold the Republican Party down the tube in Miami. Consciously perhaps but never quite verbally Because the rhythms of his own inner brain waves had convinced his conscious mind that in fact he had no choice. Given the safe assumption that the most important objective in Richard Nixon's life today is mimimizing the risk of losing the 1972 election to George McGovern, simple logic decreed that he should bend all his energies to that end at all costs. All other objectives would have to be subjugated to Number One.

By half time with the Rams trailing by six I had established a firm scientific basis for the parnoid gibberish I had uttered, an hour or so earlier while standing in the hotel driveway and talking with Bobo the night pump At the time not wanting to seem ignorant or confused I had answered his question with the first wisdom capsule that pepped into my mind But now it made perfect sense, thanks to Rhythm Logic, and all that remained were two or three secondary questions more of them serious

To say that Nixon "sold the Republican Party down the river" in order to minimize his chances of losing this election is probably a bit harsh. Most of the G.O.P delegates in Miami were eager to make that trip anyway. All Nixon did was make sure they got safely aboard the raft and into the current. It was no accident that the Nixon convention in Miami looked and sounded like a replay.

of the Goldwater convention in San Francisco eight years ago. They even brought Goldwater back and treated him like a hero. His opening-night speech was a classic of vengeful ignorance, but the delegates loved it. He was scheduled to speak for ten minutes, but he worked himself into such a fever that it took him half an hour to make sure everybody in the hall—and the T.V audience, too—understood what he'd come there to say: That he'd been eight years ahead of his time in '64, by God! But now the party had finally caught up with him! At last, they were cheering him again, instead of laughing at him . . . and just in case anybody doubted it, he was here to tell them that the whole country was finally catching up with him, too.

No other speaker at that convention was allowed to ignore the time limit laid out for him in the split-second script, but Goldwater was encouraged to rave and snarl at the cameras until he ran out of things to say. His speech set the tone for the whole convention, and his only real competition was Ronald Reagan. Compared to those two, both Agnew and Nixon sounded like bleeding-heart liberals.

The next step, on Tuesday, was a public whipping for G.O.P "liberals" like Illinois Senator Charles Percy who wanted to change some of the delegate selection rules so the large industrial (and usually more liberal) states would have more of a voice in the 1976 convention. But his proposal lost by a landslide, and the '76 convention—at which Agnew is now expected to be the leading contender—will be dominated as usual by rural conservatives from the South and the West.¹

At this point, thanks again to Rhythm Logic, a blueprint begins to take shape:

Nixon returned from Miami with a commanding 60 to 30 lead over McGovern in the public opinion polls—but roughly half of that margin would disappear overnight if McGovern could somehow get the support of the Old Guard Democrats (the Jewish vote, the Humphrey vote, A.F.L-C.I.O unions still loyal to George Meany) who lost to McGovern in the primaries and now refuse to support him.

The reasons they give are generally too vague or unfounded to argue with: "too radical," "anti-labor," "anti-Semitic," and they are not worth arguing about anyway; because the real reason why so many Old Guard Democrats are backing away from McGovern is a powerful desire to regain their control of the Democratic Party. The McGovern organization has only a tentative grip on the party machinery now, but a McGovern victory in November would give him at least four years to rebuild and revitalize the whole structure in his own image. To many professional Democrats—particularly the Big Fish in a Small Pond types who worked overtime for Humphrey or Jackson last spring—the prospect of a McGovern victory is far more frightening than another four years of Nixon.

Indeed, and Nixon has a keen understanding of these things. He has been a professional pol all his life, through many ups and downs. He understands that politics is a rotten, frequently degrading business that corrupts everybody who steps in it, but this knowledge no longer bothers him. Some say it never did, in fact—but that was the Old Nixon. We have seen many models since then, but now we are on the brink of coming to grips with The Real Nixon.

This campaign will almost certainly be his last, regardless of how it turns out. A win would retire him automatically, and a loss would probably shatter his personality along with his ego. That is one of the main keys to understanding the Real Nixon Strategy Analysis. A loss to McGovern would be such a shock to Nixon that he would probably change his name at once and emigrate to Rhodesia. Not even a narrow victory would make him happy; this time he wants to win big, and he intends to.

The intensity of his Big/Sure Win obsession became apparent to Clark McGregor, his new campaign manager, even before I picked it up with Rhythm Logic. On the day after the convention,

most of the talk among Nixon's staff members was about how to avoid complacency Their Doral Hotel fortress was rank with overconfidence McGregor sitting happy on a campaign war chest of between $35 million and $39 million had just decided to use some of the cash to fight complacency by organizing Nixon volunteer groups in some of the states. Then he went downstairs to a meeting of the G.O.P financial committee and was surprised to hear Maurice Stans Nixon's chief fund raiser announce that the press dental campaign budget had just been boosted to $45 million—$15 million more than the 1968 Nixon campaign used in the light race against Hubert Humphrey

The President was not immediately available for comment on how he planned to spend his forty five Big Ones but Stans said he planned to safeguard the funds personally.

At that point McGregor cracked Stans upside the head with a Gideon Bible and called him a thieving little fart. McGregor then began shoving the rest of us out of the room but when Stans tried to leave McGregor grabbed him by the neck and jerked him back inside. Then he slammed the door and threw the bolt.

Jesus why do I write things like that? I must be getting sick or maybe just tired of writing about these greasy Rotarian bastards I think it's time to move on to something else But first I guess I should finish off that story about how Nixon sold his party down the river

It was basically a straight across trade Agnew for McGovern By welcoming all the right wingers and yahoos back into the front ranks of the party—then watching silently as liberals fought vainly for a fair share of the delegate seats in 76—Nixon aimed the party as far towards the Right as he could while charting his own course straight down the center and opening wide his arms to all those poor homeless Democrats who got driven out of their own party by that few batting strike busting radical bustard George McGovern the Goldwater of the Left

Meanwhile, Barry Goldwater himself is riding high again in the G.O.P. The party is back in step with him now, and by the time the '76 convention rolls around, Spiro Agnew is likely to find himself hooted off the podium—like Rockefeller in '64—as a useless backsliding liberal. That convention will want to nominate one of their own, and whoever emerges to carry the party colors will almost certainly be doomed from the start and mocked by all the Humphrey/Meany Democrats—who will have gone back home, by then—as "The McGovern of the Right."

Nixon sees his margin of safety on November 7th in the number of anti-McGovern Democrats he can coax across the line to vote for him.² Despite his huge lead in the polls, he knows better than to believe he'll be thirty points ahead on election day. Soon or later, McGovern's top command will get bored with this brainless squabbling among themselves. They've been at it for more than a month now, like a bunch of winos locked in a small closet.

Gary Hart insists the "real work" of the campaign is going along just like it was in New Hampshire, or Wisconsin, or California—"but the press can't see it now, just like they couldn't see it back in the early primaries. Hell, our organizers don't hold press conferences; nobody interviews our canvassers.

“I'd say we're at the same stage now [September 1] that we were back in the third week of February. Stop worrying, Hunter, we're doing fine.”

Well . . . maybe so. If it's true, Nixon is going to need all the Humphrey/Meany Democrats he can get. Once his margin starts slipping he'll get nervous, and if that Watergate case ever gets into court he might get very nervous.

But he has already bought his insurance policy. The Old Guard anti-McGovern Democrats might not be so willing to dump McGovern if they thought they might lose again in '76. But Nixon appears to have taken care of that problem for them, quietly opening the way for a Kennedy versus Agnew fiasco four years from now.

Compared to the Democratic Convention five weeks earlier the Nation celebration was an ugly low level trip that hovered some where in that grim indefinable limbo between duliness and obscenity — like a bad pornographic film that you want to walk out on but sit through anyway and then leave the theater feeling depressed and vaguely embarrassed with yourself for ever having taken part in it, even as a practical man. It was not as good as the country's life, but overall that it is hard to even work up the energy to write about it. Not even the frenzied efforts of the T.V news moguls could make the thing interesting. According to a Miami Herald reporter who monitored T.V coverage from gavel to gavel " at any given time only about 15 percent of New York metropolitan households — where early returns are available — were tuned to network convention coverage. On the Sunday after the convention Mike Wallace presided over a C.B.S T.V re�undup special on what happened in Miami and when he Summerly was held — left on hours worth of the time. The news line was a trip to the Telephone in the whole thing as a useless bummer. Speaking for the C.B.S floor reporters he said We labored mightly and brought forth a mouse. Most of the I near press people seemed to feel the same way. Every midnight at the end of each session the Poodle Lounge in the Fontancheable filled up with sulfen journalists who would spend the next three hours moaning at each other about what a goddamn roten nightmare it all ww. On Tuesday night I was sitting at a table in the Poodle with a clutch of New York heavy-— Dick Reeves from New York Mate me Russ Dymerd from Harper Phil Tracy from the Filler. More etcetera — and when they started because about the times from the bandstand where a 1975 vintage nite-blush was group of falling the air I said. " You bastards had better get used to that music you'll be hearing a bell of it for the next four years. " Nobody laughed. I finished my double tequila and went upstairs to my room to get hopelessly stoned by myself and pass out. It was that kind of a convention

The pervasive sense of gloom among the press/media crowd in Miami was only slightly less obvious than the gung-ho, breast-beating arrogance of the Nixon delegates themselves. That was the real story of the convention: the strident, loutish confidence of the whole G.O.P machinery, from top to bottom. Looking back on that week, one of my clearest memories is that maddening "four more Years!" chant from the Nixon Youth gallery in the convention hall. N.B.C's John Chancellor compared the Nixon Youth cheering section to the Chicago "sewer workers" who were herded into the Stockyards convention hall in Chicago four years ago to cheer for Mayor Daley. The Nixon Youth people were not happy with Chancellor for making that remark on camera. They complained very bitterly about it, saying it was just another example of the "kneesjerk liberal" thinking that dominates the media.

But the truth is that Chancellor was absolutely right. Due to a strange set of circumstances, I spent two very tense hours right in the middle of that Nixon Youth mob on Tuesday night, and it gave me an opportunity to speak at considerable length with quite a few of them....

What happened, in a nut, was that I got lost in a maze of hallways in the back reaches of the convention hall on Tuesday night about an hour or so before the roll-call vote on Nixon's chances of winning the G.O.P nomination again this year. . . . I had just come off the convention floor, after the Secret Service lads chased me away from the First Family box where I was trying to hear what Charlton Heston was saying to Nelson Rockefeller, and in the nervous wake of an experience like that I felt a great thirst rising . . . so I tried to take a shortcut to the Railroad Lounge, where free beer was available to the press; but I blew it somewhere along the way and ended up in a big room jammed with Nixon Youth workers, getting themselves ready for a "spontaneous demonstration" at the moment of climax out there on the floor. . . . I was just idling around in the hallway, trying to go north for a beer, when I got swept up in a fast-moving mob of about two thousand people heading south at good speed, so instead of fighting the tide I let myself be carried along to wherever they were going....

Which turned out to be the "Ready Room," in a far corner of the hall, where a dozen or so people wearing red hats and looking like small-town high-school football coaches were yelling into bullhorns and trying to whip this herd of screaming sheep into shape for the spontaneous demonstration, scheduled for 10:33 P.M.

It was a very disciplined scene. The red-hatted men with the bullhorns did all the talking. Huge green plastic "refuse" sacks full of helium balloons were distributed, along with handfuls of New Year's Eve party noisemakers and hundreds of big cardboard signs that said things like: Nixon now!"... "four more Years!".... No Compromise!"

Most of the signs were freshly printed. They looked exactly like the "We Love Mayor Daley" signs that Daley distributed to his sewer workers in Chicago in 1968: red and blue ink on a white background . . . but a few, here and there, were hand-lettered, and mine happened to be one of these. It said, Garbage Men Demand Equal Time." I had several choices, but this one seemed right for the occasion.

Actually, there was a long and active time lag between the moment when I was swept into the Ready Room and my decision to carry a sign in the spontaneous demonstration. I have a lot of on-the-spot notes about this, somewhere in my suitcase, but I can't find them now and it's 3:15 A.M. in Miami and I have to catch a plane for Chicago at noon—then change planes for Denver, then change again in Denver for the last plane to Aspen—so I'll try to put some flesh on this scene when I get to Woody Creek and my own typewriter; this one is far too slow for good dialogue or fast-moving behavior.

Just to put a fast and tentative ending on it, however, what happened in that time lag was that they discovered me early on, and tried to throw me out—but I refused to go, and that's when the dialogue started. For the first ten minutes or so I was getting very ominous. Hells Angels flashbacks—all alone in a big crowd of hostile, cranked-up geeks in a mood to stomp somebody—but it soon became evident that these Nixon Youth people weren't ready for that kind of madness

Our first clash erupted when I looked up from where I was sitting on the floor against a wall in the back of the room and saw Ron Rosenbaum from the Village Voice coming at me in a knot of shouting Nixon Youth wranglers "No press allowed!" they were screaming "Get out of here! You can't stay!"

They had nailed Rosenbaum at the door—but, instead of turning back and giving up, he plunged into the crowded room and made a beeline for the brick wall, where he d already spotted me sitting in peaceful anonymity. By the time he reached me he was gasping for breath and about six fraternity/jock types were clawing at his arms. "They're trying to throw me out!" he shouted.

I looked up and shuddered, knowing my cover was blown. Within seconds, they were screaming at me, too. "You crazy bastard," I shouted at Rosenbaum. "You fingered me! Look what you've done!"

"No press" they were shouting Out! Both of you!"

I stood up quickly and put my back to the wall, still cursing Rosenbaum "That's right" I yelled. Get that bastard out of here! No press allowed!

Rosenbaum stared at me. There was shock and repugnance in his eyes—as if he had just recognized me as a lineal descendant of Judas Iscanot. As they muscled him away, I began explaining to my accusers that I was really more of a political observer than a journalist. "Have you run for office?" I snapped at one of them. "No!" I thought not, goddamnt. You don't have the look of a man who's been to the well. I can see it in your face.

He was taken aback by this charge. His mouth flapped for a few seconds, then he blurted out "What about you? What office did you run for?"

I smiled gently "Sheriff, my friend I ran for Sheriff, out in Colorado—and I lost by just a hair. Because the liberals put the screws to me! Right! Are you surprised?"

He was definitely off balance

That's why I came here at an observer "I continued "I wanted to see what it was like on the inside of a running campaign"

It was just about then that somebody noticed my “press” tag

was attached to my shirt by a blue and white McGovern button. I'd been wearing it for three days, provoking occasional rude comments from hotheads on the convention floor and in various hotel lobbies—but this was the first time I'd felt called upon to explain myself. It was, after all, the only visible McGovern button in Miami Beach that week—in Flamingo Park or anywhere else—and now I was trying to join a spontaneous Nixon Youth demonstration that was about to spill out onto the floor of the very convention that had just nominated Richard Nixon for re-election, against McGovern.

They seemed to feel I was mocking their efforts in some way . . . and at that point the argument became so complex and disjointed that I can't possibly run it all down here. It is enough, for now, to say that we finally compromised: If I refused to leave without violence, then I was damn well going to have to carry a sign in the spontaneous demonstration—and also wear a plastic red, white, and blue Nixon hat. They never came right out and said it, but I could see they were uncomfortable at the prospect of all three network T.V cameras looking down on their spontaneous Nixon Youth demonstration and zeroing in—for their own perverse reasons—on a weird-looking, 35-year-old speed freak with half his hair burned off from overindulgence, wearing a big blue McGovern button on his chest, carrying a tall cup of "Old Milwaukee" and shaking his fist at John Chancellor up in the N.B.C booth—screaming: "You dirty bastard! You'll pay for this, by God! We'll rip your goddamn teeth out! Kill! Kill! Your number just came up, you communist son of a bitch!"

I politely dismissed all suggestions that I remove my McGovern button, but I agreed to carry a sign and wear a plastic hat like everybody else. "Don't worry," I assured them. "You'll be proud of me. There's a lot of bad blood between me and John Chancellor. He put acid in my drink last month at the Democratic Convention, then he tried to humiliate me in public."

“Acid? Golly, that's terrible! What kind of acid?”

"It felt like Sunshine," I said.

“Sunshine?”

Yeah He denied it, of course—But hell he always denies it. Why? a get asked

Would you admit a thing like that?

She shook her head emphatically. But I wouldn't do it either she said "You could kill somebody by making them drink acid—why would he want to kill you?"

I shrugged. "Who knows?" He eats a lot of it himself. I paused sensing confusion. Actually I doubt if he really wanted to kill me. It was a hell of a dose but not that strong. I smiled. All I remember is the first rush. It came up my spine like nine taran tulas. drilled me right to the big stool for two hours. I couldn't speak. couldn't even blink my eyes.

Boy what kind of acid does that? somebody asked

"Sunsh ne I said Every time

By now several others had picked up on the conversation A bright looking kid in a blue labirdine suit interrupted "Sunshine acid? Are you talking about L.S.D"

"Right" 1 s/d

Now the others understood A few laughed but others muttered darkly. You mean John Chancellor goes around putting L.S.D in people's drinks? He takes it himself? He's a dope addict?

Golly and the girl that explains a lot doesn't it

By this time I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. These poor ignorant young waterheads. Would they pass this weird revelation on to their parents when they got back home to Middletown. Shaker Heights and Orange County? Probably so I thought. And then their parents would write letters to N.B.C saying they'd learned from reliable sources that Chancellor was addicted to L.S.D-25—supplied to him in great quantities—no doubt by Communist agents—and demanding that he be jerked off the air immediately and locked up.

I was tempted to start babbling crazyly about Walter Cronkite that he was heavy into the white slavery trade—sending agents to South Vietnam to adopt orphans girls when shipping them back to his farm in Quebec to be lobotomized and sold into brothels up and down the Eastern seaboard

But before I could get into this one, the men in the red hats began shouting that the magic moment was on us. The Ready Room cracked with tension; we were into the countdown. They divided us into four groups of about five hundred each and gave the final instructions. We were to rush onto the floor and begin chanting, cheering, waving our signs at the T.V cameras, and generally whooping it up. Every other person was given a big garbage bag full of twenty-five or thirty helium balloons, which they were instructed to release just as soon as we reached the floor. Our entrance was timed precisely to coincide with the release of the thousands of non-helium balloons from the huge cages attached to the ceiling of the hall. . . so that our balloons would be rising while the others were falling, creating a sense of mass euphoria and perhaps even weightlessness for the prime-time T.V audience.

I was ready for some good clean fun at that point, and by the time we got the signal to start moving I was seized by a giddy conviction that we were all about to participate in a spectacle that would go down, as it were, in history.

They herded us out of the Ready Room and called a ragged kind of cadence while we double-timed it across the wet grass under the guava trees in back of the hall, and finally burst through a well-guarded access door held open for us by Secret Service men just as the balloons were released from the ceiling ... it was wonderful; I waved happily to the S.S man as I raced past him with the herd and then onto the floor. The hall was so full of balloons that I couldn't see anything at first, but then I spotted Chancellor up there in the booth and I let the bastard have it. First I held up my Garbage Men Demand Equal Time" sign at him. Then, when I was sure he'd noticed the sign, I tucked it under my arm and ripped off my hat, clutching it in the same fist I was shaking angrily at the N.B.C booth and screaming at the top of my lungs: "You evil scumsucker! You're through! You limp-wristed Nazi more!"

I went deep into the foulest back-waters of my vocabulary for that trip, working myself into a flat-out screeching hate-frenzy for

five or six minutes and drawing smiles of approval from some of my fellow demonstrators. They were dutifully chanting the slogans that had been assigned to them in the Ready Room—but I was really into it and I could see that my zeal impressed them.

But a little bit of that bullshit goes a long way and I quickly tired of it. When I realized that my erstwhile buddies were settling into the four more Years chant I figured it was time to move on.

Which was not easy By this time the whole crowd was facing the T.V booths and screaming in unison People were trampling each other to get up front and make themselves heard—or at least to get on camera for the homefolks—and the mood of that crowd was not receptive to the sight of a McGovern button in their midst so I moved against the tide as gently as possible keeping my elbows close down on my ribs and shouting Chancellor to the Wall” every thirty seconds or so to keep myself inconspicuous

By the time I got to the periodical press exit I was almost overcome with a sense of deja vu I had seen all this before I had been right in the middle of it before—but when?

Then it came to me. Yes. In 1964 at the Goldwater convention in San Francisco when poor Barry unloaded that fateful line about "Exremism in the defense of liberty is no vice etcetera" I was on the floor of the Cow Palace when he had that one on the crowd and I remember feeling genuinely frightened at the violent reaction it provoked. The Goldwater delegates went completely amok for fifteen or twenty minutes. He hadn't even finished the sentence before they were on their feet cheering wildly. Then as the human thunder kept building they mounted their metal chairs and began howling shaking their fists at Huntley and Brunkley up in the N.B.C booth—and finally they began picking up those chairs with both hands and bashing them against chairs other delegates were still standing on.

It was a memorable performance, etched every bit as clearly in the grey folds of my brain as the police beatings I saw at the corner of Michigan and Balboa four years later . . . but the Nixon convention in Miami was not even in the same league with Chicago in '68. The blinding stench of tear gas brought back memories, but only on the surface. Around midnight on Wednesday I found myself feeling around completely blind on Washington Avenue in front of the convention hall, bumping against cops wearing black rubber gas masks and running demonstrators clutching wet towels over their faces. Many of the cops were wearing khaki flak jackets and waving three-foot hickory pick-handles . . but nobody hit me, and despite the gas and the chaos, I never felt in danger. Finally, when the gas got so bad that I no longer knew what direction I was moving in, I staggered across somebody's lawn and began feeling my way along the outside of the house until I came to a water faucet. I sat down on the grass and soaked my handkerchief under the tap, then pressed it on my face, without rubbing, until I was able to see again. When I finally got up, I realized that at least a dozen cops had been standing within twenty feet of me the whole time, watching passively and not offering any help—but not beating me into a bloody, screaming coma, either.

That was the difference between Chicago and Miami. Or at least one of the most significant differences. If the cops in Chicago had found me crawling around in somebody's front yard, wearing a "press" tag and blind from too much gas, they'd have broken half my ribs and then hauled me away in handcuffs for "resisting arrest." I saw it happen so often that I still feel the bile rising when I think about it.

Time Warp: New Hampshire, August 24

We arrived at the Wayfarer sometime around four-thirty or five on Thursday morning, badly twisted—and for a while neither one of us said anything. We just sat there in the driveway and stared

straight ahead with no focus. Somewhere in front of the windshield I thought I could see a long row of sand dunes in the fog and there seemed to be small moving shapes.

"Jesus" I said finally. 'Look at all those goddamn sea otters I thought they were extinct."

'Sea otters' Crouse muttered, hunching down on the wheel and staring intently into the darkness

"Straight ahead," I said. "They're hunkered down in the dune grass. Hundreds of the bastards Yeah we're almost to San Luis Obispo

"What" he said still squinting into the darkness

I noticed he was running through the gears fairly rapidly First-Second-Third Fourth Fourth Third Second First Down and up up and down not paying much attention to what he was doing

"You better slow down I said We'll roll this bastard if we go into the turn with no warning with these goddamn U-joints blown out I looked over at him What the luck are you doing with the gears"

He continued to shift aimlessly not meeting my gaze The radio was getting louder some kind of big beat hurbily song about truck drivers popping little white pills and driving for six days with no sleep I could just barely hear him when he started talking

"I think we came to the motel he said 'There's a min standing in there behind the desk trying to watch us"

"Fuck him't said We're okay"

He shook his head "Not you

What

"The next thing is to register ' he and ' We're here McGovern headquarters Manchester New Hampshire and that man in there might call the police if we sit out here any longer without doing something"

I could see the man staring out at us through the glass doors "Do we have reservations? I said finally

He nodded

"Okay, I said 'Let s take in the luggage'"

He twisted around in his seat and began counting out loud. very slowly: “One ... Two ... Three ... Four ... Five ... Six ... and two silver ice-buckets.” Then he shook his head slowly. “No ... we can't take it all at once.”

“The hell we can't,” I snapped. “What the fuck do you want to do—leave it in the car?”

He shrugged.

"Not mine," I said. "Not with these U-joints like they are."

“Bullshit,” he muttered. “U-joints, sea otters, sand dunes . . . I think we're about to get busted; let's walk in there and tell him we want to register.” He tossed off his seat belt and opened the door. “Let's each take a suitcase and tell him who we are.”

“Right,” I said, opening my own door and stepping out. “We got here from Boston with no trouble. Why should we have any now?”

He was opening up the back, to get the luggage. It was one of those new Volvo station wagons with a hinge on the whole rear end, like a small garage door. I didn't want to alarm the man inside the motel by moving slowly or erratically, so I planted my left foot firmly on the gravel driveway and moved fast toward the rear of the car.

Whack!!! A dull sound in my ear, and pain all over my head. I heard myself screech ... then reeling across the gravel and falling into shrubbery, grasping wildly for a handhold, then hitting a wooden wall with a heavy thump ... then silence, while I leaned there, holding onto the wall with one hand and my head with the other. I could see Crouse watching me, saying something I couldn't hear. The right half of my skull felt like it had just been blown off by a bazooka. But I felt no blood or bone splinters, and after forty seconds or so I managed to straighten up.

“Jesus god!” I said. “What was that?”

He shook his head. "You just suddenly fell away and started yelling," he said. "Christ, you took a real crack on the head—but you were coming so fast I couldn't say anything until..."

"Was it Mankiewicz?" I asked.

He hesitated, seeming to think for a moment, then nodded. "I

think so" he said quietly ' But he came out of the darkness so fast, I couldn't be sure Jesus he never even broke stride. He got a full stroke running shot on you with that big leather sap he carries then he kept right on going, across the driveway and into those bushes at the end of the building where the path leads down to the river over there by the gazebo'

I could see the white-domed wooden gazebo out there in the moonlight, squatting peacefully about ten yards offshore in the slow-moving current of the Piscataquog River but now it seemed very ominous looking and big enough inside to conceal a dozen men with saps

Was Mankewicz out there? How long had he been waiting? And how had he known I was coming? It had been a last-minute decision precipitated by a snarling argument with the night manager of the Ritz-Carleton in Boston. He'd refused to cash a check for me at 2 AM but he finally agreed to spring for $10 if I gave the bellboy 10 percent of it for bringing the cash up to the room.

By that time, the bellboy was so rattled that he forgot to take the check. I had to coax him back down the hall and push it into his hands and there was no argument when we checked out moments later, after stripping the room of everything we could haul through the lobby in big laundry bags.

Now, ninety miles away on the outskirts of Manchester, I had to shut one eye in order to focus on Crouse "Are you sure that was Mankiewicz who hit me?" I asked, trying to look him in the eye. He nodded.

“How did he know I'd be here tonight?” I snapped “You fin-ered me, didn't you?”

"Hell no" he replied "I didn't even know myself until we had that scene at the Ritz"

I thought for a moment, trying to reconstruct the events that had brought us to this place ' Back there in Boston, you were gone for ten minutes!" I said, "When you went out to get your car

yes you carried those ice buckets out, then you disappeared I slammed my fist on the raised rear door of the Volvo. " You had time to call, didn't you?"

He was pulling our bags out, trying to ignore me.

"Who else could have tipped him off?" I shouted.

He glanced nervously at the man behind the desk inside the office. "Okay," he said finally. "I might as well admit it ... Yeah, I knew Frank was laying for you, so I called him and set it all up."

My head was beginning to swell. "Why?" I groaned. "What was in it for you?"

He shrugged. Then reached for another suitcase. "Money," he said. "Power. He promised me a job in the White House."

I nodded. "So you set me up, you bastard."

"Why not," he replied. "I've worked with Frank before. We understand each other." He smiled. "How do you think I got this new Volvo wagon?"

"From Rolling Stone," I said. "Hell, they paid for mine."

"What?"

“Sure, we all got them.”

He stared at me, looking very groggy. "Bullshit," he muttered. "Let's get inside before Mankiewicz decides to come back and finish you off." He nodded toward the gazebo. "I can hear him pacing around out there ... and if I know Frank, he'll want to finish the job."

I focused my good eye on the gazebo, a moonlit wooden pillow out in the river ... Then I picked up my bag. "You're right," I said. "He'll make another try. Let's get inside. I have a can of Mace in that satchel. You think he can handle it?"

“Handle what?”

“Mace. Soak the fucker down with it. Put him right to his knees, stone blind, unable to breathe for forty-five minutes.”

Crouse nodded. "Right, it'll be a good lesson for him. That arrogant bastard. This'll teach him to go around cracking responsible journalists in the head."

Checking into the Wayfarer was difficult, but not in the way we expected. The man at the desk ignored our twisted condition and sent us off to a wing so far from the main nexus of the hotel that it

Aucust

took us about forty-five minutes to find our rooms and by then it was almost dawn, so we cranked up the tape machine and got into the Singapore Grey for a while admiring the appointments and congratulating ourselves on having the wisdom to flee the Ritz Carleton and move to a decent place like the Wayfarer

In the course of this apparently endless campaign I have set up the National Affairs Desk in some of the worst hotels, motels, and other foul commercial lodging establishments in the western world. Politicians, journalists and traveling salesmen seem to gravitate to these places—for reasons I'd rather not think about, right now—but the Wayfarer is a rare and constant exception. The one that proves the rule, perhaps but for whatever reason, is one of my favorite places: a rambling, woodsy barracks with big rooms, good food, full ice machines and yes a brief history of pleasant memories.

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.

Which is precisely why both McCarthy and McGovern did so well here. 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. There is no Secret Service presence in New Hampshire: no vast and everpresent staff of hired minions and police escorts. The candidates drive around the state in rented Ford's accompanied by a handful of local workers and press people and they actually walk into people's living rooms and try to explain themselves—taking any and all questions face to face, with no screening and no place to hold when things get nasty.

It was up in New Hampshire, several weeks before the vote, that I blundered into that now infamous "Men's Room Interview" with McGovern. People have been asking me about it ever since—as if it were some kind of weird journalistic coup, a rare and unnatural accomplishment pulled off by what had to have been a super-inventive or at least super-aggressive pervert.

But in truth it was nothing more than a casual conversation between two people standing at adjoining urinals. I went in there to piss—not to talk to George McGovern—but when I noticed him standing next to me I figured it was only natural to ask him what was happening. If it had been the men's room at the Los Angeles Coliseum during half time at a Rams-49ers game I would probably have cursed John Brodie for throwing "that last interception" … but since we were standing in Exeter, New Hampshire, about midway through a presidential primary, I cursed Senator Harold Hughes for siding with Muskie instead of the man I was talking to … and if we had just driven through a terrible hailstorm I would probably have cursed the hailstones instead of Hughes.

Which hardly matters. The point is that anybody could have walked up to that urinal next to McGovern at that moment, and asked him anything they wanted—and he would have answered, the same way he answered me.

That is the odd magic of the New Hampshire primary, and I didn't really appreciate it until about two months later when I realized that every time McGovern wanted to piss, at least nine Secret Service agents would swoop into the nearest men's room and clear it completely, then cordon off the whole area while the poor bastard went in alone to empty his bladder.

This was only one of the big changes in the style of the McGovern campaign that Crouse and I tried to discuss rationally in the dawn hours of that Friday morning in Manchester. George was scheduled to arrive at the local airport at 10:15, then lead a huge caravan of press, staff, and S.S men to the J. F. McElwain Shoe Factory on Silver Street—a symbolic Return to The Roots; his first full-dress campaign appearance since the disastrous "Eagleton affair."

It was the first time since the day after the California primary that we had a chance to talk seriously about McGovern. We had covered most of the primaries together, and we had both been in Miami for the convention, but I don't recall itetting a single coherent sentence the whole time. I was down there—except perhaps on Thursday afternoon in the basement coffee shop of the Doral Beach Hotel, when I spent an hour or so denouncing McGovern for selecting a "burn" and a "hack" like Eagleton to share the ticket with him. Marklewas had not brought the official word down from the penthouse yet, and I came home to take the knowledge and nobody's sermon to happy about it. The lobby of the Doral was jammed with media people, waiting for the announcement, but after milling around up there for a while I went down to the coffee shop with Dave Sugarman a 22 year old Dartmouth student from Manchester who had signed on as a volunteer "press aide" in New Hampshire and gone on to handle McGovern's press operations in several other key primary states. He was obviously less than pleased with the Eagleton choice. But he was after all on The Staff—so he did his duty and tried to calm me down. He failed. I had been without sleep for two or three days at the time and my temper was close to the surface. Beyond that, I had spent the past five or six days brooding angrily over the list of vice presidential possibilities that McGovern had floated in the New York Times several days before the convention even started. I recall telling Minkiewicz in the coffee shop on Friday night that I had never seen so many hums and hacks listed in a simple paragraph in many publications for any reason. Mr. Mankew had come to mind are Governor Dale Bumpers of Arkansas and Governor G. W. Carter of Georgia. The others—including Eagleton and Shiver—were almost as bid I thought. But Frank assured me that my worth was premature. "Don't worry," he said. "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised." The clear implication which made the sense at the time, was that McGovern was merely tossing a few bones to the demoralized "party bosses" who knew they were about to get steam rolled. Eagleton was a Mankew man, Shiver was a kennedy by marriage.

pers were Good Ole Boys . . . but I had spent enough time around Mankiewicz in the past six months to understand that he was saying all these names were just decoys: that when the deal went down, McGovern would choose his vice-president with the same merciless eye to the New Politics that had characterized his sweep through the primaries.

So there was nothing personal in my loud objections to Eagleton a week later. It struck me as a cheap and unnecessary concession to the pieced-off ward-heeler syndrome that McGovern had been fighting all along. Tom Eagleton was exactly the kind of V.P candidate that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen: a harmless, Catholic, neo-liberal Rotarian nebbish from one of the border states, who presumably wouldn't make waves. A “progressive young centrist” with more ambition than brains: Eagleton would have run with anybody. Four years earlier he had seen Hubert lift Muskie out of obscurity and turn him into a national figure, even in defeat. Big Ed had blown it, of course, but his role in the '68 campaign had given him priceless Exposure—the same kind of Exposure that Eagleton knew he would need as a springboard to the White House in '76 or '80, depending on whether McGovern won or lost in '72.

But winning or losing didn't really matter to Eagleton. The important thing was getting on the ticket. Exposure. Recognition. No more of this "Tom Who?" bullshit. He was a career politician, and he had driven himself harder than all but a few people knew, to get where he was on that Thursday afternoon in Miami when he heard McGovern's voice on the telephone.

Did he have any “skeletons in his closet?”

Fuck no, he didn't. At least none that either Mankiewicz or Hart were going to locate that afternoon without a king-hell set of bolt-cutters. Eagleton understood—like all the rest of us in Miami that day—that McGovern had to name his choice by 4:00 P.M. or take his chances with whoever the convention might eventually nominate in what would surely have been a brain-rattling holocaust on Thursday night. It was difficult enough with Eagleton already chose a God only knows who might have emerged if the delegates had actually been forced to name the vice-presidential nominee in an all-night floor fight. Given the nature and mood of the people on that floor, McGovern might have found himself running with Evil Knicvel.

So all this gibberish about how many questions Mankiewicz asked Eagleton and how much truth Eagleton avoided telling is beside the point. The deed was done when McGovern made the call. Only a lunatic would have expected Eagleton to start babbling about his “shock treatments” at that point. Shit, all he had to do was stall for fifteen minutes; just keep talking . . . it was almost four o'clock, and McGovern was out of options.

Just exactly why things came to this desperate pass is still not clear. It is almost impossible now to find anybody remotely associated with McGovern who will admit to having been for Eagleton. He "sort of happened," they say, "because none of the others were quite right." Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Auto Workers, was a Catholic, but a fallen one. ("He hasn't been to church in twenty years," said one McGovern aide.) Wisconsin Governor Pat Lucey was Catholic, but his wife was given to tantrums in the Martha Mitchell style... and Mayor Kevin White of Boston was not acceptable to Ted Kennedy. At least that's how I heard it from one of McGovern's speech writers. The official public version, however, says White was vetoed by the two kingpins of McGovern's Massachusetts delegation: Harvard Economist John Kenneth Galbraith and Congressman Robert F. Drinian.

One member of the Massachusetts delegation told me Galbraith and Drinian had nothing to do with White's rejection—but when I asked Galbraith about it in Miami, on the first night of the G.O.P convention, he first refused to say anything at all—but when I persisted he finally said, "Well, I'll tell you this much—it wasn't Teddy." Selah.⁴

The other vice-presidential finalists were rejected for a variety of reasons that don't really matter much now, because the point of the whole grim story is that McGovern and his brain trust were determined from the start to use the V.P as a peace offering to the Old Politics gang they'd just beaten. It was crucial, they felt, to select somebody acceptable to the Old Guard. The Meany/Daley/Muskie/Humphrey/Truman/L.B.1 axis — because McGovern needed those bastards to beat Nixon.

Which may be true—or at least as true as the hoary wisdom that said a maverick like McGovern couldn't possibly win the Democratic nomination because Ed Muskie began the campaign with a lock on the Party Machinery and all the polls who mattered

One of McGovern's closest advisors now is a widely respected political wizard named Fred Dutton a 49 year old Washington lawyer and longtime kennedy advisor who recently wrote a book called Changing Sources of Power. American Politics in the 1970s Dutton's main theory resolves around the idea that the politics of the Seventies will be drastically different from the politics of the last

thirty or even forty years; that the 1970s will produce a “cornerstone generation” that will bring about a major historical watershed in American politics.

“The politics of the Seventies offer one of those rare chances to rally a new following,” he says, “or at least to provoke a different configuration, out of this immense sector of younger voters who are still at an impressionable and responsive stage. If an exciting individual or cause really stirs this generation, it could be activated in numbers that make irrelevant any past indicator of political participation among the young, and it would then become one of the few human waves of historic consequence. If this still unmarshalled mass is allowed to scatter, or a substantial part of it is politically turned off, it will pass by as one of the great lost opportunities in American politics and history.”

The book makes more sense—to me, at least—than anything I've read about politics in ten years. It is a cool, scholarly affirmation of the same instinct that plunged me and almost (but not quite) half the population of this Rocky Mountain valley where I live into what came to be known as "The Aspen Freak Power Uprising" of 1969 and '70.

Ah yes . . . but that is a different story. No time for it now.

We were talking about Fred Dutton's book, which reads like a perfect blueprint for everything the McGovern campaign seemed to stand for—until sometime around the middle of the California primary, when Dutton finally agreed to take an active, out-front role, as one of George's main advisors. This was also the fateful point in time when it suddenly became clear to almost every political pro in the country except Hubert Humphrey and his campaign manager that McGovern was going to be the Democratic Party's candidate against Nixon in 1972... and Dutton was not alone when the time came for those who saw the handwriting on the wall, as it were, to come out of their holes and sign on. Senators Frank Church of Idaho, Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, John Tunney of California: These three and many more scratched all their previous commitments and got going strong behind McGovern. By

June 1—six days before the vote in California—George had more rich and powerful friends than he knew what to do with

Not everyone agrees that June 1 was also the day—give or take a few—when the McGovern campaign seemed to peak and start losing its energy. There was still enough momentum to edge Hubert in California and to win New York by a landslide against no opposition and enough tactical expertise to croak the A.B.M (Anybody But McGovern). Movement in Miami

But once that was done—the moment his troops understood that George had actually not the nomination—his act started falling apart

Another problem in Wisconsin as elsewhere is patching things up with old time Democrats and labor leaders who were strong backers of Senator Humphries or Senator Muskie. The organization is working on it. Everywhere that an office is opened: the Democratic Party and local candidates are invited to share it. Bumper stickers and signs are being made available to permit candidates to have their names on them with Mr. McGovern. And other efforts are being made.

a move was made a few days ago to try to win favor from Rep Clement J Zablocki a Democrat who has been a strong supporter of the 1 setnam war policies of both Democratic and Republican administrations Mr Zablocki, whose Fourth (congressional) District includes Milwaukee's working class South Side is faced with primary opposition Sept 12 from Grant Waldo, an anti-war candidate

When the McGovern state organizers found that their Fourth District chairman was running Mr Waldo's campaign they squeezed him out abruptly "We can't possibly win the Fourth without the Zahlocki voters," Mr Dixon explained

—-excerpt from a New York Times article headlined

Wisconsin McGovern Team Revenues Preprimary Faith,"

by Douglas Kneteland, 8/25/72

There will not be universal agreement at this time on the idea that Nixon is seriously worried about losing to McGovern in November. The September 1 Gallup Poll showed Nixon leading by 61 percent to 30 percent and still climbing ... while McGovern, on the same day, was appearing on the C.B.S evening news to deny that his recently hired campaign chairman, former Democratic Party chief Larry O'Brien, was threatening to quit because the campaign is "disorganized" and "uncoordinated." Moments later, O'Brien appeared on the screen to say things weren't really that bad, and that there was no truth to any rumors concerning his inability to stay in the same room for more than forty seconds with Gary Hart, McGovern's campaign manager. ... Then Hart came on to deny any and all rumors to the effect that he would just as soon feed O'Brien, head-first, into the nearest meat grinder.

This kind of thing is extremely heavy-duty for a presidential candidate. Private power struggles inside a campaign are common enough, but when one of your top three men flips out and starts blowing his bile all over the national press and the T.V networks, it means you're in a lot more trouble than you realized... and when the howler is a veteran professional pol like O'Brien, you have to start flirting with words like Madness, Treachery, and Doom.

It would have seemed far more logical if Gary Hart had been the one to flip out. After all, he's only thirty-four years old, managing his first presidential campaign, not used to this kind of pressure, etcetera . . . but when I called Gary today, almost immediately after catching his strange act on the Cronkite show, he sounded more cheerful and relaxed than I'd ever heard him. It was like calling McGovern headquarters and talking with Alfred E. Neuman . . . "What! Me worry?"

But Hart has been talking like that since last Christmas: relentless optimism. There was never any doubt in his mind—at least not in any conversation with me—that McGovern was going to win the Democratic nomination, and then the presidency. One of his central beliefs for the past two years has been that winning the Democratic nomination would be much harder than beating Nixon.

He explained it to me one night in Nebraska, sitting in the bar of the Omaha Hilton on the day before the primary Nixon was a very vulnerable incumbent, he'd failed to end the war, he'd botched the economy, he was a terrible campaigner, he would crack under pressure, nobody trusted him, etc

So any Democratic candidate could beat Nixon, and all the candidates knew it. That's why they'd been fighting like wolverines for the nomination—especially Humphrey who was a far more effective campaigner than Nixon and who had just inherited enough of the "regular" old line party machinery, money and connections from the Muskie campaign to make McGovern go into California and take on what amounted to the entire Old Guard of the Democratic Party. California was the key to both the nomination and the White House, a victory on the coast would make all the rest seem easy.

Hart and I agreed on all this at the time Nixon was obviously vulnerable and he was such a rotten campaigner that, four years ago Humphrey—even without the Youth Vote or the activist Left—had gained something like fifteen points on Nixon in seven weeks, and only lost by an eyelash. So this time around, with even a third of the 25 million potential new voters added to Hubert's '68 power base anybody who could win the Democratic nomination was almost a cinch to win the presidency.

Now, looking back on that conversation, I can see a few flaws in our thinking. We should have known, for instance, that Nixon had been hoarding his best shots for the '72 stretch drive. The China/Russia trips, pulling the troops out of Vietnam, ran rodding the economy but none of these things, no matter how successful, would change enough votes to offset the Youth Vote. The day after he won the nomination, McGovern would bank at least five million 18 to 21-year-olds' votes and another five million by mid October, after massive campus registration drives.

So the minor flaws didn't matter a hell of a lot It was the Big One—the Humphrey Sidewinder—that blew half the spine out of McGovern's campaign strategy The one thing that apparently

never occurred to either Hart or Frank Mankiewicz—or to me either, for that matter, despite my rancid contempt for the Humphrey/Meany axis and everything it stood for—was the ominous possibility that those evil bastards would refuse to close ranks behind McGovern once he had the nomination. It was almost inconceivable that they would be so bitter in defeat that they would tacitly deliver their own supporters to a conservative Republican incumbent, instead of at least trying to rally them behind the candidate of their own party... but this is what they have done, and in doing it they have managed to crack the very foundations of what McGovern had naturally assumed would be the traditional hard core of his Democratic Party power base.

The trademark of the McGovern campaign since it started has been ineptitude which somehow turns into victory.

—unnamed “McGovern topsider,” quote in Newsweek, 8/14/72

God only knows who actually said that. It sounds like vintage Mankiewicz—from that speedy, free-falling era that ended in California. . . . not on the night of June 6, when the votes were counted, but somewhere prior to June 1, when Frank and all the others were still wallowing crazily in the news from all those polls that said McGovern was going to stomp Humphrey in California by anywhere from fifteen to twenty percentage points.

California was “The Superbowl.” Hubert himself had said it; whoever won “on the coast” would get the nod in Miami. . . it was a foregone conclusion, and I doubt if I'll ever forget the sight of Mankiewicz, Hart, and all the other “vets” swaggering through the lobby of the Wilshire Hyatt House Hotel in Los Angeles. It was almost impossible to talk to them. They were “high as a pigeon,” in Lord Buckley's words, and the adrenaline level in McGovern headquarters just a few blocks down Wilshire Boulevard was so tall that you could feel it out on the sidewalk. During the day you could almost hear the energy humming, and at night the place seemed to glow. One of the lowest underdog trips in American politics was about to explode in a monumental victory celebration at the Hollywood Palladium on Tuesday night, and the

people who d put it together were feeling like champions

Until somewhere around midnight on election day when the votes came rolling in and cut McGovern's victory margin down to a nervous five percentage points instead of fifteen to twenty. On Monday afternoon, Gary Hart had tried to ease the pain of the shock he suddenly realized was coming by announcing that the final margin would be between eight and ten percent. And just before the polls closed on Tuesday, Mankiewicz cut it again telling a network T.V reporter that he thought McGovern would win California by five points which turned out to be right on the mark although neither Hart nor Mankiewicz nor any of the embarrassed pollsters could offer any coherent explanation for what looked like a massive swing to Humphrey in the final days of the campaign.

Sometime around 2:00 on Wednesday morning I was standing with Hart in the hall outside the hotel press room when a glum looking student canvasser grabbed his arm and asked What happened?

What do you mean What happen-d? Gary snapped We won goddamnt! What did you expect?

The young volunteer stared at him but before he could say anything Hart cut him off What are you standing around here for? Let's go to New York We have no to do

The boy hesitated then flashed a thin smile and darted into the press room where the beer was flowing free and nobody was hung up on embarrassing questions like "What happened?"

But the question remains and the answer is too pregnant to be shrugged off with a simple drill sergeant's comment like: We won't. Which was true and a lot of people called it a Great Victory—which was also true, in a sense—but in the tight little circle of brain trusters who run the McGovern campaign the reaction was not euphoric. There was nothing wrong with the victory margin itself. It was very convincing they said. Absolutely decisive.

And besides, it cinched the nomination. California's 271 delegates would send McGovern down to Miami with enough votes to win on the first ballot.

Which he did—although not without some unexpected problems and a few hellish aftereffects—but when the sun loomed out of the ocean to light Miami Beach on the morning of Thursday, July 14, George McGovern was the man in the catbird seat. Despite the savage opposition of Big Labor and "The Bosses," McGovern would carry the party colors against Nixon in November. For better or for worse... and to ease the sting of those who figured it was definitely worse, McGovern made room in his chariot for a sharp and ambitious young pol from Missouri named Thomas Eagleton; a first-term Senator and a Catholic by birth, known as a friend of Big Labor and also known—even to McGovern—as a man who didn't mind taking thirteen or fourteen tall drinks now and then, and whose only other distinguishing factor at the time was a naked and overweening lust for the Main Chance. Senator Eagleton was one of the two "possibles" on McGovern's list of V.P candidates who didn't mind telling anyone who asked that he was ready and willing to spring for it. The other was Ted Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, a good friend of Mayor Daley's.

McGovern never even considered Shriver in Miami ^{5} and his personal affinity for Eagleton was close to nil. Which hardly

mattered—would about six hours before the deadline on Thursday—because up until then George was still convinced that Ted Kennedy would “come around.” He had never given much serious thought to alternative candidates, because McGovern and most of his ranking staff people had been interpreting Kennedy's hazy/negative reaction to the V.P offer as a sort of shrewd flirtation that would eventually come up “yes.” A McGovern/Kennedy ticket would, after all, put Nixon in deep trouble from the start—and it would also give Teddy a guaranteed launching pad for 1980, when he would still be two years younger than McGovern is today.

Indeed It made fine sense on paper and I recall making that same argument myself a few months back—but I do sooner sent it on the Mojo Wire than I realized it made no sense at all. There was something finally and chemically wrong with the idea of Ted Kennedy running for vice president it would be like the Jets trading Joe Nam sth to the Dallas Cowboys as a sub for Roger Staubach

Which might make excellent sense, from some angles, but Namath would never consent to it—for the same reasons Kennedy wouldn't put his own presidential ambitions in limbo for eight years, behind McGovern or anyone else. Superstar politicians and superstar quarterbacks have the same kind of delicate egos, and people who live on that level grow accustomed to very thin, rarified air. They have trouble breathing in the lower altitudes, and if they can't breathe right, they can't function.

The ego is the crucial factor here, but ego is a hard thing to put on paper—especially on that 3x5 size McGovern recommends. File cards are handy for precinct canvassing, and for people who want to get heavy into the Dewey Decimal System, but they are not much good for cataloguing things like Lust, Ambition, or Madness.

This may explain why McGovern blew his gig with Kennedy. It was a perfectly rational notion—and that was the flaw, because a man on the scent of the White House is rarely rational. He is more like a beast in heat: a bull elk in the rut, crashing blindly through the timber in a fever for something to fuck. Anything! A cow, a calf, a mare—any flesh and blood beast with a hole in it. The bull elk is a very crafty animal for about fifty weeks of the year; his senses are so sharp that only an artful stalker can get within a thousand yards of him . . . but when the rut comes on, in the autumn, any geek with the sense to blow an elk-whistle can lure a bull elk right up to his car in ten minutes if he can drive within hearing range.

The dumb bastards lose all control of themselves when the rut comes on. Their eyes glaze over, their ears pack up with hot wax, and their loins get heavy with blood. Anything that sounds like a cow elk in heat will fuse the central nervous systems of every bull on the mountain. They will race through the timber like huge cannonballs, trampling small trees and scraping off bloody chunks of their own hair on the unyielding bark of the big ones. They behave like sharks in a feeding frenzy, attacking each other with all the demented violence of human drug dealers gone mad on their own wares.

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.

Dozen Protestors Do About-Face

Sergeant Roy Gates an Army recruiter in Miami Beach looked out his carpeted and paneled office at a sign in the window saving Von-délegutes—Help United

In what must rank as one of the Arms's finest recruiting efforts Gates thought he had convinced 13 non-delegates during the conventions to enlist in the military

Aine of the protesters however failed to pass the Army's intelligence tests

Their low education surprised me—around the eighth grade and wanting to change it world he said They said they didn't want to go along with the hard core radicals It's arraing the different types you forl —Mimmi News Friday August 25

On Tuesday afternoon my car disappeared. I left it on the street in front of the hotel while I went in to pick up my swimming trunks and when I came back out it was gone.

To hell with it I thought it was time to get out of Miami

I went up to my room and thought for a while, sitting with my back to the typewriter and staring out the window at the big ocean going yachts and luxury houseboats tied up across the street at the piers along Indian Creek. Last week they'd been crawling with people and cocktail parties. Every time the Fontanebleau lobby started buzzing with rumors about another crowd of demonstrators bearing down on the hotel from the direction of Flamingo Park the boats across Collins Avenue would fill up with laughing Republican delegates wearing striped blazers and cocktail dresses. There was no better place they said for watching the street action. As the demonstrators approached the front entrance to the hotel they found themselves walking a gauntlet of not equipped police on one side and martini sipping G.O.P delegates on the other

One yacht—the Wild Rose, out of Houston—rumbled back and forth, just offshore, at every demonstration. From the middle of Collins Avenue, you could see the guests lounging in deck chairs, observing the action through high-powered field glasses, and reaching around from time to time to accept a fresh drink from crewmen wearing white serving jackets with gold epaulets.

The scene on the foredeck of the Wild Rose was so gross, so flagrantly decadent, that it was hard to avoid comparing it with the kind of bloodthirsty arrogance normally associated with the last days of the Roman Empire: Here was a crowd of rich Texans, floating around on a $100,000 yacht in front of a palatial Miami Beach hotel, giggling with excitement at the prospect of watching their hired gladiators brutalize a mob of howling, half-naked Christians. I half-expected them to start whooping for blood and giving the Thumbs Down signal.

Nobody who was out there on the street with the demonstrators would be naive enough to compare them to “helpless Christians.” With the lone exception of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the demonstrators in Miami were a useless mob of ignorant, chicken-shit ego-junkies whose only accomplishment was to embarrass the whole tradition of public protest. They were hopelessly disorganized, they had no real purpose in being there, and about half of them were so wasted on grass, wine, and downers that they couldn't say for sure whether they were raising hell in Miami or San Diego.

Five weeks earlier, these same people had been sitting in the lobby of the Doral, calling George McGovern a "lying pig" and a "warmonger." Their target-hotel this time was the Fontainebleau, headquarters for the national press and many T.V cameras. If the Rolling Stones came to Miami for a free concert, these assholes would build their own fence around the bandstand—just so they could have something to tear down and then "crash the gates."

The drug action in Flamingo Park the official campground for 'non-delegates' and other would be protesters' was so bottom heavy with downers that it was known as Qualude Alley

Qualude is a mild sleeping pill but—consumed in large quantities along with wine grass and adrenaline—it produces the same kind of stupid mean-drunk effect as Seconal (Reds). The Quao lude effect was so obvious in Flamingo Park that the Last Patrol's caravan of Vietnam Veis—who came here in motorcades from all parts of the country—refused to even set up camp with the other demonstrators. They had serious business in Miami they explained and the last thing they needed was a public alliance with a mob of stoned street crazies and screaming teenboppers.

The Vets made their camp in a far corner of the Park then sealed it off with a network of perimeter guards and checkpoints that made it virtually impossible to enter that area unless you knew somebody inside. There was an ominous sense of dignity.

Anted For President Ralph Steadman

August

about everything the V.V.A.W did in Miami They rarely even hunted at violence, but their very presence was menacing—on a level that the Yippies, Zappies, and S.D.S street crazies never even approached despite all their velling and trushing.

The most impressive single performance in Miami during the three days of the G.O.P convention was the V.V.A.W march on the Fontainebleau on Tuesday afternoon. Most of the press and T.V people were either down at the Convention Hall, covering the "liberals versus conservatives" floor-fight over rules for seating delegates in 1976—or standing around in the boiling mid-afternoon sun at Miami International Airport, waiting for Nixon to come swooping out of the sky in Air Force One.

My own plan for that afternoon was to drive far out to the end of Key Biscayne and find an empty part of the beach where I could swim by myself in the ocean, and not have to talk to anybody for a while. I didn't give a fuck about watching the rules fight, a doomed charade that the Nixon brain-trust had already settled in favor of the conservatives... and I saw no point in going out to the airport to watch three thousand well-rehearsed "Nixon Youth" robots "welcome the President."

being for a change—or better still, like an animal Just get off by myself and drift around naked in the sea for a few hours

But as I drove toward key Biscayne with the top down, squatting into the sun, I saw the Vets. They were moving up Collins Avenue in dead silence, twelve hundred of them dressed in battle fatigues helmets, combat boots a few carried full size plastic M-16's, many peace symbols, girlfriends walking beside vets being pushed along the street in slow moving wheelchairs, others walking perkly on crutches But nobody spoke all the "stop start," "fast, slow" "left, right" commends came from "platoon leaders" walking slightly off to the side of the main column and using hand signals

One look at that eerie procession killed my plan to go swimming that afternoon. I left my car at a parking meter in front of the Cadillac Hotel and joined the march. No 'joined' is the wrong word, that was not the kind of procession you just walked up and "joined. Not without prying some very heavy dues an arm gone here a leg there paralysis a face full of lumpy scar tissue all staring straight ahead as the long silent column moved between rows of hotel porches full of tight lipped Senior Citizens, through the heart of Miami Beach.

The silence of the march was contagious almost threatening. There were hundreds of spectators but nobody said a word I walked beside the column for ten blocks and the only sounds I remember hearing were the soft thump of boot leather on hot asphalt and the occasional rattling of an open canteen top.

The Fontainebleau was already walked off from the street by five hundred heavily armed cops when the front ranks of the Last Patrol arrived, still marching in total silence. Several hours earlier, a noisy mob of Yippie/Zippie/S.D.S "non-delegates" had shown up in front of the Fontainebleau and been met with leers and curses from G.O.P delegates and other partisan spectators, massed behind the police lines. But now there was no jeering. Even the cops seemed deflated. They watched nervously from behind their face-shields as the V.V.A.W platoon leaders, still using hand signals.

funneled the column into a tight semicircle that blocked all three northbound lanes of Collins Avenue. During earlier demonstrations—at least six in the past three days—the police had poked people with riot sticks to make sure at least one lane of the street stayed open for local traffic, and on the one occasion when mere prodding didn't work, they had charged the demonstrators and cleared the street completely.

But not now. For the first and only time during the whole convention, the cops were clearly off balance. The Vets could have closed all six lanes of Collins Avenue if they'd wanted to, and nobody would have argued. I have been covering anti-war demonstrations with depressing regularity since the winter of 1964, in cities all over the country, and I have never seen cops so intimidated by demonstrators as they were in front of the Fontainebleau Hotel on that hot Tuesday afternoon in Miami Beach.

There was an awful tension in that silence. Not even that pack of rich sybarites out there on the foredeck of the Wild Rose of Houston could stay in their seats for this show. They were standing up at the rail, looking worried, getting very bad vibrations from whatever was happening over there in the street. Was something wrong with their gladiators? Were they spooked? And why was there no noise?

After five more minutes of harsh silence, one of the V.V.A.W platoon leaders suddenly picked up a bullhorn and said: "We want to come inside."

Nobody answered, but an almost visible shudder ran through the crowd. "O my God!" a man standing next to me muttered. I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively —for the first time in a long, long while—by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is always your watch, and once you've lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when it's time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket.

August

I can't say for sure what I would have done if the Last Patrol had tried to crack the police line and seize control of the Fontainebleau—but I have a fair idea, based on instinct and rude experience, so the unexpected appearance of Congressman Pete McCloskey on that scene calmed my nerves considerably. He shoved his way through the police line and talked with a handful of the V.V.A.W spokesmen long enough to convince them, apparently, that a frontal assault on the hotel would be suicidal.

One of the platoon leaders smiled faintly and assured McCloskey that they'd never had any intention of attacking the Fontainebleau. They didn't even want to go in. The only reason they asked was to see if the Republicans would turn them away in front of network T.V cameras—which they did, but very few cameras were on hand that afternoon to record it. All the network floor crews were down at the Convention Hall, and the ones who would normally have been on standby alert at the Fontainebleau were out at the airport filming Nixon's arrival.

No doubt there were backup crews around somewhere—but I suspect they were up on the roof, using very long lenses; because in those first few moments when the Vets began massing in front of the police line there was no mistaking the potential for real violence... and it was easy enough to see, by scanning the faces behind those clear plastic rint masks, that the cream of the Florida State Highway Patrol had no appetite at all for a public crunch with twelve hundred angry Vietnam Veterans.

Whatever the outcome, it was a guaranteed nightmare situation for the police. Defeat would be bad enough, but victory would be intolerable. Every T.V screen in the nation would show a small army of heavily armed Florida cops clubbing unarmed veterans—some on crutches and others in wheelchairs—whose only crime was trying to enter Republican convention headquarters in Miami Beach. How could Nixon explain a thing like that? Could he slither out from under it?

Never in hell, I thought—and all it would take to make a thing like that happen, right now, would be for one or two Vets to lose control of themselves and try to crash through the police line; just enough violence to make one cop use his riot stick. The rest would take care of itself.

Ah nightmares nightmares Not even Sammy Davis Junior could stomach that kind of outrage He would flee the Nixon family compound on Key Biscayne within moments after the first news bulletin rejecting his newfound soul brother like a suckfish cutting loot from a mortally wounded shark and the next day's Washington Post would report that Sammy Davis Junior. had spent most of the previous night trying to ooze through the keyhole of George McGovern's front door in Washington D.C.

Right but none of this happened McCloskey's appearance seemed to soothe both the crowd and the cops The only violent act of the afternoon executed moments later when I foul meathed twenty year old blends girl named Dubby Marshal tried to ram her way through the crowd on a 125 Honds's Get out of my way' she kept shouting This is rid culous' These people should go back where they belong

The Vets reared her but about halfway through the crowd she ran into a nest of press photographers, and that was as far as she went. An hour later she was still sitting there, biting her lips and whining about how "ridiculous" it all was. I was tempted to lean over and set her hair on fire with my Zippo, but by that time the confrontation had settled down to a series of bullhorn speeches by various Vets. Not much of what was said could be heard more than fifteen feet from the bullhorn, however, because of two Army helicopters that suddenly appeared overhead and filled the whole street with their noise. The only Vet speaker who managed to make himself plainly understood above the chopper noise was an ex-Marine Sergeant from San Diego named Ron Kovic, who spoke from a wheelchair because his legs are permanently paralyzed.

I would like to have a transcript or at least a tape of what Kovic said that day, because his words lashed the crowd like a wire whip. If Kovic had been allowed to speak from the convention hall podium, in front of network T.V cameras, Nixon wouldn't have had the balls to show up and accept the nomination.

No. . . . I suspect that's wishful thinking. Nothing in the realm of human possibility could have prevented Richard Nixon from accepting that nomination. If God himself had showed up in Miami and denounced Nixon from the podium, hired gunsels from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President would have quickly had him arrested for disturbing the peace.

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 V.V.A.W. Not even those decadent swine on the foredeck of the Wild Rose can ignore the dues Ron Kovic and his buddies have paid. They are golems, come back to haunt us all—even Richard Nixon, who campaigned for the presidency in 1968 with a promise that he had “a secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam.

Which was true, as it turns out. The plan was to end the war just in time to get himself re-elected in 1972. Four more years.

Fits very ago

August 23 1972 Little is known of this picture except that Mr Newton (center) suffered from a power complex a hatred of humanity near impoence and finally premature sensitivity which resembled Parkin son's disease—or an advanced stage of neuro-syphilis caught during his student days—which has hallucinatory effects on the victim giving him a sense of grandeur. The second possibility has been ruled out on the grounds that at the time Mr Newton was a student it would have been socially impossible for him to contract the disease except from a lavatory seat. He died sense in an anti-environment bunker near Camp David, seated before a sun ray lamp in a deckchair wearing only a pair of oldstyle "jackboots" Miami was subsequently reclaimed in 1982 and became an alligator swamp and tourist attraction during the mid-eighties.

Fat City Blues ... Fear and Loathing on the White House Press Plane ... Bad Angst at McGovern Headquarters ... Nixon Tightens the Screws ... "Many Appeared to Be in the Terminal Stages of Campaign Bloat" ...

Hear me, people: We have now to deal with another race—small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.

—Chief Sitting Bull, speaking at the Powder River Conference in 1877

if George Mcgovern had a speech writer half as eloquent as Sitting Bull, he would be home free today—instead of twenty-two points behind and racing around the country with both feet in his mouth. The Powder River Conference ended ninety-five years ago, but the old Chief's baleful analysis of the White Man's rape of the American continent was just as accurate then as it would be today if he came back from the dead and said it for the microphones on prime-time T.V. The ugly fallout from the American Dream has been coming down on us at a pretty consistent rate since Sitting Bull's time—and the only real difference now, with Election Day '72 only a few weeks away, is that we seem to be on the verge of ratifying the fallout and forgetting the Dream itself.

Sitting Bull made no distinction between Democrats and Republicans—which was probably just as well, in 1877 or any other year

Septtmrfr

—but it's also true that Sitting Bull never knew the degradation of traveling on Richard Nixon's press plane he never had the bilious pleasure of dealing with Ron Ziegler and he never met John Mitchell Nixon's king fixer

If the old Sioux Chief had ever done these things I think—despite his angry contempt for the White Min and everything he stands for—he'd be working overtime for George McGovern today

These past two weeks have been relatively calm ones for me. Immediately after the Republican Convention in Miami I dragged myself back to the Rockies and tried to forget about politics for a while—just his, naked on the porch in the cool afternoon sun and watch the aspen trees turning gold on the hills around my house, mix up a huge cinnamon of gin and grapefruit juice, watch the horses nuzzline each other in the picture across the road big, logs in the fireplace at night. Herbie Mann John Prime and Jesse Colin Young booming out of the speakers, zip off every once in a while for a fast run into town along a back road above the river to the health center gym for some volleyball then over to Benton's gallery to get caught up on whatever treaches the loc it greedends rammed through while I was gone watch the late T.V news and curse McGovern for poking another hole in his own boat then step by the Jerome on the way out of town for a midnight beer with Solheim.

After two weeks on that peopleful human schedule the last thing I wanted to think about was the grim inescapable spectre of two more frenzied months on the campaign trail. Especially when it meant coming back here to Washington to start lying the groundwork for a long and painful autopsy job on the McGovern campaign. What went wrong? Why had it failed? Who was to blame? And finally what next?

That was one project. The other was to somehow pass through the fine eye of the White House security camel and go out on the campaign trail with Richard Nixon to watch him waltz in—if only to get the draft of his thinking to watch the moves his eyes. It is a nervous thing to consider. Not just four more years of Nixon but Nixon's last four years in politics—completely un shackled, 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.

There is no point in kidding ourselves about what Richard Nixon really wants for America. When he stands at his White House window and looks out on an anti-war demonstration, he doesn't see "dissenters," he sees criminals. Dangerous parasites, preparing to strike at the heart of the Great American System that put him where he is today.

There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans; I have made that argument myself—with considerable venom, as I recall—over the past ten months. . . . But only a blind geek or a waterhead could miss the difference between McGovern and Richard Nixon. Granted, they are both white men; and both are politicians—but the similarity ends right there, and from that point on the difference is so vast that anybody who can't see it deserves whatever happens to them if Nixon gets re-elected due to apathy, stupidity, and laziness on the part of potential McGovern voters.

The tragedy of this campaign is that McGovern and his staff wizards have not been able to dramatize what is really at stake on November 7th. We are not looking at just another dim rerun of the '68 Nixon/Humphrey trip, or the L.B.J/Goldwater fiasco in '64. Those were both useless drills. I voted for Dick Gregory in '68, and for "No" in '64... but this one is different, and since McGovern is so goddamn maddeningly inept with the kind of words he needs to make people understand what he's up to, it will save a lot of time here—and strain on my own weary head—to remember Bobby Kennedy's ultimate characterization of Richard Nixon, in a speech at Vanderbilt University in the spring of 1968, not long before he was murdered.

Richard Nixon * he said *represents the dark side of the American spirit

I don't remember what else he said that day I guess I could look it up in the New York Times speech morgue, but why bother? That one line says it all

Anybody who doubts it should go out and catch The President's act the next time he swoops into the local airport Watch the big silver and blue custom built 707 come booming down the runway and roll up in front of the small but well-disciplined crowd of Nixon Youth cheerleaders singing the "Nixon Now" song waving their freshly printed red-white and blue Rf Elect the President signs and then pausing in perfect spontaneous unison before in timidating every T.V crew on the runway with the stylish "Four More" cars! "chant

Watch The President emerge from the belly of the plane holding hands with the aging Barbie doll he calls his wife and ooze down the rolling V.I.P starway while the 105th Division Rolling Thunder Women & Children Classic Napalm U.5 Army Parade Band whips the crowd higher and higher with a big beat rendition of "God Save the Frenks

See the Generals strut down from the plane behind The Pretent. Take a long look at the grinning local dignitaries who are ushered out, by armed guards to greet him. See the White House press corps over there about two hundred yards away, herded into that small corral behind heavy ropes stretched around red white-and blue-pinted oil drums. Why are they smiling?

I went out on the campaign trail with Richard Nixon last week. Right After seven straight days of savage in-fighting with the White House press office, the bastards finally caved in and let me join up, if only for a few days, with the Presidential Press Corps

Cazart! Vindication! When the magic words of approval finally zipped across the phone line from the White House to my room on the top floor of the Washington Hilton my brain went limp with pride 'We'll leave from Andrew A.I. Force Rose," said the hard burstone voice of deputy press secretary Gerald Warren "I don't have the final schedule yet but if you call me before noon tomorrow I'll tell you exactly when to be there with your bags"

Indeed My bags No doubt they would be searched thoroughly prior to boarding by extremely sophisticated electronic machinery and a brace of super sharp Secret Service agents When you travel on the Presidential Press Plane boy you do it our way

Of course I was ready for it. A total skin search if necessary and perhaps even a lie-detector. Do you have any violent thoughts regarding the President?

Violent? Certainly not We're old football buddies

Football buddies

Right Richard and I go way back I was with him long ago in the snows of New Hampshire Things were different then fella Where were you in the winter of 68?

I was ready for all the standard-brind Secret Service bullshut. The only thing that worried me was that maybe some of the S.S boys might have seen the current Rolling Stone—which was available that week at newsstands all over Washington. It continued along with my claim and well reasoned analysis of the recent G.O.P convention in Miami some of the most brutal and hateful caricatures of Richard Nixon ever committed to print in this country or any other.

That crazy bastard Steadman? Why is it that it's always your friends who cause you to be screwed to the wall? Want do you say when you go across town to the White House to apply for press credentials to cover the Nixon campaign is the National Affairs Editor of Rolling Stone and the first thing you see when you walk through the door of the press office is one of Steadman's unconscientably obscene Nixon/Agnew drawings tacked up on the bulletin board with a big red circle around Ralph's name?

Well ah yes Ho ho eh? My name is ah Thompson from Rolling Stone and I'm here to pick up my cre dentials to fly around the country with President Nixon on Air Force One for the next month or so

Cold store from the man at the desk No handshake offered Well He ho eh? I can't help but notice you've been adming the work of my friend Ralph Steadman. He ho he

sure has an eye for it, eh? Sure does. Good ole Ralph." Sad smile and shrug of the shoulders. "Crazy as a loon, of course. Terminal brain syphilis." Keep smiling, another shrug. "Jesus, what can you do, eh? These goddamn vicious limeys will do anything for money. He was paid well for these rotten drawings. My protests were totally ignored. It's a fucking shame, I say. What the hell is the world coming to when the goddamn British can get away with stuff like this?"

Nixon has never made any secret of his feelings about the press. They are still the same gang of "biased bastards" and "cynical sons of bitches" that he called them, backstage, on election day in California ten years ago when he made his now-legendary concession statement after losing the 1962 governor's race to Pat Brown. His aides tried to restrain him, but Nixon would have none of it. Trenbling with rage, he confronted a hotel ballroom full of political reporters and snarled: "This is my last press conference! You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore!"

He failed to honor that pledge, but the anger that caused him to utter it still burns in his breast. He rarely holds press conferences, and his personal relationship with the working press is almost nonexistent. In the White House and on the road, he "communicates" with the press corps through his mouthpiece, press secretary Ron Ziegler—an arrogant 33-year-old punk who trained for his current job by working as a P.R man for Disneyland, and who treats the White House press corps like a gang of troublesome winos who will only be tolerated as long as they keep out of the boss's hair.

The few reporters who switched off the McGovern campaign to travel with Nixon on this last trip to California were shocked by what they found. The difference between traveling with McGovern and traveling with Nixon is just about like the difference between going on tour with the Grateful Dead & going on tour with the Pope.

My first experience with it came shortly after Nixon's arrival in Oakland. After nervously pressing the flesh with some of the several hundred well-drilled young supporters' who had been rounded up to greet him for the T.V cameras, Nixon was hustled off in a huge black bulletproof Cadillac for a brief appearance at one of the Bay Area's new rapid transit stations. The three big press buses followed, taking a different route, and when we arrived at the Bart station we were hauled down by freight elevator to a narrow hallway outside a glass wailed control room.

Moments later Nixon emerged from a nearby subway tunnel, waved briefly at the crowd and was ushered into the control room with a dozen or so local Republican dignitaries. Two certified harmless photographers were allowed inside to take pictures of The President shaking hands and making small talk with the engineers. His pathy remarks were broadcast out to the press mob in the hallway by means of loudspeakers.

After watching for a moment I turned to Bob Greene a young Chicago Sun-Times reporter who had just dropped off the McGovern campaign 'Jesus I sand "Is it always like this'."

He laughed. 'Hell, this is accessible! We can actually see him. I spent about twelve hours covering him in New York yesterday, and I never saw him once—except on closed-circuit T.V when he made his speech last night. They had us in a separate room, with speakers and T.V monitors.'

Our next stop was across the Bay in San Francisco where Nixon was scheduled to address several hundred "Young Republicans" at a $500-a-plate lunch in the billroom of the (itt-owned) Sheraton-Palace Hotel. Thousands of anti-war demonstrators milled around in the streets outside, kept off at a safe distance by hundreds of cops carrying twelve-gauge shotguns.

Nixon's "remarks" were piped into the press room, where the cream of American journalism sat down with each other at several long white-cloth-covered banquet tables, to eat a roast beef buffet and take notes while staring intently at two big brown speakers hung on the wall.

I went across the street to the Shields House tavern, where I met a thirty-year-old merchant seaman wearing a tweed sports coat and a tie, who said he and three friends had just "split from that goddamn phony sideshow across the street."

“The Nixon rally?” I asked.

He nodded. "Shit, they tried to make us rehearse cheers! They put us all in a big room and told us to synchronize our watches so we would all start singing that goddamn 'Nixon Now' song at exactly 1:17 P.M., when his car pulled up to the door."

I smiled and ordered a Tuborg. "Why not? You can't sing? You mean you just blew $500 on that lunch, and you didn't even stay to eat it?"

He waved me off. "Shit, are you kidding? Do I look like one of those Young Republican assholes? You think I'd pay $500 to have lunch with Nixon?"

I shrugged.

“Hell no!” he said. “Some guy down at the Maritime Hall just came up and asked us if we wanted to go to a $500-a-plate lunch, for free. We said sure, so he gave us the tickets—but he didn't say anything about cheering and singing songs.” He shook his head. “Hell no, not me. When they started that bullshit I just walked out.”

"Your friends stayed?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I guess so. They were pretty loaded."

“Loaded?” I said. “Nixon supporters?”

He looked at me. "Nixon? Are you nuts?"

I started to ask him about McGovern, but just then my attorney arrived and we got heavily into business matters until I looked out the window and noticed the press buses beginning to fill up. Moments later we pulled out, with a massive police escort, and joined the Nixon motorcade going back to the Oakland airport, where the press plane was waiting to haul us down to L.A.

Nixon, as always, made the trip in his private compartment aboard Air Force One. Five or six "pool" reporters went with him. Or at least they went on the same plane. The tiny press compart-

ment is far back in the rear and nobody leaves it in flight except by special permission from Ron Ziegler—who routinely accepts individual requests for brief interviews with Nixon and just as routinely ignores them

When we got to L.A. I asked the U.P.I pool man if there was any professional advantage in traveling on Air Force One instead of the press plane

Absolutely none he replied We never leave the compartment just sit in there and play cards They could all be running around naked up in front for all we know We don't even get on and off the plane through the same door Nixon uses Ours is way back in the tail

You never get a chance to talk with him? I asked Never even see him?

He shook his head. Not usually. He paused. Oh every once in a while he'll ask somebody up front for a few minutes but it's almost always for his reasons not ours. You know—like if he happens to be writing a speech about hog futures or something he might ask Ron if any of the pool guys that day used to be pig farmers.

I shook my head sadly Sounds pretty frustrating

He shrugged No not really No worse than riding on the press plane

Which is probably true The entire White House press corps apparently lives in fear of somehow getting on the wrong side of Ziegler. He is their only human connection with the man they're supposed to be covering—and since they can't possibly get to Nixon on their own they have to deal with Ron. Every once in a while someone will freak out and start selling at him but that involves serious risks. It is just about impossible to stay on the White House best of Ziegler won't talk to you and if you push him for enough that's exactly what will happen.

Even king be types like the Associated Press correspondent Walter Meurs and the New York Times's Bob Semple are nervous in Ziegler's presence The White House beat is one of the most prestigious in American journalism, but Ziegler manages to make it so uncomfortable and potentially humiliating that only the most ambitious reporters still push for it.

The handful of McGovern exiles who traveled with Nixon to California found themselves standing off in little knots by themselves in the press room of Los Angeles' Century Plaza Hotel, and saying things like: "Jesus, this is really incredible! These White House guys are totally broken, they act like sick sheep... Christ, McGovern would laugh all night if he could see guys like Mears and Semple whimpering around and kissing Ron Ziegler's ass."

Just for the record, here is the "pool report" from Nixon's New York to California trip. Contrary to popular impression, the press does not ride free. The rate on the chartered planes is First Class plus one third, so to send the two hundred newsmen who went along on this expedition cost, including copy-transmission expenses, approximately a grand apiece.

Pool Report — Waldorf to Oakland airport — September 27

The motorcade departed the Waldorf at 9:28. Fair crowds were out at 50th and Lexington to wave at the President, and knots of people dotted the path. On F.D.R Drive, small groups of hard-hats appeared here and there, waving at the President as he sped by.

Choppers from the Wall Street helipad took a last swing past the Statue of Liberty before reaching Newark. Wheels up was at 9:50.

All was quiet aboard Air Force One until press secretary Ziegler materialized with statements that had already been released aboard the press plane. John Ehrlichman appeared briefly with some added information on Bart financing. A total of $219 million in financing has come from the government, out of the total cost of $1.4 billion. Of this new grant of $38 million, $26.6 million goes to work along Market Street. The rest goes to various items such as development of an undercar fire protection system, a fare collection data collecting system, storage buildings, and car washing equipment.

Mr Ehrlichman also advised that Clark MacGregor has called upon the opposition to "repudiate" demonstrations said to be aborning in San Francisco Information that demonstrations are being generated "squares with some intelligence that law enforcement agencies had" he said, which shows that these demonstrations are political rather than of an anti-war nature. Asked if it was possible to make that distinction Ehrlichman implied that the agencies know what is going on. He did not clarify. He added that the "motorcade seems to be the prime target

Henry Hubbard Newsweek Jack Germond, Manchester Union-Leader

The worst thing to look like right now is a policeman, this is a bad year for them

—Frank Mankiewicz, April 1972

McGovern was doing better when he was an anti-politician

—George Gallup, September 1972

You know I finally figured out why McGovern's gonna get his ass beat this year. He doesn't have half the class of the people who work for him. As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to think George McGovern doesn't have much class at all.

—Jack Germond correspondent October 1972

Seldom has the public perception of a major political figure changed so rapidly George McGovern's political problem stems not from the belief that he is a dangerous radical and unpatriotic American. His trouble lies in the way people feel about him personally. Many who were attracted to him earlier this year because of his freshness and promise now express strong disillusionment.

—Haynes Johnson in the Washington Post, October 1972

The mood at McGovern's grim headquarters building at 1910 K Street, N.W, in Washington is oddly schizoid these days a jangled mix of defiance and despair—tempered, now and then by quick flashes of a lingering conviction that George can still win.

McGovern's young staffers, after all, have never lost an election they expected to win, at the outset—and they definitely expected to win this one. They are accustomed to being far behind in the public opinion polls. McGovern has almost always been the underdog, and—except for California—he has usually been able to close the gap with a last-minute stretch run.

Even in the primaries he lost—New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania—he did well enough to embarrass the pollsters, humiliate the polls, and crank up his staff morale another few notches.

But that boundless blind faith is beginning to fade now. The Curse of Eagleton is beginning to make itself felt in the ranks. And not even Frank Mankiewicz, the Wizard of Chevy Chase, can properly explain why McGovern is now being sneered at from coast to coast as "just another politician." Mankiewicz is still the main drivewheel in this ham-strung campaign; he has been the central intelligence from the very beginning—which was fine all around, while it worked, but there is not a hell of a lot of evidence to suggest that it's working real well these days, and it is hard to avoid the idea that Frank is just as responsible for whatever is happening now as he was six months ago, when McGovern came wheeling out of New Hampshire like the Abominable Snowman on a speed trip.

If George gets stomped in November, it will not be because of anything Richard Nixon did to him. The blame will trace straight back to his brain-trust, to whoever had his ear tight enough to convince him that all that bullshit about "new politics" was fine for the primaries, but it would never work against Nixon—so he would have to abandon his original power base, after Miami, and swiftly move to consolidate the one he'd just shattered: the Meany/Daley/Humphrey/Muskie axis, the senile remnants of the Democratic Party's once-powerful "Roosevelt coalition."

McGovern agreed. He went to Texas and praised L.B.J; he revised his economic program to make it more palatable on Wall Street; he went to Chicago and endorsed the whole Daley/Demo.

cratic ticket, including State's Attorney Ed Hanrahan, who is still under indictment on felony/conspiracy (Obstruction of Justice) charges for his role in a police raid on local Black Panther headquarters three years ago that resulted in the murder of Fred Hampton

In the speedy week between March and July, the atmosphere in McGovern's cramped headquarters building on Capitol Hill was so high that you could get bent by just hinging around and watching the human machinery at work.

The headquarters building itself was not much bigger than McGovern's personal command post in the Senate Office Building five blocks away. It was one big room about the size of an Olympic swimming pool—with a grocery store on one side a liquor store on the other, and a tree-shaded sidewalk out front. The last time I was there, about two weeks before the California primary I drove my blue Volvo up on the sidewalk and parked right in front of the door. Crouse went inside to find Mankiewicz while I picked up some Balantine ale.

"Is this a charge" the booze-clerk asked

"Right," I said. "Charge it to George McGovern."

He nodded, and began to write it down.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I said. “I was just kidding. Here—here's the cash.”

He shrugged and accepted the three bills . . . and when I got to Frank's office and told him what had happened, he didn't seem surprised. "Yeah, our credit's pretty good," he said, "in a lot of places where we never even asked for it."

⑥

That was back in May, when the tide was still rising. But things are different now, and the credit is not so easy. The new K Street headquarters is an eight-story tomb once occupied by the "Muskie for President" juggernaut. Big Ed abandoned it when he dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination, and it stood empty for a month or so after that—but when McGovern crooked Humphrey in California and became the nominee-apparent, his wizards decided to get a new and larger headquarters.

The Muskie building was an obvious choice—if only because it was available very cheap, and already wired for the fantastic maze of phone lines necessary for a presidential campaign headquarters. The Man from Maine and his army of big-time backers had already taken care of that aspect; they had plenty of phone lines, along with all those endorsements.

Not everybody on the McGovern staff was happy with the idea of moving out of the original headquarters. The decision was made in California, several days before the primary, and I remember arguing with Gary Hart about it. He insisted the move was necessary, for space reasons... and even in retrospect my argument for keeping the original headquarters seems irrational. It was a matter of karma, I said, psychic continuity. And besides, I had spent some time in the Muskie building on the night of the New Hampshire primary, when the atmosphere of the place was strongly reminiscent of Death Row at Sing Sing. So my memories of that building were not pleasant—but my reasons, as usual, had a noticeably mystic flavor to them. And Gary, as usual, was thinking in terms of hard lawyer's logic and political pragmatism.

sfpttmbr

So the McGovern headquarters was moved after Miami, from the original base between the liquor store and the grocery store on Capitol Hill to the Muskie tomb on K. Street in the fashionable downtown area. It was a central location they said with a big parking lot next door. It also had two elevators and swollen bathrooms. The original headquarters had only one bathroom with a card board arrow on the door that could be moved like one-armed clock to three different positions. Men's women's or empty. There was also a refrigerator. It was small but somehow there were always a few cins of beer in it even for visiting journalists. Nobody was in charge of stoking it, but nobody drank the last beer without replacing it either (or maybe it was all a shuck from the start, maybe they had a huge wash outside the back door, but they only kept two or three cans in the refrigerator, so that anybody who drank one would feel so guilty that he/she would bring six to replace it the next time they came around but I don't, not even that devious Arab-bistard Rick Stearns would plot them that carefully).

But what the hell? All that is history now and after roaming around the new McGovern headquarters building for a week or so the only refrigerator I found was up in finance director Henry Kimmelman's office on the sixth floor. I went up there with Pat Caddell one afternoon last week to watch the Crookats Channel for T.V news (every afternoon at 6:30 all activity in the building is suspended for an hour while the staff people gather around T.V sets to watch "the daily summer as some of them call it) and Kimmelman has the only accessible color set in the building, so his office is usually crowded for the news hour.

But his sit is fucked, unfortunately One of the color tubes is blown, so everything that appears on the screen has a wet purple tint to it When McGovern comes on ropping out lines from a

speech that somebody watching one of the headquarters' T.V sets just wrote for him a few hours earlier, his face appears on the set in Kimmelman's office as if he were speaking up from the bottom of a swimming pool full of cheap purple dye.

It is not a reassuring thing to see, and most of the staffers prefer to watch the news on the black & white sets downstairs in the political section.

What? We seem to be off the track here. I was talking about my first encounter with the refrigerator in Henry Kimmelman's office—when I was looking for beer, and found none. The only thing in the icebox was a canned martini that tasted like brake fluid.

One canned martini. No beer. A purple T.V screen. Both elevators jammed in the basement; fifteen empty bathrooms. Seventy-five cents an hour to park in the lot next door. Chaos and madness in the telephone switchboard. Fear in the back rooms. confusion up front, and a spooky vacuum on top—the eighth floor—where Larry O'Brien is supposed to be holding the gig together... what is he doing up there? Nobody knows. They never see him.

"Larry travels a lot," one of the speech writers told me. "He's Number One, you know—and when you're Number One you don't have to try so hard, right?"

The McGovern campaign appears to be fucked at this time. A spectacular Come From Behind win is still possible—on paper and given the right circumstances—but the underlying realities of the campaign itself would seem to preclude this. A cohesive, determined campaign with the same kind of multi-level morale that characterized the McGovern effort in the months preceding the Wisconsin primary might be a good bet to close a twenty-point gap on Nixon in the last month of this grim presidential campaign.

As usual, Nixon has peaked too early—and now he is locked into what is essentially a Holding Action. Which would be di

slptmember

sastrous in a close race, but—even by Pat Caddell's partisan estimate—Nixon could blow twenty points off his lead in the next six weeks and still win (Caddell's figures seem in general agreement with those of the most recent Gallup Poll ten days ago, which showed that Nixon could blow thirty points off his lead and still win).

My own rude estimate is that McGovern will steadily close the gap between now and November 7th but not enough. It I had to make book right now I would try to get McGovern with seven or eight points, but I did probably go with five or six if necessary. In other words my guess at the moment is that McGovern will lose by a popular vote margin of 55 percent—and probably far worse in the electoral college.

The tragedy of this is that McGovern appeared to have a sure lock on the White House when the sun came up on Miami Beach on the morning of Thursday July 13th. Since then he has crippled himself with a series of almost unbelievable blunders—Eagleton Sahinger, O'Brien etcetera—that have understandably convinced huge chunks of the electorate including at least half of his own hard core supporters that The Candidate is a gibbering diaghat. His behavior since Miami has made a preceimal mockery of everything he seemed to stand for during the primaries.

Possibly I'm wrong on all this. It is still conceivable to me at least—that McGovern might actually win. In which case I won't have to worry about my P.O. Box at the Woody Creek general store getting turned up with dinner invitators from the White House. But what the hell? Mr. Nixon never invited me and neither did kennedy or L.B.I.

I survived those years of shame, and I'm not especially worried about enduring four more. I have a feeling that my time is getting short, anyway, and I can think of a hell of a lot of things I'd rather find in my mailbox than an invitation to dinner in the Servants' Quarters.

Let those treacherous bastards eat by themselves. They deserve each other.

Ah, Jesus! The situation is out of hand again. The sun is up, the deal is down, and that evil bastard Mankiewicz just jerked the

kingpin out of my finely crafted saga for this issue. My brain has gone numb from this madness. After squatting for thirteen days in this scum-crusted room on the top floor of the Washington Hilton—writing feverishly, night after night, on the home-stretch realities of this goddamn wretched campaign—I am beginning to wonder what in the name of Twisted Jesus ever possessed me to come here in the first place. What kind of madness lured me back to this stinking swamp of a town?

Am I turning into a politics junkie? It is not a happy thought

—particularly when I see what it's done to all the others. After two weeks in Woody Creek, getting back on the press plane was like going back to the cancer ward. Some of the best people in the press corps looked so physically ravaged that it was painful to even see them, much less stand around and make small talk.

Many appeared to be in the terminal stages of Campaign Bloat, a gruesome kind of false fat condition that is said to be connected somehow with failing adrenal glands. The swelling begins within twenty four hours of that moment when the victim first begins to suspect that the crump sign is essentially meaningless. At that point the body's entire adrenal supply is sucked back into the guzzard and nothing either candidate says does or generates will cause it to rise again and without adrenaline the flash begins to swell, the eyes fill with blood and grow smaller in the face the jowls puff out from the checkbones the neck flesh droops and the belly swells up like a frogs threat. The brain fills with noxious waste fluids the tongue is rubbed raw on the molars and the basic perception antennae began dying like hairs in a bonfire.

I would like to thank—or at least claim to thank, out of charity if nothing else—that Campaign Bloat is at the root of this hellish angst that boats up to obscure my vision every time I try to write anything serious about presidential politics.

But I don't think that's it. The real reason I suspect, is the problem of coming to grips with the idea that Richard Nixon will almost certainly be re elected for another four years as President of the United States. It the current polls are reliable—and even if they aren't, the sheer size of the margin makes the numbers themselves unimportant—Nixon will be re elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam.

The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable via jority of the Youth Vote And that he might carry all fifty states Well maybe so This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves, finally just lay back and say it—

that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who've run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

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

Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls

Due to circumstances beyond my control I would rather not write anything about the 1972 presidential campaign at this time On Tuesday, November 7th I will get out of bed long enough to go down to the polling place and vote for George McGovern After wards, I will drive back to the house, lock the front door, get back in bed, and watch television as long as necessary. It will probably be a while before The Angst lifts—but whenever it happens I will get out of bed again and start writing the mean, cold-blooded bummer that I was not quite ready for today. Until then, I think Tom Benton's "re-elect the President" poster (above) says everything that needs to be said right now about this malignant election. In any other year I might be tempted to embellish the Death's Head with a few angry flashes of my own. But not in 1972. At least not in the sullen numbness of these final hours before the deal goes down—because words are no longer important at this stage of the campaign; all the best ones were said a long time ago, and all the right ideas were bouncing around in public long before Labor Day.

That is the one grim truth of this election most likely to come back and haunt us: The options were clearly defined, and all the major candidates except Nixon were publicly grilled, by experts who demanded to know exactly where they stood on every issue from Gun Control and Abortion to the Ad Valorem Tax. By mid-September both candidates had staked out their own separate turfs, and if not everybody could tell you what each candidate stood for specifically, almost everyone likely to vote in November understood that Richard Nixon and George McGovern were two very different men: not only in the context of politics, but also in their personalities, temperatures, guiding principles, and even their basic lifestyles.

There is almost a Yin/Yang clarity in the difference between the two men, a contrast so stark that it would be hard to find any two better models in the national politics arena for the legendary duality—the congenital Split Personality and polarized instincts—that almost everybody except Americans has long since taken for granted as the key to our National Character. This was not what Richard Nixon had in mind when he said, last August, that the 1972 presidential election would offer voters "the clearest choice of this century," but on a level he will never understand he was probably right... and it is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and

his box full of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us the bully the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable full of claws and bleeding string warts on nights when the moon comes too close.

At the stroke of midnight in Washington a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog then races off into the darkness towards the Watergate snarling with lust loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue and trying desperately to remember which one of those four hundred identical balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment

Alt. highmares nightmares But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. But how would the voters react if they knew the President of the United States was presiding over 'a complex far reaching and sinister operation on the part of White House aides and the Nixon campaign organization involving sabotage forgery theft of confidential files surveillance of Democratic candidates and their families and persistent efforts to lay the basis for possible blackmail and intimidation.

That ugly description of Nixon's stuff operations comes from a New York Times editorial on Thursday October 12th But neither Nixon nor anyone else felt it would have much effect on his steady two-to-one lead over McGovern in all the national polls. Four days later the Times/Yankelovich poll showed Nixon ahead by an incredible twenty points (57 percent to 37 percent with 16 percent undecided) over the man Bobby Kennedy described as the most decent man in the Senate.

Ominous is not quite the right word for a situation where one of the most consistently unpopular politicians in American history suddenly skyrockets to Folk Hero status while his closest advisors are being caught almost daily in nazi style gigs that would

have embarrassed Martin Bormann.

How long will it be before "demented extremists" in Germany, or maybe Japan, start calling us A Nation of Pigs? How would Nixon react? "No comment"? And how would the popularity polls react if he just came right out and admitted it?

Chinese text

At the Midnight Hour Stoned on the Zoo Plane, Stomped in Sioux Falls A Rambling, Mame/Depressive Screen in Triple-Focus on the Last Days of the Doomed McGovern Campaign Then Back to America's Heartland for a Savage Beating Fear and Loathing at the Holiday Inn

It was Dar when we took off from Long Beach. I was standing in the cockpit with a joint in one hand and a glass of Jack Daniels in the other as we boomed off the runway and up up into the cold black empanness of a Monday night sky three miles above southern California. That's San Diego, off there to the right," said the pilot. We were leaning left now, bending east, and I booked an elbow in the cockpit doorway to keep from falling looking down on the beach cues—Newport Laguna, San Clemente—and a thin, sharp white line along the coast that was either U.S. 101 or the Pacific Ocean surf.

^{*} Yes that has to be the surf line. I muttered

"Daya California," the person beside me replied

I couldn't see who it was. There were five or six of us crowded into the cockpit, along with the three-man crew. 'Here, take this,' I said, landing him the joint. 'I have to get a grip on something.' I seized the back of the navigator's chive as we kept rolling left/east, and still climbing. Behind us in the long bright belly of the United Airlines 727 Whisper Jet—or whatever they call those big three-engine buggers with the D B Cooper door that drops down from the tail—fifty or sixty drunken journalists were lurching around in the ashes, spilling drinks on each other and rolling spoofs of raw T.V film towards the rear of the plane where two smiling steward esses were strapped down by their safety belts, according to regulations.

The “Fasten Seat Belts” sign was still on, above every seat, along with the “No Smoking” sign—but the plane was full of smoke and almost nobody was sitting down. Both flight kitchens had long since been converted to bars, stocked with hundreds of those little one-and-a-half ounce flight-size whiskey bottles. We had left New York that morning, with a stop in Philadelphia, and by the time we got to Wichita the scene in the Zoo Plane was like the clubhouse at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day . . . and now, flying back from L.A. to Sioux Falls, it was beginning to look more and more like the infield at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day.

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. Yesterday I was sitting on my porch in Woody Creek, reading the sports section of the Denver Post and wondering how many points to give on the Rams-49ers game, sipping a beer and looking out on the snow-covered fields from time to time... when suddenly my head rolled back and my eyes glazed over and I felt myself sucked into an irresistible time-warp:

I was standing at the bar in the clubhouse at Churchill Downs on Derby Day with Ralph Steadman, and we were drinking Mint Juleps at a pretty good pace, watching the cream of Bluegrass Society getting drunker and drunker out in front of us. It was between races, as I recall: Ralph was sketching and I was making notes ("3:45, Derby Day, standing at clubhouse bar now, just returned from Mens Room / terrible scene / whole place full of Kentucky Colonels vomiting into urinals & drooling bile down their seersucker pants-legs / Remind Ralph to watch for "distinguished-looking" men in pari-mutual lines wearing white-polished shoes with fresh vomit stains on the toes

Right. We were standing there at the clubhouse bar, feeling very much on top of that boozy, back-slapping scene . . . when I suddenly glanced up from my notes & saw Frank Mankiewicz and Sonny Barger across the room, both of them wearing Hells Angels costumes and both holding heavy chrome chain-whips . . . and yes,

it was clear that they'd spotted us. Barger stared, not blinking but Mankiewicz smiled his cold� lizard's smile and they moved slowly through the drunken crowd to put themselves between us and the doorway.

Ralph was still sketching muttering to himself in some kind of harsh Gaelic singsong & blissfully unaware of the violence about to come down I nudged him 'Say ah Ralph, I think maybe you should finish your drink and get that camera strap off your neck real fast '

“What?”

' Don't act nervous Ralph Just get that strip off your neck and be ready to run like a bastard when I throw this glass at the mirror "

He stared at me sensing trouble but not understanding. Over his shoulder I could see Frank and Sonny coming towards us, moving slowly down the length of the long whiskey wet oaken bar trying to seem casual as they showed through the crowd of boozebent Southern Gentlemen who were crowding the aisle and when I scanned the room I saw others Tiny Zorro Frenchy Terry the Tramp, Miles Rubin Dick Dougherty Freddy Th. Torch they had us in a bag, and I figured the only way out was a sudden screaming sprint through the clubhouse and up the ramp to the Governor's Box, directly across from the Finish Line & surrounds at all times by State Troopers.

Their reaction to a horde of thugs charging through the crowd towards the Governor's Box would be safely predictable, I felt. They would club the bleeding shut out of anybody who looked even halfway weird, and then make mass arrests. Many innocent people would suffer, the drunk tank of the Jefferson County Jail would be boring that night with dozens of drink maddened Blue-bloods who got caught in the Sweep, beaten stupid with truncheons and then hauled off in paddy wagons for no reason at all.

But what the hell? This was certainly acceptable I felt and preferable beyond any doubt to the horror of being lashed into hamburger with chain-whips by Mankiewicz and Barger in the Clubhouse Bar

Indeed, I have spent some time in the Jefferson County Jail, and on balance it's not a bad place—at least not until your nerves

go, but when that happens it doesn't really matter which jail you're in. All blood feels the same in the dark—or back in the shower cell, where the guards can't see.

Editor's Note

at this Point Dr. Thompson suffered a series of nervous seizures in his suite at the Seal Rock Inn. It became obvious both by the bizarre quality of his first-draft work and his extremely disorganized lifestyle that the only way the book could be completed was by means of compulsory verbal composition. Despite repeated warnings from Dr. Thompson's personal physician we determined that for esthetic, historical, and contractual reasons The Work would have to be finished at all costs.

What follows, then, is a transcription of the conversations we had as Dr. Thompson paced around his room—at the end of an eighteen-foot microphone cord—describing the final days of the doomed McGovern campaign.

Ed: Well, Dr. Thompson, if you could explain these references . . . we just left you in the Jefferson County Jail, on a very dark and ominous note which I don't understand. . . I thought you were on the plane going back to Sioux City and that you were standing . . .

H.S.T: Sioux Falls.

Ed: Sioux Falls, excuse me, and that you were actually standing in the cockpit with a joint in one hand and a glass of Jack Daniels in the other. Were the pilots smoking dope? What was happening on this plane? . . . why was it called the Zoo Plane?

H.S.T: Well, I would have preferred to write about this, but under the circumstances, I'll try to explain. There were two planes in the last months of the McGovern campaign. One was the Dakota Queen, actually it was the Dakota Queen 2—like "junior"—the Dakota Queen Second. McGovern's bomber in World War 2 was the original Dakota Queen.

Ed: McGovern's bomber in World War 2 was named the Dakota Queen?

H.S.T: Right. He was a bomber pilot in World War 2.

Ed: Why don't you pull up a chair? Would you stop pacing around?

H.S.T: I'm much more comfortable pacing...

Ed: All right. But you'll have to speak into the microphone.

H.S.T: Yes... He named his campaign plane the Dakota Queen 2, and at first that was enough—just one 727 which he chartered from United Airlines at outrageously inflated rates. They burned him as much as they could. He was doing things like flying back and forth from Washington to New York when he could have stayed in one place and they were running up...

Ed: Speak up, please.

H.S.T: They were running up massive bills which were not necessary. I learned this from the United Airlines representative on the plane. But nevertheless, when the campaign began mushrooming around Labor Day, more and more press people came aboard the Dakota Queen, and it was necessary to have two McGovern campaign planes. One of which was divided into three compartments: where McGovern's family, himself and his sort of ... personal staff sat in front. Like a first-class compartment. The middle of the plane was full of the very serious ... working press, the New York Times, the wire service people, the Washington Post.

Ed: The New York Times, the wires?... What else?

H.S.T: The people who had to file every day...

Ed: They had some sort of priority?

H.S.T: Right. They were very serious people.

Ed: And they sat in the middle section of the plane?

H.S.T: Yes. In the rear was a bar and a sort of mini press room where there were about five typewriters, a few phones—you could call from the plane to headquarters in Washington—you could call anywhere from the plane. But the atmosphere on the Dakota Queen was very ...ah ...very ...reserved is the word.

Ed: The atmosphere was reserved? On the day before the election?

H.S.T: Only on the Dakota Queen . . . the atmosphere on the Zoo Plane became crazier and crazier as the atmosphere on the Dakota Queen became more reserved and more somber. The kinkier members of the press tended to drift onto the Zoo Plane. The atmosphere was more comfortable. There were tremendous

amounts of cocaine, for instance

Ed There was excuse on the Zoo Plane?

H.S.T Yes dope

Ed Marquona?

Hist Oh, hell yes lots of manipuna, brush, M.D.A

Ed Was this from the press primarily?

H.S.T Well what happened was that the press took over the Loo Plane—totally

Ed There were no McGovern staffers on the Zoo Plane?

Hist A few tried to get on it, but the press people had hailed down their own seats and refused to leave them. Once you got a seat on the Zoo Plane you clump to it. And so people would trade off for different legs of the trip. I recall once when I wanted to talk to McGovern. I traded with John Holum who had a girlfriend on the Zoo Plane. And when I tried to get my seat back, I think it was in Wichita. It was necessary to hunt that I might have to use physical force to get Holum out of my seat and back on the Dikota Queen.

Ed Were the provisions provided on the Zoo Plane brought by the press themselves or were they a part of the hospitality of the McGovern stuff?

Hist Well, you have to remember that the press was every member of the press who traveled on either one of the planes any campaign plane was billed at the first-class rate plus one third

Ld Why? What was the one third for?

H.S.T Well presumably for the damages

Id Damages?

Hist It was a chartered plane, and on charters the stewardesses are more or less at the mercy of the passengers

Fd At the merci

Hist At one point on the Zoo Plane on the way to Sacramento—the pilot, whose name was Paul Prince ^{1} and he was called Perfect Paul, the Virgin Pilot Ed: Perfect Paul, the Virgin Pilot?

H.S.T: Right. He was locked out of the cockpit. . . . And several of the crazier members of the press, who were up front—the cocaine section was up right behind the cockpit—got hold of him . . . and tore all of his clothes off . . . down to his underwear.

Ed: The press people tore off the pilot's clothes??

H.S.T: Well, they sort of helped a woman from. I think it was . . . not Women's Wear Daily, but something like that. She was completely drunk and stoned. But, the T.V technicians were the worst villains on the plane. . . . They held him while the wild woman tore his clothes off.

Ed: Who was flying the plane at this time?

H.S.T: Well... the co-pilot, I guess...

Ed: The co-pilot was flying the plane?

H.S.T: There was a crew aboard—three crew members.

Ed: This was a 727?

H.S.T: Yes, a 727. I think they call them "Whisper Jets." The one with the D. B. Cooper door, you know, the one that drops down cut of the tail ... And the pilot was stripped down to his underwear. Finally he got back into the cockpit, had to land in Sacramento in his underwear with this stoned woman still after him....

Ed: One of the stewardesses?

H.S.T: No. no. It was a woman from...

Ed: One of the reporters.

H.S.T: I'd rather not name her.

Ed: Well, let's not mention any names. Certainly not.

H.S.T: That sort of thing happened regularly on the Zoo Plane. All the sound freaks, for instance, were on the Zoo Plane. There were speakers up and down the aisle ... every ten feet there would be a different ... tape going. There were the Rolling Stones in front, the Grateful Dead in back ...

Ed: I'd like to interrupt you now to ask what was the prevail- ing mood of the McGovern staff at this point . . . flying back to Sioux Falls . . . a day before the election, November 6?

H.S.T: We left Long Beach at about 8:30 on Monday night. November 6, and flew directly to Sioux Falls. Long Beach was the last campaign appearance McGovern made except for a . . . sort of . . . homecoming in Sioux Falls at 1:30 at night. And . . . you asked about the mood . . . the mood of the McGovern staff on the Dakota Queen was very, very quiet. They had known for a long time what was going to happen. McGovern admitted knowing for at least a week.

Ed: McGovern admitted knowing for a week before the election?

H.S.T: Yeah. I talked to him earlier that day on the way from Wichita to Long Beach and I could tell . . . he loosened up so much that it was clear something happened to him in his head. . . He was finally relaxed for the first time. This was shortly after he told a heckler in I think it was . . . Grand Rapids, "Kiss my ass." He did it with very . . . considerable elan. . . He moved up right next to this guy and he said: "I have a secret for you—kiss my ass." Most of the press people missed it. He put his arm around him and whispered, sort of quietly in his ear. McGovern didn't know anyone had heard him. Only two people heard him—one was a Secret Service man, another was Saul Kohler, of the Newhouse papers. McGovern thought he was saying it in total privacy. But it got out. But by that time he didn't care . . . He was laughing about it, and when I asked him about it on the Dakota Queen, he sort of smiled and said . . . "Well, he was one of these repulsive people, it was . . . one of the types you just want to get your hands on . . ." He was so loose it was kind of startling. He got very relaxed once he realized what was going to happen. Later he said that he'd known for at least a week, and Gary Hart later said he had known for a month.

Ed: Gary Hart later admitted he had known McGovern would lose for a month before the election?

H.S.T: He told me when I stopped in Denver on the way to the Super Bowl that he'd sensed it as early as September, but when I asked him when he knew, he thought for a minute and then said, "Well, I guess ... it was around October 1. . . ." According to

Pat Caddell's polls they had known—when I say they," I mean the McGovera top command—had known what kind of damage the Eagleton thing had done and how terminal it was ever since September. Pat said they spent a month just wringing their hands and tearing their hair trying to figure out how to overcome the Eagleton disaster.

Ed By the Eagleton disaster do you mean the question of M-Govern a competence in handling the affair?

Hist His whole image of being a first a maverick anti-politician and then suddenly becoming an expedient pragmatic hack who talked like any politician in anybody's kind of a Well he began talking like a used car salesman sort of out of both sides of his mouth in the eyes of the public and he was no longer either a maverick or an anti-politician he was he was no better than Hubert Humphrey and that's not a personal judgment that's how he was perceived and that's an interesting word Perceive is the word that became in the 72 campaign what "charisma was for the 1960s" 64 and even the 68 campaign Perceive is the new key word

Ed What does "perceive" mean?

H.S.T When you say perceive you imply the difference between what the candidate is and the way the public or the voters see him

Ed What causes the difference between the perception and the reality?

1957 The best example of how perception can drastically alter a campaign is the difference between for instance how McGovern was perceived by the Wallace voters in the Wisconsin primary as being almost as much of a maverick and an anti-politician as George Wallace himself. He carried the south side of Milwaukee—one of the last places anybody expected him to carry.

Ed That was primarily a blue-collar district?

H.S.T Not just blue-collar—hardhat a really serious hardhat distinct.

Ed Weren t they also Polrish?

Hist A lot of them yeah Muskie was supposed to carry the Fourth but Muskie's campaign was filling apart by that time and Humphrey was not the kind of person who would go over up there

Ed So the voters perceived the blue-collar Polish Wallace style voters perceived McGovern to be as much of a maverick as Wallace.

H.S.T: Yes, at that point he was hitting the tax reform issue, which he picked up from Wallace in Florida.

Ed: What was the difference between the perception and the reality on the Eagleton affair?

H.S.T: The Eagleton affair was the first serious crack in McGovern's image as the anti-politician. He dumped Eagleton for reasons that still aren't... that he still refuses to talk about. Eagleton's mental state was much worse than was ever explained publicly. How much worse, it's hard to say right now, but that's something I'll have to work on.... In any case there was no hope of keeping Eagleton on the ticket.

The Eagleton thing is worth looking at for a second in terms of the difference between perception and reality. 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. Whereas, in fact, despite denials of the McGovern staff in the last days of the campaign—when I was one of the five or six reporters who were pushing very aggressively to find out more about Eagleton and the real nature of his mental state—I spent about ten days in late September, early October, in St. Louis trying to dig up Eagleton's medical record out of the Barnes Hospital, or actually the Rennard Hospital in the Washington University medical center. Despite this, Mankiewicz denied knowing anything about it, because he'd promised to protect the person who told him about it in the first place....

Ed: Which person?

H.S.T: The person who called and said ... several days after the convention ... who left a note at the headquarters in Washington saying, "There's something you should know about Tom Eagleton---he's a dangerous nut."

Ed: This was back in June, July?

Hist It was about two days after the convention ended in Miami

Ed An anonymous person called Mankiewicz ?

H.S.T And Gary Hart

Fd And Gary Hurt ^{1}

ilst Both of them got messages about the same time It was the husband of a woman whose name well there's no point in going into that—it would probably be lifelous but it was the husband of a woman who had been part of the anaesthesiology team who had participated in Fanleton's second shock treatment so she knew about it

Ed So you were investing the Lagleton story and Man knewz denied knowing anything about it?

Hist Repeatedly over and over again I knew he was lying because I had all the facts from other people in the campaign whose names I couldn't use. I couldn't quote them because I had promised I wouldn't say where I got the information. About three weeks after the election though Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post wrote a long series on the Eagleton affair and here is the way he explains how Minkiewicz recited to the initial shock of this information about Eagleton. He's talking about the fact that two reporters from the Knight newspapers got hold of the information about the same time as Gary and Frank did. The same person who called them called John Knight in Detroit and two reporters from the Detroit Free Press—or the Washington Bureau of Knight newspapers flew out to Sioux Falls with a long memo on the Eagleton situation. They hadn't broken the story yet—but they were about to. They were trying to be first they were trying to be fair with McGovern and second they were trying to use what they had to get more—which is normal journalistic kind of procedure.

Ed A normal v hat kind of procedure?

Hist Journalistic If you have a story and you don't know the rest you use what you have to pry the test out of someone

Ld Leverage

Hist Here's what Mankiewicz told Haynes Johnson after the election was over when it no longer muttered At Mankiewicz says, they had come up with a very incoherent and largely unpublishable memo full of rumors and unsubstantiated material—but a memo that was clearly on the right track." The memo contained such things as drinking reports and reports that Eagleton had been hospitalized and given electro-shock treatments for psychiatric problems. "But the real crusher," Mankiewicz said, "was a passage in the memo that had quotations around it as if it had been taken from a hospital record. It said that Tom Eagleton had been treated with electro-shock therapy at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis for, and this was the part that was quoted, 'severe manic-depressive psychosis with suicidal tendencies.' And that scared me."

That was Mankiewicz talking, and here's the explanation he gave for why he lied to all the reporters, including me, who had asked him about this. . . Because I knew . . . I had that exact quote from several people on the McGovern staff, who wanted to release it. They thought that if people knew the truth about the Eagleton situation—that there was no way he could possibly be kept on the ticket—that the "perception" of McGovern's behavior with Eagleton might be drastically altered. Eagleton would no longer be the wronged good guy, but what he actually was—an opportunistic liar.

Ed: An opportunistic liar.

H.S.T: With a history of very serious mental disorders and no reason for anyone to believe they wouldn't recur. Here's what Mankiewicz ... here's the reason Mankiewicz gives for not explaining this to the press at the time. This is Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post again: "Mankiewicz says 'he stalled furiously' with the newspaper representatives, appealed to their patriotism and promised them tangible news breaks. Both McGovern and Eagleton would have complete physicals later at Walter Reed Hospital, and challenge the other candidates to do the same and release the medical results. When that happened, he went on, he would try to arrange either an exclusive interview with Eagleton or give them a news cycle break on the Eagleton medical story."

Ed: What's a news cycle break?

H.S.T: I don't know. That's the kind of language Mankiewicz used all through the campaign when he got confused and started treading water.

I do. So the difference between the perception and the reality was that the public was McGovers dumping Edelston for political expedience when it is only the same as no Wulston could stay on the ground. He had to do the most, and he would have to stop it. hiat Right. At that pointChinese text was afraid to say my thing heavy to the press and right to so I think. Look at what happened to Jack Anderson when he went on the air on the Mural Radio Network with a story of Englishers' struck, drawing him to the end of the 19th. He couldn't see the reports he told by True was who had a good Employment. The Democratic primary for senior in 1968 in Mission and the records were in a box in the office in St. Louis and Davis promised Anderson that he would get them immediately. So Anderson had every reason to believe that he would have, the actual drank-droing records or serovers of them in his hands to the tone he broke the old man. And he said he had a number of policies to story both the rules and the outcome. His swinders he had to be. He got the first of the records because he knew we was going to be challenged. At the point True dyevs was the president of a bank owned by the United Mines Workers in Washington. Ed Tony Boyle's anom? Habitat Humphrey's friend? Hist Rachel Davis told Jack Anderson that unfortunately the best-making and the people who were in the town were a demark driving arrests had a step-down to what he told Anderson earlier in St. Louis and the controls to us. Some storage place he could's have you? And he told us that almost every man that almost every journalist in Washington will believe to be true. Ed. How does that get back to what we are talking about the first? hiat I wanted to tell you why Mankowicz was afraid to break up or help anyone else need the story on Exploitation's mental history. Anderson got burned so badly in that and was so embarrassed publicly that I appeared—for reasons that he could never exproach—that he was taking just a cheap shot at Eagleton and Eagleton came off looking better than he had before Anderson had started. So Mankowicz and Gary Hart's long-long McClaren mental disorders. . . . They decided that they couldn't break the story. They couldn't help anyone else investigate Eagleton any further than Eagleton himself wanted to be investigated, or it would appear that the McGovern staff was deliberately leaking false information on Eagleton in order to make him look bad, which would then in turn make McGovern look good.

Ed: Which what? Which in turn would make McGovern look good?

H.S.T: Yeah, if Eagleton had turned out . . . if the records had been available . . . See, Eagleton never showed McGovern his medical records. He kept saying he would bring them to South Dakota.

Ed: Did McGovern keep asking him?

H.S.T: Oh, yes. They kept ... they couldn't believe it when he didn't show up with them in South Dakota.

Ed: He promised that he was going to bring them?

H.S.T: He promised it for about ten days and finally he said that the psychiatrists wouldn't release them, the Mayo Clinic wouldn't release them, the Barnes Hospital wouldn't release them.

Ed: Why wouldn't the hospital release records to a patient?

H.S.T: Well, the answer is... the question is the answer.

Ed: So it wasn't true. He just did not bring the records for his own reasons.

H.S.T: Well, would you want to go . . . would you go to a psychiatrist who you thought would release his own personal diagnosis of your condition?

Ed: No, but he promised McGovern the records and he did not produce the records. He could have produced the records.

H.S.T: Yes, he could have.

Ed: Yes, he could have.

H.S.T: By the end of the campaign McGovern had still not seen the records, but at that point... he didn't care anymore.

Ed: Okay, now back to perception and reality—and Mankiewicz.

H.S.T: When I talked to Markiewicz about the Eagleton records, he denied knowing anything about it at all, whereas, in fact, he knew exactly what I'd just said about . . . severe psychosis and so forth.

Ed: What he later told Haynes.

H.S.T I gave him the same words, exactly

Ed And he denied it

H.S.T Right He denied it But what he told me was that I should go out to St Louis and look and look for the records on my own He said I'm surprised that some of you people haven't gone out there and worked on it' speaking of the journalists He was hunting that the records were there, but that was as far as he would go They were afraid, is I said well, they knew that the information had to come from somebody other than from the McGovern camp in order to have any kind of credibility, or otherwise it would look like

Ed Like they were trying to make Eagleton look bad

Hist Yeah and Eagleton kept accusing them of it constantly saying that these bastards have not only spiked my career but now they're trying to make it look worse in order to make themselves look good. Whereas in fact McGovern and about six of his top people knew that the information was there to get their hands on, but they couldn't do it. What I tried to do was to go out and buy them or find somebody who would steal them out of the safe at Rennard Hospital.

Ed At what hospital?

H.S.T Rennard Hospital That's where they are in St Louis

Ed They're still there?

H.S.T Yeah but they're not public 'records' in any real public sense

Ed 1 understand but they could be released at the request of a patient

H.S.T Yes, at the request of the patient

I'd So the public perceived McGovern to be the bad guy, when in fact it was really Egleton And McGovern never recovered from that change in his image

Hist No to the extent that it damaged him Put Caddell has very convincing figures on that Their polling from July, September to November shows that the Eagleton affair had hurt McGovern so badly that the fact is the figures went off the end of the board It was totally impossible to recover from that the damage was so great particularly among the younger voters where Mc Govern's potential strength lay.

Ed: Why were there so many defections over Eagleton among McGovern's younger supporters?

H.S.T: They were the people who would be more inclined to be sympathetic—because they were more sophisticated—to a person who had been treated for nervous tension, even if he had gone to the extent of having electro-shock treatments. They were not the kind of people who would say, "Oh, that nut—get rid of him." They were also the same kind of people who had earlier seen McGovern as an anti-politician ... or the "white knight," as some people called him ... The honest man ... Not the kind of person who would say one thing and do another. And at that point with Eagleton, as he said, he was behind him 1000 percent. Then he turned around and asked him to get off the ticket.

Ed: It was at that point McGovern said “1000 percent?”

H.S.T: One of the weird unanswered questions is whether McGovern actually said 1000 percent to anyone but Eagleton.

Ed: Well, who reported that McGovern said, “I was behind you 1000 percent?”

H.S.T: Eagleton reported it.

Ed: Eagleton reported it, but McGovern never denied it ... he couldn't have, of course.

H.S.T: He didn't deny it and Mankiewicz explained to me . . . he said, we had to do that. We came to a point where we either had to back him totally, or dump him. There was no middle way.

Ed: So they decided to back him totally. What made them change their minds?

H.S.T: The reaction from all over the country ... the party hierarchy ... mainly the financial people. The money flow stopped completely.

Ed: The money flow stopped completely because of Eagleton? Was there ever any . . . in other words, the money people said, you have to get rid of Eagleton or we're not going to put any more money into this campaign.

H.S.T: Oh, it wasn't just the money people . . . They said that . . . But it was also Jean Westwood, Larry O'Brien, Mayor Daley, all the pros, who said we simply can't do it. Mankiewicz had said the same thing. Just as soon as the Eagleton story broke. He said:

"Let's get rid of this guy"

Ld Frank said that "Let's get rid of this guy?" Right away?

Hist Yeah In the Haynes Johnson story Mankiewicz said that he was speaking both for himself and Gary Hart when he went to McGovern right after they found out about the information on Eagleton the initial information, the stall that was published. He said, "I remember that right I called him 'George' which I vowed I would not do during the campaign I indicated I was speaking for Gary and myself." Mankiewicz told McGovern, "Let's get rid of this guy."

Ed That was the first time he had called Senator McGovern George? That seems unusual

Hist Yeah that puzzled me all throughout the campaign, because I remember when I first met McGovern over at Tom Bradn's house back in December. He came over for dinner and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to call him George. The I had called Tom Braden columnist from the Washington Post. Tom and people would call Robert Kennedy 'Bobby' One of the sort of consistent indicators of the tone of the McGovern campaign and McGovern's personality was the fact that nobody in the campaign including Mankiewicz, who was the closest person to him in the campaign ever called him anything but The Senator or addressed him as "Senior," which struck me as very peculiar.

Hist At first I called him George, but then I began to feel weird, because I was the only person that called him that My wife called him that I never heard anyone else call him 'George "

Ed What did you call Hubert Humphrey? Did you speak to him first face to face

Hist I didn't get the chance to address Humphrey directly I was introduced to him once, though He had a habit of wandering up and down the aisle of his plane

I'd This was on the Humphrey campaign plane?

H.S.T In California, yeah I went out there after I called him all these wretched things I figured I owed them a free shot at me since I'd taken so many at them I went out to the Lockheed factory with Hubert whoever makes the L-1011 Yeah, it must be Lockheed In Palmdie, I think it was Ed: In California?

H.S.T: Yeah, it was during the California primary. I figured I should spend at least one day on the Humphrey plane ... so I called his press office at the Beverly Hilton and I said I'd be on it—and I thought, well Jesus, here we go—I'll get a beating now. And when I came on Humphrey was walking up and down the aisle. One of his press aides was sort of escorting him and saying this is so and so, from so and so ... Then he got to me and said, "Who are you?" And I said I was Hunter Thompson from Rolling Stone, and he said how do you spell that ... So at the top of his voice he insisted that I spell Hunter Thompson ... then I had to spell Rolling Stone.

Ed: They'd never heard of you?

H.S.T: Of course they had—Newsweek had just quoted me in two consecutive issues, calling Humphrey "a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler"—that bullshit about spelling was just their way of getting back at me. I guess they thought I'd be embarrassed. The whole Humphrey trip was run by waterheads... but there was no way I could avoid that crap and I figured... you know... they deserved a free shot by that time.

Ed: When you spoke to Nixon, how did you address him?

H.S.T: I don't think I did. I'm very uncomfortable with titles.

Ed: What did Nixon call you?

H.S.T: "Hunter" ... We were talking about football. He was feeling very relaxed.

Ed: We seem to be getting off the track. We were discussing the difference between "perception" and "reality" in the handling of the Eagleton affair. The public perceived Eagleton to be the good guy...

H.S.T: Excuse me, but I think I see a mescaline dealer down there in the street.

Ed: No...pull the curtains, pull the curtains.

H.S.T: I should call my attorney.

7d: Maybe we should get your personal physician back here.

You're acting very tense, very nervous we can't even think about mescaline dealers right now. We're on a crisis schedule with this book. Do you want to say anything further about the way McGovern handled the Eagleton problem?

H.S.T I think he handled it very badly There were two people in the campaign in the sort of top echelon, who made the strongest possible case with George for unloading Eagleton

Ed Who? When was this?

H.S.T Right after it happened, the day the story broke. It was a Tuesday, as I recall—the 1st Tuesday in July.

Ed Who argued for dumping Eagleton?

H.S.T Well Eleanor McGovern was the first one. But that's not what I mean here because she wanted to dump him in Miami, about two minutes after she heard he'd been selected to be on the ticket. She was the only person in Miami who was openly, out front opposed to Eagleton right from the start—except me, of course but people like Hart and Munkiewicz never took my opinions very seriously anyway and in Miami I wasn't down on Eagleton because I knew my foul secrets about him, neither did Eleanor. But when I was talking to Stearns and Bill Dougherty (McGovern advisor William Dougherty) Lucitenant Governor of South Dakota) on the bench that Saturday afternoon after the convention, I told him Eagleton looked like the first big mistake they'd made up to then—because he seemed out of place in that campaign, he was a hack, just another one of these cheap hustlers—and Dougherty said it was kind of funny to him. He's saying almost exactly the same things Eleanor had been buying about a Arabic text.

Ed Bill Dougherty said that? In Miami?

H.S.T Yeah, but I didn't print it Stearns and I were out on the beach drinking beer when Bill saw us He just came over and sat down without realizing I had my tape recorder going so I figured it wasn't fair to use some of the brutally frank things he said that day I edited them out of the tape transcription

Ed Too bad—but let's get back to what happened when the Eagleton story actually broke Who wanted to dump him?

H.S.T Mankiewicz didn't even want him to come to South Dakota—he wanted to dump him the minute he heard about it—the shock treatments Ed: Mankiewicz wanted to dump Eagleton immediately? And McGovern said no?

H.S.T: McGovern wasn't sure.

Ed: So you say Mankiewicz handled the situation badly.

H.S.T: Well, you can't blame it on Frank. Mankiewicz couldn't dump him; McGovern had to. And Gary Hart was . . . at first . . . under the impression that they should ride it out, or at least, try to ride it out. That was the rationale behind the 1000 percent . . . let's back him . . . they couldn't back him 99 percent . . . or 84 percent . . . they had to back him 1000 percent . . . or a million percent, or whatever . . . In other words, they had to back him or dump him.

Ed: And they wound up doing neither, really.

H.S.T: Right, and that was the pattern of their blunders all through the campaign. It happened with welfare, the thousand dollar per person scheme; it happened with the Salinger trip to Paris to talk with the Viet Cong.

Ed: Did Salinger go to Hanoi or did he go to Paris?

H.S.T: To Paris.

Ed: To negotiate with the Viet Cong representatives? To make a deal of some kind?

H.S.T: Not really to make a deal, but to establish a contact. . . . McGovern told him to do it and then denied it.

Ed: I see. McGovern had sent Salinger to Paris and then denied it.

H.S.T: No, he didn't send him, he asked him to go—Pierre was going to Paris anyway, he lives there. So McGovern asked him to see what he could find out about getting some P.O.W's released.

Ed: So the public's perception of McGovern was distorted—but you think that McGovern essentially was at the root of that distortion.

H.S.T: I think his indecisiveness was at the root of that distortion. At every crisis in the campaign McGovern appeared to be—was perceived to be—and, in fact, was indecisive... for unnatural periods of time.

Ed: Unnatural periods of time?

H.S.T: Well, unsettling periods of time. The selection of a replacement for Eagleton was one of the most heinous botches.

"I had three main reasons The first was political and personal—he had led to us and we couldn't have him around the second was the public reaction that inevitably would come from these kinds of reports and the third was patriotism In other words I'd we want this man to be in the position to be President?"

in the history of politics. Here he was calling Humphrey and Muskie and offering it to them publicly—and then being turned down ... He had also offered it to Humphrey at the convention ... I didn't realize that until later.

Ed: He had offered it to Humphrey before he offered it to Eagleton?

H.S.T: Yeah. Informally. Like a peace offering—symbolic.

Ed: Informally, symbolic. Very subtle, eh?

H.S.T: And Humphrey turned it down informally. Humphrey was in a fit of pique at the convention.

Ed: So throughout the campaign McGovern exhibited these alarming tendencies, which the public perceived to be indecision.

H.S.T: It was indecision.

Ed: But nevertheless, you think that Eagleton was really more of a villain than the public ever knew.

H.S.T: Absolutely.

Ed: Let's get back to the airplane . . . The last thing I remember was that the pilot had his clothes off and you were landing in . . . where was it . . . were you back in Sioux Falls?

H.S.T: Sacramento.

Ed: Sacramento?

H.S.T: That was a flashback.

Ed: Well, let's focus on Sioux Falls. The Zoo Plane and the Dakota Queen are landing in Sioux Falls and it's the night before the election.... You said previously that everyone's mood was somewhat sober, that most of the key people in McGovern's staff knew at this point there was no chance.

H.S.T: Everybody on both planes knew what was going to happen. But the dimensions of the defeat—that was a real shock—but nobody thought McGovern was going to win. It was out of the question. And because of that, I think, there was a mood of suspended hysteria on the Zoo Plane, which would probably have happened on the other plane too, if McGovern hadn't been there. But in deference to the candidate, his wife, his family, his close personal friends, all those people, the mood there was... almost

a sort of peaceful resignation

Ed Is it true that McGovern has an illegitimate twenty two-year old son?

H.S.T 11 millimeters Well I think you'd better ah let's call him and ask I have his number over here in this book

Ed One last question about this trip from Long Beach to Sioux Falls Why was this second plane called the Zoo Plane and how widespread was the use of dangerous narcotics in the campaign and on this particular trip?

H.S.T Well let's first deal with the fret that drugs" are not necessarily narcotics. We want to get that clear in our minds. The narcotic is one type of drug and

Ed Excuse me l

Hist Coffee is a drug yes there were drugs being used booze is a drug many drugs They're all around us these days

Fd 1 understand you're an expert

H.S.T Well I've been studying drugs for years

Ed A student of pharmacology

H.S.T I make a point of knowing what I'm putting into myself Yes The Zoo Plane I'm not sure who named it that but the name derived from the nature of the behavior of the people on it It was very much like a human zoo and I recall particularly that last flight from Long Beach to Sioux Falls I remember Tim Crouse's description of how the older and straighter press people must have felt when they saw five or six freaks reeling around in the cockpit on takeoff and landing passing joints around As Tim said you can imagine how these guys felt They had heard all these terrible things they'd read stories about how people in dark corners gathered to pass drugs around and they always thought that it happened in urine soaked doorways around Times Square But all of a sudden here we were covering a presidential campaign and there were points being passed up and down the�le word people in the cockpit drug addicts lunatics

crowding into the cockpit just to get high and wired on the lights. The cockpit had millions of lights all around it . . . green lights . . . red lights . . . all kinds of blinking things—a wonderful place to be. That surge of power in a jet . . . you don't get any real sense of it back in the passenger seats, but the feeling . . . up in front is like riding God's own motorcycle. You can feel that incredible . . . at takeoff . . . that incredible surge of power behind you . . . in the 727 the engines are way back in the back and you feel like you're just being lifted off the ground by some kind of hellish force. And the climb angle is something like 45 or 50 degrees . . . maybe 60 degrees . . . and then all these green lights blinking and these dials going and there are things buzzing and humming . . . and looking down seeing the lights here and there . . . and cities passing and mountain ranges . . . a wonderful way to go. I think I'm going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. Jesus—the possibilities! It beats motorcycles all to hell.

Ed: It's the third dimension. Motorcycles are only two dimensional.

H.S.T: Yeah, right. I think I'd like to get up there at night, all alone—with a head full of mescaline, just roll around in the sky like a big Condor.

Ed: What about drugs on the Zoo Plane?

H.S.T: Christ, you have a one-track mind! I think probably . . . I wish we had a picture of this somewhere . . . I don't think anybody ever got one. If they did, we'll all be arrested for it. But early on in the campaign, I'm not sure at what point, both galleys, which is where on commercial jets the stewardesses kind of station themselves to serve food . . . On the Zoo Plane both of them were immediately converted into bars, one in the front and one in the back. The stewardesses were totally helpless—at the mercy of these lunatics who had taken over the plane. That trip from Long Beach to Sioux Falls was probably the worst . . . after we had left the cockpit, about five of us gathered in the rear galley, there was one overhead light and the rest of the plane was dark. They had turned the lights out—it was practically midnight and . . .

Ed: Midnight?

Novfmbr

H.S.T Yeah we didn't arrive in Sioux Falls until one-thirty in the morning on November 7 election day And the rest of the plane was dark and here was this one overhead light in this galley and I had taken my tape recorder back playing Herbie Mann's Memphis Underground album at top volume in this tiny little room with ten walls and the music was echoing all up and down the plane Somebody up in front was playing a Rolling Stones album on another tape recorder and we were smoking this very peculiar looking hash pipe passing it wound

Ed Was that your fully club hash pipe?

H.S.T 1d rather not talk about that. No this was some kind of strange Lebanese flower pipe which was clearly a drug implement. There was no mistaking at. And right next to us were about four of these rather old time straight looking cameromen from A.B.C T.V just looking up in stone horror that here on a press dental campaign these addicts and loones all of them being paid presunntabs well by respectable or wholeer new-papers or media that covered this presidential campaign.

Ed Union members

Hist These people were yes that sort And it was funny and very bizarre for a president's campaign Behavior like that was consistent for maybe a month on the Zoo Plane the last month As the McGovern situation got worse the Zoo Plane became crazier and crazier

Cd What happened when you arrived in Sioux Falls?

H.S.T Well there was a very sad kind of welcome home rally for George McGovern and One final note on the Zoo Plane I think it was a tradition dating back to one of the Kennedy campaigns. At every hotel wherever the campaign press corps stopped there would be maybe a hundred rooms reserved for the press. And everyone upon checking out would keep their keys and we brought the keys on the plane and taped them along the aisle. The keys pingled like a giant rambourne on every takeoff. They were taped next to each other in a solid row along both top racks above the seats. There were maybe five thousand hotel keys.

I'd From the entire campaign?

Hist Every hotel in the country, it looked like And I think on the last day of the campaign, one of the C.B.S cameramen put them all in a huge bag. He was going to take them to one mailbox in Washington and dump them all in there. . . . Then they were going to film the behavior of the postman when he opened the box and found five thousand hotel keys . . . it must have weighed two hundred pounds . . . that was the kind of twisted humor that prevailed on the Zoo Plane.

Ed: What happened when you arrived in Sioux Falls?

H.S.T: Well, it was, as I say, it was really a sad kind of rally. It was cold and late. My notes here say: 12:55 and the sign says "Welcome Home, George" . . . erected by the local Jaycees. It was sort of the return of the local boy who made good, but I suspect that even in that crowd there was an ominous sense that some kind of awful beating was about to occur. And as it happened, McGovern didn't even carry South Dakota. He lost it by eight or nine points.

Ed: What did McGovern say when he got off the plane? Did he make a speech?

H.S.T: The only quote I have here in the notebook—yeah, here it is: “When I see these thousands of people standing here I think of words like love and devotion.” My own feeling at the time was … sort of like “the party's over” and … once you got off the Zoo Plane it was almost like being … plunged back into reality. Most of us just crashed that night either at the Holiday Inn or the Ramada Inn. And the next morning by about ten o'clock McGovern had a schedule … this was his last official campaign schedule and about half of the press corps followed him. I didn't, I slept. Then I had lunch with some of the heavier, straight reporters … Doug Kneeland from the New York Times, Bill Greider from the Post, and four or five others. We were discussing what bets were safe and I think Kneeland had McGovern and six points, meaning that if McGovern lost by five he would win the bet. He was a little dubious about that one, but we decided that anybody who had McGovern and ten points was pretty safe. There was no question in their minds, even the most enlightened and

supposedly inside hard core press people—that McGovern would lose by more than ten points And this was at noon on election day

Ed I notice here we have the schedule for Senator George McGovern on Tuesday. November 7, election day It only runs up to 3 30 where it says private time at Holiday Inn What happened after that?

H.S.T There a vnt a hell of a lot to do in Sioux Falls

Ed We're now on election day and according to what you've told me so far, you and the members of the press were sitting around betting on exactly how much McGovern would lose by What was McGovern doing during that day? This 'Schedule for Senator George McGovern begins at 8:30 A.V.

H.S.T Lets just put the goddann thing in the record

Schedule for Senator George McGovern Tuesday November 7 1972

8 30 A M Depart Holiday Inn Downtown Shuttle buses will pick up people from the other hotels shortly beforehand — bus schedules forthcoming upon arrival. Monday evening at the Holiday Inn

9 45 A M Arrive to vote at Educational Building of Congregational Church 301 E 4th Street, Mitchell, South Dakota There will only be room inside for press pool

10 15 A M D part for Dakota Wesleyan

10 25 A M Informal coffee with President Don Messer, University Building Allen Hall Drikota Wesleyan University

11·10 A M Depart (wiking) for Campus Center

11 15 A M High School Students Seminar ---speech, Campus Center Building 2nd floor cafeteria

12:00 P.M Interview with Mitchell Dady Republic Press Filing in Campus Center Building

12 20 P M Drop in at Burg Shoe Store 216 N Mum Street followed by visit to Mitchell McGovern Head quarters 1:00 P.M. Depart for Sioux Falls (box lunch in cars and buses).

2:15 P.M. Presentation and press reception, Minnehaha Country Club. W. 22nd Street, Sioux Falls.

3:15 P.M. Depart for Holiday Inn.

3:30 P.M. Private time at Holiday Inn.

To be announced: Election Night Statement, Coliseum, 501 N. Main, Sioux Falls.

Time of Departure of planes back to Washington will be posted in Press Room immediately following Election Night statement.

Ed: What did McGovern do after 3:30? How did he spend his private time? What did he do that day?

H.S.T: Well, he spent most of the afternoon at that Country Club reception . . . it was the first time I'd ever seen him drinking . . . sort of casually and openly in public . . .

Ed: Was he drinking more heavily than usual?

H.S.T: Not heavily, but he wasn't worried about walking up to the bar and saying ... uh ... let me have ... a ... vodka and orange juice. Normally a presidential candidate wouldn't do that. He'd have somebody else go get it for him ... and if anybody asked what he was drinking, he'd say "orange juice." But by that time McGovern no longer cared what people thought about his minor vices. Particularly the press corps ... A weird relationship develops when you follow a candidate for a long time. You become sort of a ... friendly antagonist ... to the extent sometime where it can get dangerous ... It certainly did in this campaign during the last month or so ... In my case I became more of a flack for McGovern than ... than a journalist. 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 10 points ... except Joe Alsop; he said McGovern wouldn't get more than 40 percent of the vote.

Ed: The others were more optimistic?

H.S.T: Weil . . . there was a sense of suspended ... ah ...

not animation that's the wrong word it was sort of a sense of limbo an eminous sense that the night was not gonna be very pleasant. We all knew it but nobody was talking about it. McGovern Headquarters was in the downtown Holiday Inn and there was a sort of false giety that prevailed there. There was a bar on the top floor kind of a big glass walled dome. People were having a few drinks and pretending that none of them knew what was about to happen. I recall spending a few hours up there with Ron Rosenbaum from the Village & Ioke and Bob Greene from the Chicago Sun Times and I don't think we talked about the election at all. We just talked about how strange it was to be sitting in Sioux Falls up at the top of the Holiday Inn. Wondering what sones were on the jukchov. It was like going to visit a couple on the verge of a really mostly divorce scene where you know it and you're invited over for dinner but nobody mentions it. You sat there listening to music and you talk about I don't know the Super Bowl or the pig races or Ed. Pie races?

just Right Pig races are incredible Drama Tension Speed I think what we what we all thought would happen would be that They had a giant press room set up with a free bar about fifty typewriters and six T.V consoles at one end of the room and I think the general impression was that we'd sort of filter in there about 6 o'clock which would be seven Eastern Time when the polls closed in New York and Massachusetts

and we would sort of watch the deft go down slowly. I think we all assumed that by midnight it would be over. The only question was how bad it would be. But what happened as it turned out was that well I decided rather than go to the press room. I did go up and watch the first T.V returns with some of McGovern's closest staff people. It seemed more fitting somehow to go up to the ninth floor where most of the staffers were staying and watch the first returns with some of McGovern's key people the ones who were closest to him. I knew that John Holum and Sandy Berger two speech writers were staying in a room up there so I picked up the house phone in the lobby about 6.15

I'd heard that some of the results had come in but I didn't know what they were at that point and it didn't seem to make much difference . . . Too early, I thought . . . when Holum answered I asked if he was busy and if he wasn't I'd like to come up and have a drink and sit around and wait for the results . . . He said, "Don't bother . . . It's all over . . . We've been wiped . . . Shit, we're losing everything!"

Ed: What time was this?

H.S.T: Shortly after 6 . . . Central Time. So that was what . . . 5 o'clock Eastern Time . . No, 7 Eastern Time, excuse me . . . and 4 California time . . . It was really all over by then. By 6:30 there wasn't a person at the Holiday Inn who didn't know what had happened. There was never any question of winning, but the Shock set in when people began to sense the dimensions of it, how bad it was. . . And the tip-off there was . . . I'm not sure . . . but . . . first it was when Ohio went down . . . no, Illinois . . . that's right, it was Illinois . . . When Illinois went by 11 points you could almost feel the shudder that went through the place because Illinois was where they had Gene Pokorny, their best organizer. He was a real wizard. He's the one who did the Wisconsin primary. And Illinois was the key state so they put their best person in. They had to have Illinois. 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. But if Pokorny couldn't carry Illinois—when it went down by 11 points, a feeling of shock and deem came over the whole place. Nobody talked. You could see T.V people like Frank Reynolds and Bruce Morton doing their interviews . . .

Ed: Frank Reynolds, Bruce Morton?

H.S.T: A.B.C-T.V, and Bruce Morton from C.B.S... Setting up their cameras and their lights out in the lobby, doing on-the-scene reports with a quiet crowd gathered around watching them, and theirs were the only voices you could hear and they were broadcasting...

Ed: Who were they interviewing?

H.S.T: They weren't interviewing anybody. It was eerie, you'd walk out of the press room, through the lobby out of the elevators, into the bar ... There'd be a huge crowd in the lobby and only one person talking and you'd hear this voice saying, "The mood at the McGovern headquarters ... is extremely solemn and

shocked one of shock and depression right now Illinois has just fallen California is gone New York is gone They'd read this list of disasters and you knew their faces and what they were saying was on T.V screens all over the country It was like a televised funeral

I think about 800 I was sitting in the coffee shop eating a hamburger no pea soup it was I didn't feel like eating but somebody insisted I have something I was feeling depressed And John Holum came in I could see that he had been crying and he's not the kind of person you'd expect to see walking around in public with tears all over his face I said why don't you sit down and have a beer or some pet soup or whatever And he said No I think it's about time to go upstairs and write the statement He was going up to write McGovern's concession statement and you could see he was about to crack again and that's what he did he turned and walked out of the coffee shop and into the elevator

I think McGovern slept through the first returns Holum woke him up and asked him what he wanted to say and McGovern was very cool for a while till he read the statement that Holum had written he typed a first draft then woke George up and said Here it is we have to go over about 10 o'clock to the coliseum and do it It was sort of a giant auditorium where a big crowd of mainly young people were waiting for McGovern and all the national press and the net work cameras

Ed But first he read the statement that Holum had written for him

H.S.T Yeah That was the only time that McGovern cracked For about a minute he broke down and and couldn't talk for a few minutes Then he got himself together He was actually the coolest person in the place from then on Other people were cracking all around It was spooky to be there later at night

Fd What was Mankiwitz's reaction?

IfST Well Frank had flown out early from Washington There were plans for two planes to fly out Mankowicz had come out in a small Lear jet with I've forgotten who

else came out with him. Most of the top people were supposed to come out on the second plane, once the polls closed in the east . . . But when the shittrain started they cancelled that flight . . . Gary Hart never showed up in Sioux Falls, for instance . . . his wife was waiting for him out there, at the Holiday Inn . . . Rick Stearns . . . Eli Segal . . . Hal Himmelman; none of them ever left Washington.

Ed: Why not?

H.S.T: Well . . . the shock was so sudden, so massive . . . that they didn't want to come out.

Ed: But Mankiewicz came?

H.S.T: He came out on the first plane . . . the four-person jet . . . and I recall seeing him once or twice, but I didn't talk to him that night . . . It was not the kinda night when you . . . it wasn't the scene where you felt like talking to people.

Ed: How did Mankiewicz look? How did he take it?

H.S.T: Like everybody else . . . stunned, wall-eyed . . . there was nothing to say . . . just a belluva shock . . . you know . . . a fantastic beating . . . and I think about . . . oh . . . ten or fifteen of us stayed in the press room watching the final returns from other races around the country until about 4 or 5 in the morning. I remember, when Agnew came on, throwing something at the television set. It was a beer can . . .

Ed: You threw a beer can at the television set when Agnew came on?

H.S.T: Yeah . . . That was the mood there. I was more extreme, but that was the general mood, even among the press. I think one of the best expressions of that—the feeling of the press, which McGovern has cursed all the way through the campaign and ever since the campaign . . .

Ed: Excuse me, McGovern cursed what?

H.S.T: McGovern places a large part of the blame for his defeat on the press. He did before the election, and even now he's still doing it. The Eagleton affair turned him brutally against the press. He thought they were crucifying him and leaving Nixon alone... and he was right, on one level. But what he ignored was the fact that, first, he was out in the open and committing these blunders that the press couldn't ignore... while Nixon was not out

in the open and committing no blunders or at least none that the press could pin on him The Wertegite thing came about as close as anything and the Washington Post worked that one about as heavily as any newspaper could But McGovern throughout the campaign blamed the press for taking advantage of his of what he called his "open campaign as if he opened up his house to guests and they came in and passed all over the floor and npped off his silver and you know raped the children that sort of thing But I think one of the best examples of the way the press people felt that night showed up in these few pieces of paper I found in the typewriter about 5 in the morning in the press room I was just sort of wandering around

There was an old sense of not wanting to go to sleep because that would have been giving up. In a scene like that you get a weird feeling that maybe if you stay up a little longer maybe something good might happen but Colorado was the only bright spot in the country that might

Ed Why was that?

Hist Gordon Allet got beaten Republic in senator an arch Nixon supporter He was defeated by Floyd Haskell a sort of unknown Democrat, by a very small margin and also the Olympics were defeated which was a definite victory

Ed There had been a referendum?

Hist Oh yeah They actually threw the Winter Olympics out of Colorado Which was a great shock to the Chamber of Commerce people-the greedheads And then I called Aspen and we earned you know Aspen was the only county in Colorado that went for McGovern And there was one other thing I forget what oh Pat Schroeder a sort of a liberal woman lawyer who bent the former da who was the incumbent congressman

Ed Where was that?

H.S.T In Denver

Ed Also in Colorado

H.S.T Yeah but the rest of the country—except for Massachusetts—was a sort of a never ending nightmare. For a while in the press room there were people trying to write or half heartedly poking on typewriters around the edge of the room.

But nobody was writing by five. we were just sort of watching television and drinking, and I saw this abandoned story sort of ... lying around. One page was still in the typewriter, the others were on the table beside it, and I think it pretty well expresses the feeling of most of the press about the McGovern campaign ... I have no idea who wrote it ... There was no byline ... it was a first draft ... just left there unfinished on the table ... and at first I found one page and I thought, ... hmnnn ... where's the rest of this? So I shuffled around through the paper on the table and put it together ...

Ed: Well, let's include this, with the following message to whoever originally wrote it: We hope you'll get in touch with Barbara Burgower at Straight Arrow Books in order that we may properly credit this piece of writing and carry the customary copyright of permissions and acknowledgments in future editions of this book. What follows is the actual manuscript which Dr. Thompson found that morning.

the cruel moment of defeat hurt senator McGovern more deeply than it might most other men, his quest for the presidency was inspired not so much by/ desire for power but by conviction that the country new spiritual direction, fresh vision about its ideal and perhaps, above all, a national integrity that he felt was its greatest need. he talked frequently about a@crisis of spirit@ in the united states but xxx americans overwhelmingly demonstrated that they did not agree with him. even the country's young people.

senator mcgovern had hinged his lxxxx whole campaign on opposition to the vietnam war, xhoping to pursue americans of its immorality and awakening in them a sense of outrage and shame. he tried to demonstrate that the continuing american presnece in vietnam, the bombing and the support of what he denounced as a corrupt dictatorship was an indication of a moral collapse in the united states. he did not balme the people but the nixon administration/ but the people did not respond to his appeals. ironically yesterday morning he voted here in support of a local proposition to outlwa the

killing of a small bird known as the @mourning dove@ last night as the nixon landslide gathered momentum that is precisely what heorge megovern became—a mourning dove

late yesterday afternoon in an informal talk with me sen megovern said he truly believed xx what he had earlier suggested in x his final campaigning that the re-election of president naixon could actually mean four more years of war in south-east Asia it was a poignant moment because massacre he seemed to snees that the american people were about to re-elect pres dent nicon just the same

I asked him if the worst happened whether he would run again and he said @emphantically no I will not I shall stay in the senate but xxx someone else will have to carry on what I began@

frequently in the last two weeks senator megovern had spoken of a young p black man who predicted that the election was going to break his heart because he was going to g find out that the american people were not as high mndd as he thought they were typically air megovern challenged this view *saying that he believed in the goodness and decency of the people and that they would respond to their own consequences

but the election did break his heart after all he thought he saw faces glowing with hope xx that the country would aim for higher standards yearning for peace and an edn to the domestic anguish but the voters turned their bricks on him

senator megovern had x hoped too that americans x would share his concern that the nixon administrab was ignoring the interests of the people and consorting only with v. in dustal giants/amanaing to the @special interests@ of the super rich and generally sacenting the welfare of the court at last.

nothing x that Mr Megovern had to say on these questions got through to the people sufficiently to pursue them to vote for him they did not even react to his dark assumptions that the alleged writping espionage and subotage tactics of the mixon administration was leading them towards a big brother@ state where none would be safe from intrusion on the personal privacy Ed: I have one last question. What does this mean here, “Time of departure of planes back to Washington will be posted in press room immediately following election night statement”?

H.S.T: That was the last flight of the Dakota Queen and also the last flight of the Zoo Plane. It was the trip back to Washington from Sioux Falls, which borders on one of the worst trips I've ever taken in my life. I was on the Zoo Plane. Apparently the atmosphere on the Dakota Queen was something very close to a public hanging of a good friend. When we got to the Washington National Airport, we landed at a ... I think it was a Coast Guard terminal somewhere away from the commercial terminal and all of the McGovern national staff people from Washington were there. ... Jesus Christ ... I can't even describe what's coming off ... it was easily the worst scene of the campaign. ... I'd thought that election night was the worst thing I'd been through. 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. There was something ... total ... something very undermining about the McGovern defeat ... a shock. There was a very unexplained kind of ... ominous quality to it ... So when we got to Washington ... the national staff people were there and the wives of the people who had been on the plane ... and it was a scene of just complete ... weeping chaos. 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. Mass disintegration ...

It was such a shock to me that although I'd gone back to Washington to analyze ... the reasons for McGovern's defeat and the dimensions of it, when I saw that scene at the airport ... and I saw how ripped up people were, you know, unable to even focus, much less think or talk ... I decided to hell with this ... I can't stay around here ... so I just went right around to the main terminal and got on another plane and went back to Colorado.

Novtmrer

Fd You never left the airport?

H.S.T Well I was looking for a cab to get across the main terminal it was about a mile away and Sandy Berger appeared in his car he was one of the people who had broken down earlier

Ed Who is Sandy Berger?

Hist He was one of the speech writers first class speech writer one of the two or three who were with McGovern all the way through from Miami on and he was in such a state when he packed us up. It was rush hour in Washington and we had to go down one side of a freeway. There was a big grass island about eighteen inches high and twelve feet wide separating the two freeways we lanes three in each direction. Sandy thought he was giving Tim Crouse and me a ride into town but we said we were going over to the main terminal to catch another plane and he said Oh, back there eh? 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 just made a high speed. It turned over the island and back into the other time and ever were skidding at us coming side ways and fighting trying to avoid us That was the kind of mood the McGovern people were in I don't think he cared whether anybody hit us or not It scared the hell out of me But we made it to the terminal and I bought a ticket for Denver and just got the hell out of Washington

Ed Just got the hell out of Washington? I think that should be the end that's a good point to end it is chapter

H.S.T Yeah I decided to get the hell out give them time to cool off and get themselves together then come back later and get into some serious talk about why it happened

Ed A serious talk

1157 Y each—poke into the re isons for it

Fd Okay that it be the end of chapter we'll call November I.I.S.T Why not?

Be Angry At The Sun

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. Watch the wheel slope and turn, They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors. This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating. Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate

Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far

From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame. And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.

Yours is not theirs.

—Robinson Jeffers

Purging the McGovernites Shoot-Out in the Dung-Heap Corral Where Do We Go From Here What Next for the "New Politics"? A Crude Autopsy & Quarrelsome Analysis on Why McGovern Got Stomped

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved" —Jeremiah 8 20

on A Friday Afternoon in early December I spent about thirty-three minutes observing the traffic pattern around Times Square from the co-pilot's seat of a chartered Beechcraft Bonanza. We were trying to land at LaGuardia airport on Long Island in time to catch a 630 flight to Lvansville. Indiana but the runways were crowded at that hour, and when the Tower put us into the holding pattern we were faced with a choice between drifting idly around in circles above the New Jersey shoreline, or doing something different.

I offered the pilot a Harp Ale out of my kitbag and said I'd just as soon do anything that wouldn't cost him his license—like maybe swooping down on Manhattan Island to check the size of the crowd outside of whatever theater was showing "Deep Throat"

He glanced across at me, refusing the ale, but I could see a new light in his eyes. "Lissen," he said. "Are you serious? Because we can really do that, if you want to." He smiled wickedly. "We can go right down to five hundred feet and still be legal."

Why not? I said "Five hundred feet still gives us plenty of room to maneuver"

He chuckled and pushed the stick hard left, throwing the plane into a tight downward spiral 'You'll get a big kick out of this' he said "Five hundred feet an't much " He glanced over at me, keeping the plane aimed straight down at Times Square. "You a pro football fan?"

"Absolutely," I replied.

He nodded. "Well, five hundred feet is about a hundred and seventy yards—and every quarterback in the league can throw a football about half that far."

I tried to raise my ale-bottle for a long drink, but our plunge-angle made it impossible to lift it high enough to overcome the reverse-gravity flow. We were headed straight down at a little over 300 miles an hour ... and from somewhere behind me in the small cabin I heard a voice; a low keening sound, very much like a moan ...

“What's that noise?” the pilot asked.

“That's Frank,” I said. “I think he just bit a chunk out of his own liver.” I looked back to be sure Mankiewicz was still strapped into his seat—which he was, but his face was grey and his eyes seemed unable to focus. He was sitting with his back to the window, so he couldn't enjoy the view. And our engine noise was so loud that he couldn't hear what we were saying up in the cockpit, so he had no way of knowing that our sudden, high-speed power-dive straight down at the vortex of Manhattan Island was anything more or less than what anybody who has spent a lot of time on commercial jetliners would assume it to be—the last few seconds of an irreversible death-plunge that would end all our lives, momentarily, in a terrible explosion and a towering ball of fire in the middle of Broadway.

“Don't worry,” I yelled back at him. “We're stuck in a holding pattern.”

He stared down at me, clinging to a hand-strap on the roof of the plane: "What? What? I can't hear you!"

Just then we began leveling out, and the ale spilled all over my lap. "Nevermind!" I shouted. "We're right over Times Square."

He tried to lean back in his seat, fighting the G's, but I could see that his heart was not in it. Spontaneous night power-dyevs over metropolitan areas are not lightly dismissed by those who were weaned on "the Friendly Skies of United." Few commercial passengers have ever experienced a rise or drop angle worse than

thirty or forty degrees—so a sudden ninety-degree spiraling swoop over midtown Manhattan does serious things to the nerves

Soon we were standing on our right wing, and the only thing between me and the sidewalk in Times Square was a thick pane of plexiglass. We were flying in very tight circles, so low that if the window had a hole in it I felt like I could reach down and touch the people on the street.

"You see what I mean?" said the pilot. "Five hundred feet and much, as it"

"Jesus! I muttered

He laughed “You wann go around again”

I glanced back at Frank, but even at a glance I could see that the damage was already done. His face was frozen, his mouth had gone slack, and his eyes were locked in a kind of glazed blank fascination on the toes of his own shoes which—because of our flight angle—seemed to be floating in a state of weightlessness about fifteen inches off the floor of the plane.

"He looks okay I said to the pilot Let's take another run"

He grinned. 'We'll turn a little wider this time, and come in real low—right across Central Park. He eased back on the stuck and aimed us out above the docks on the Hudson River. 'I don't do this much with passengers,' he said. 'Most people get scared when I take it down this low.' He nodded. 'I usually don't even mention it, but you guys looked like the type who'd probably get a boot out of stuff like this."

"You were right," I said. "Frank's acting a little funny right now, but it's only because he's tired. It's been about fifteen months since he had any real sleep."

Now we were bearing down on Times Square again, coming in so low over Central Park and the Plaza Fountain that I was sure of I could learn out the window and yell something vicious, everybody on Fifth Avenue would hear me and look up

The pilot spoke without taking his eyes off our tree-skimming course 'Tilteen months with no sleep? God damn! You guys must have really been whooping it up'

I shrugged, trying to light a cigarette as we zoomed across 59th Street. Well I guess maybe you could say that.

"What line of work are you in?" he asked.

“Work?” It had been a long time since anybody asked me a thing like that. “Well . . . ah . . . Frank's writing a book about politics, I think . . . and I'm organizing a campaign for the U.S. Senate.”

“Whose campaign?” he asked.

"Mine," I said.

He glanced over at me and smiled. "Well I'll be damned! So you're gonna be a Senator, eh?" He chuckled. "You think you might want to hire a private pilot?"

I shrugged. "Why not? But you'll have to clear it with Frank. He'll be handling that end of the action—after he gets some sleep."

Now we were circling Times Square, standing on the wing and looking straight down at the New York Times building. The pilot appeared to be thinking. "Frank?" he said. "Frank Mankiewicz? . . . I saw that name on the manifest. Didn't he have something to do with that goddamn McGovern business?"

I hesitated, reaching around behind me to fetch another bottle of ale out of the kitbag as we leaned left around the Empire State Building.

“Yeah,” I said finally. “Frank was McGovern's political director.”

He said nothing for a moment, then he slowly turned to look at me again. “So now you want Mankiewicz to run your campaign?”

I laughed nervously. Was Frank listening? Was he conscious? Could he hear us—above the roar of the engines and the whine of his own nerve ends?

A sudden burst of noise from the radio ended our conversation. It was the voice of an air-traffic controller from the La Guardia tower, telling us to get back in the landing pattern immediately. We hooked a hard right over Brooklyn, then left & down to the private/charter runway in front of the small yellow Butler Aviation terminal, a painfully familiar docking place to anyone who spent any time on the McGovern campaign plane last fall.

We had about four minutes to make the Eastern flight to Evansville, which was leaving from a gate about a mile across

Decema R

the LaGuardia parking lot in the main terminal but our pilot had radiohead for a cab and it was waiting for us on the runway

This is the kind of split second service that you come to take for granted after a year or so on the [presidential] campaign trail. But the cost—for chartered planes private cars police escorts and small army of advance men and Secret Service guards clearing a path for you—is about $5000 a day which is nice while it lasts but the day after the polls close you suddenly understand why. Canderella never stayed out after midnight.

McGoverns Now Ordinary Tourists

St Thomas I (U.P.I)—Senator George McGovern his Secret Service protection game stood in line with ordinary tourists Thurs day to fly to the Virgin Islands I was a week of rest after his crushing election defeat McGovern gave up his 727 let—which he had dashed Dakota Queen 2 after his World War Two bomber—when he returned to Washington Wednesday from South Dakota. As he left Dulles Airport outside Washington Thursday morning, he stood in line at the ticket counter and rode a bus with the other passengers from the terminal to the plane. A few Secret Service agents accompanied him to the airport and one who was in the Virgin Islands on other business paid a courtesy call with the local police chief when McGovern arrived. But the agents who hounded his steps for the past nine months were with him no more.

—Rocky Mountain News November 10 1972

McGovern himself was not as overtly unhinged by this sudden fall from grace as were some of his staff people and journalists who'd been following him back and forth across the country for the past year. In Mankewicz's case it had been almost two years and now—a month after the election—he was living a hard time coping with the rigors of public transportation. We were on our way from New Haven to Owensboro. Kentucky where he was scheduled to explain the meaning of the election and McGovern's disastrous defeat to a crowd of dispirited local liberals at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Earlier that afternoon Frank and I had been part of a panel discussion on "The Role of the Media in the Campaign." The moment the Yale gig ended, we sprinted out of the auditorium to a waiting car. Rather than cope with the complexities of commercial transportation, Mankiewicz insisted on chartering the Beechcraft. There was no particular reason for me to fly down to Owensboro with him—but it seemed like a good time to spend a few hours talking seriously, for the first time since Election Day, about the reasons and realities that caused McGovern to get stomped so much worse than either he or anybody on his staff had expected.

After his speech in Kentucky that night, Frank and I spent about three hours in a roadside hamburger stand, talking about the campaign. Three weeks earlier, just after the election, he had said that three people were responsible for McGovern's defeat: Tom Eagleton, Hubert Humphrey, and Arthur Bremer—but now he seemed more inclined to go along with the New York Times/Yankelovich poll, which attributed Nixon's lopsided victory to a rising tide of right-bent, non-verbalized racism in the American electorate. The other McGovern staffers I'd talked to had already cited that "latent racism" theory, but there was no consensus on it. Gary Hart and Pat Caddell, for example, felt the Eagleton Affair had been such a devastating blow to the whole campaign machinery that nothing else really mattered. Frank disagreed, but there was no time to pursue it that night in Owensboro; at the crack of dawn the next morning we had to catch a plane back to Washington, where the Democratic National Committee was scheduled to meet the next day—Saturday, December 9—for the long-awaited purge of the McGovernites. There was not much doubt about the outcome. In the wake of McGovern's defeat, the party was careening to the right. John Connally's Texas protegé, Robert Strauss, already had more than enough votes to defeat McGovern's appointee, Jean Westwood, and replace her as Democratic National Chairman. Which is exactly what happened the next day. George's short-lived fantasy of taking over the party and remolding it in his own image had withered and died in the five short months

since Miami. Now the old boys were back in charge.

“Just why the American electorate gave the present administration such an overwhelming mandate in November remains something of a mystery to me. I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat could defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972.”

—Senator George McGovern, speaking at

Oxford University two months after the election.

After months of quasi-public brooding on the Whys and Wherefores of the disastrous beating he absorbed last November, McGovern seems finally to have bought the Conventional Wisdom—that his campaign was doomed from the start: conceived in a fit of hubris, born in a momentary power-vacuum that was always more mirage than reality, borne along on a tide of frustration churned up by Liberal lintheads and elitist malcontents in the Eastern Media Establishment, and finally bashed into splinters on the reefs of at least two basic political realities that no candidate with good sense would ever have tried to cross in the first place.... To wit:

(1) Any incumbent President is unbeatable, except in a time of mushrooming national crisis or a scandal so heinous—and with such obvious roots in the White House—as to pose a clear and present danger to the financial security and/or physical safety of millions of voters in every corner of the country.

(2) The “mood of the nation,” in 1972, was so overwhelmingly vengeful, greedy, bigoted, and blindly reactionary that no presidential candidate who even faintly reminded “typical voters” of the fear & anxiety they'd felt during the constant “social upheavals” of the 1960s had any chance at all of beating Nixon last year—not even Ted Kennedy—because the pendulum “effect” that began with Nixon's slim victory in '68 was totally irreversible by 1972. After a decade of left-bent chaos, the Silent Majority was so deep

Decrmair

in a behavioral sink that they only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of reversion. All they wanted in the White House was a man who would leave them alone and do anything necessary to bring calmness back into their lives—even if it meant turning the whole state of Nevada into a concentration camp for hippies, niggers, dope fiends do-gooders and anyone else who might threaten the status quo. The Pendulum Theory is very vor探ch these days especially among Washington columnists and in the more prestigious academic circles where the conversion rate has been running at almost epidemic proportions since the night of November 7. Until then it had not been considered entirely fashionable to go around calling ex Attorney General John M thell a "prophet" because of his smiling prediction in the summer of 1970 that "This country is going so far to the right that you won't recognize it."

This is the out of the Pendulum Theory. It is also a recurring theme in McGovern's personal analysis of why the voters rejected him so massively fast November. The loss itself didn't really surprise him but he was deeply and genuinely shocked by the use of it. Not even the Earleton debacle he insisted could explain away the fact that the American people had come within an eyelash of administering the worst defeat in the history of presidential politics to a gentle soft spoken and eventually conservative Methodist minister « son from the plures of South Dakota.

I hung around Washington for a few days after the D.N.C purge buying up all the cheap smack I could find and on Wednesday afternoon I stopped at McGovern's office in the O'd Senate Office Building for an hour or so of talk with him. He was gracious as always despite the fact that I was an hour late. I tried to explain it away by telling him that I did had a bit of trouble that morning, a girl had been arrested in my suite at the Washington Hilton. He nodded sympathetically without smiling and said that yes John Holum had already told him about it.

I shook my head sadly. "You never know these days!" I said "Where will it end?"

He walked around the desk and sat down in his chair, propping his feet up on the middle drawer. I half-expected him to ask me why a girl had been arrested in my hotel room, but it was clear from the look on his face that his mind had already moved on to whatever might come next. McGovern is a very private person—which might be part of the reason why not even his friends call him “George”—and you get the feeling, after being around him for a while, that he becomes uncomfortable when people start getting personal.

I was tempted for a moment to push on with it, to keep a straight face and start mumbling distractedly about strange and unsettling events connected with the arrest—pornographic films that had allegedly been made on the Zoo Plane, Ted Van Dyk busted for pimping at the "Issues" desk—but he seemed so down that I didn't have the heart to hassle him, even as a friendly joke. Besides I had my professional reputation to uphold. I was, after all, the National Affairs Editor of Rolling Stone.

He was obviously anxious to get on with it, so I set up the tape recorder and asked him about a comment he'd made shortly after the election about the split in the Democratic Party. He had told a group of reporters who flew down to talk with him at Henry Kimmelman's house in the Virgin Islands that he wasn't sure if the two wings of the party could be put back together. But the part of the quote that interested me more was where he said he wasn't sure if they should be put back together. "What did you mean by that?" I asked. "Are you thinking about something along the lines of a fourth party?"

McGovern: No, I was not suggesting a major break-up of the Democratic Party. We had been talking earlier about Connolly's role, you know, and also about so-called Democrats for Nixon that had formed in the campaign, and they had asked me what I thought could be done to bring those people back in. Well, I don't think they ever really belonged in the Democratic Party. I thought that it wasn't just a matter of personality differences with me or ideological differences with me. I thought that basically they were

more at home in the Republican Party and I wasn't sure that we ought to make the kind of gestures that would bring them back. H.S.T Were you talking specifically about?

McGovern Well, I was really talking about this organized group rather than the defection of large numbers of blue collar workers, which I regard as a serious problem. I think those people do have to be brought back into the Democratie Party if it's going to survive as a party that can win national elections. 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. I don't think Connaffy adds anything to the party. I think as a matter of fact, he's the kind of guy that's always forcing the party to the right and into positions that really turn off more people than he brings with him. What I regard as a much more serious defection is the massive movement of people to Wallace that we saw taking place in the primaries.

H.S.T Yeah That's Another Thing I Was Going to Ask You

McGovern. I don't think anybody really knows what was at the bive of that movement. I suspect that race was a lot more of a factor than we were aware of during the campaign. There wasn't a lot of talk about racial prejudice and the old fashioned racial epithet, things like that but I think it was there. There were all kinds of ways that—of tapping that prejudice. The buting issue was the most pronounced one, but also the attacking on the welfare program and the way the President handled that issue. I think he was orchestrating a lot of things that were designed to tap the Wallace voters and he got most of them. Now what the Democratic Party can do to bring those people back. I'm not sure I suspect that there should have been more discussion in the campaign of the everyday frustrations and problems of working people, conditions under which they work, maybe more of an effort made to identify with them.

H.S.T 1 spent a whole day during the Wisconsin primary on the south side of Milwaukee at a place called Serb Hall

McGovern Yeah

Hist I went up there in the afternoon and Wallace was scheduled to be there at five. I think it was—then you and Muskie were coming in later I went out there to talk to those people and I

was really amazed to find that you and Wallace were the two people they were... kind of muttering and mumbling about who to vote for. Humphrey and Muskie were pretty well excluded. You seemed to have a pretty good erib on it.

McGovern: Yeah.

H.S.T: But at some point you seemed to lose it. I'm not sure why...

McGovern: Well, I think there were a number of factors. One, once I became the nominee of the party, they saw me more as a typical Democrat. I mean, I was no longer the challenger taking on the party establishment. I was the nominee at that point. Secondly, instead of competing with Muskie and Humphrey, I was then competing with Nixon, the author of the Southern strategy and the guy who hammered hard against those who were dissenters on the war and hammered on amnesty and busing and those things, so that it was a different type of competition than I had with Muskie and Humphrey in Wisconsin.

H.S.T: But I got the impression that they were actually considering voting for you or Wallace.

McGovern: I know that. I know.

H.S.T: Even though they disagreed with you on a lot of things.

McGovern: If I could just say this to you: I think that probably you may have gotten an exaggerated impression of the numbers of them. I think that it always started people to find any—and it was easy to assume that when you ran into a guy who said well it's either Wallace or McGovern, that he was typical of large numbers of people. As I think back on it, it always struck me as such a paradox that it made more of an impression on me than was justified by the numbers of people that actually said it. Furthermore, I think we were hurt by the—I think those people were turned off, some of them, by the Eagleton controversy. I think that others were turned off by the attacks on me as a radical. I think they came to perceive me as more radical than they wanted me to be. Also, some of them were offended by the convention. I thought the convention was great, but what came across on television, apparently, to many of these guys was they saw a lot of aggressive women, they saw a lot of militant blacks, they saw long-haired kids, and I think that combination, which helped win the nomin

tion for me. I think it offended a lot of them

H.S.T John Holum and I were talking about that the other night There should have been somebody assigned to sit in a room in Fort Lauderdale and just watch the whole show on television to see how it came across

McGovern Yeah I thought one of the highlights of that convention was that ringing peroration of Willie Brown's when he said give me back my delegation—screamed that into the television networks of the country and it scared the hell out of a lot of people who saw that as a wild militant cry of the blacks you see they're going to take over the country And so that what seemed to be powerful and moving and eloquent to us was terrifying to many people

Hist Did you get any kind of feedback on that?

McGovern I did yeah

H.S.T During the convention?

McGovern Not during the convention but afterward I ran into people who weren't nearly as impressed with it as I was and who in fact were turned off by it And that was one of the most celebrated incidents of the convention You need a bottle opener?

Hist Yeah but I only have one beer Would you like some? Do you have a glass? I haven't even eaten breakfast yet I had a disturbin sort of day I was up until eight o'clock

McGovern Was that when they arrested the gal in your room?

H.S.T Yeah I don't want to go into it But actually I got so wound up I went to the doctor in Aspen on Tuesday to find out what the hell was wrong with me who I was to knotted up I had a cold and I had all kinds of things wrong We went through about six hours of tests at the hospital the whole works then I went back to his office and he said I had this and that a virus nothing serious but he said in all of his years in medicine about fifteen or twenty years he's one of those people one of those high powered Houston Medical Center doctors who dropped out and came to Aspen he said he never seen anybody with us had a case of anxiety as I had He said I was right on the verge of a complete mental physical and emotional collapse At that point I began to wonder how the hell you or anyone else survived be cause . . . I really am amazed, I think I said that to you on Monday on the plane.

McGovern: Well, it is a fantastic physical and emotional beating.

H.S.T: Yeah, but it never seemed to show on you—it showed on some people, God knows it showed on me.

McGovern: Well, I wouldn't want to go through it again, I don't think.

H.S.T: No, once every four years just to recover. Here's the main question I want to get to and I think it's something that I have a very personal interest in. I don't see any need for me to stay in politics at all or getting my head involved or running for anything, which I'm kind of thinking of doing. I was thinking of running for the Senate in Colorado, running against Gary in the primary. I'm not sure how serious I am about that, but here's a question that sort of haunts me now, talking to John and everyone else in the campaign about it just in the last two-three days, is whether this kind of campaign could have worked? Were the mistakes mechanical and technical? Or was it either flawed or doomed from the start by some kind of misconception or misdirection?

McGovern: I think that there was just a chance, coming out of Miami, that we could have ignited the public. There was a period there right after I got the nomination when I'm sure that the majority of the American people really weren't sure what they were going to do about me. But the impressions that they had were rather favorable.

H.S.T: I would have bet dead even coming out of the convention... I was optimistic.

McGovern: Yeah, I was, too. Now I think the first thing they saw was the Eagleton thing, which turned a lot of people off. No matter what I'd have done, you see, we were in trouble there. And so that was an unfortunate thing. And then there were some staff squabbles that the press spotlighted, which gave the impression of confusion and disarray and lack of direction, and I think that hurt.

H.S.T: I know it hurt. At least among the people I talked to.

McGovern: So those two factors were related and the Eagleton

thing upset the morale of the staff and people were blaming each other, and there was no chance to recover from the fatigue of the campaign for the nomination—we had to go right into that Eagle ton battle, and so I think that—if there was a chance, at that point, to win the election—we probably lost it right there. And then other factors began to operate, the 'peace is at hand' business, the negotiations sort of blunted and killed it, actually, I think the war issue was working for the President. And then the accommodation of—at least the beginning of the accommodation of Peking and Moscow seemed to disarm a lot of moderates and liberals who might otherwise have been looking in another direction.

H.S.T But That Was Happening Even Before The Convention

McGovern Yeah, it was but it happened far enough ahead so that the impact of it began to sink in then. And I think—I don't think we got a break after Miami. I think that from then on in the breaks were with the President. I mean—and he orchestrated his campaign very cleverly. He stayed out of the public eye and he had all the money he needed to hire people to work on direct mail and everybody got a letter tailored to their own interests and their own groove and I think their negative T.V spots were effective in painting a distorted picture of me.

H.S.T The Spinning Head Commercial?

McGovern Yeah the spinning head commercial, knocking over the soldiers The welfare thing They concentrated on those themes I suppose maybe I should have gone on television earlier with thoughtful Q and A sessions the kind of speeches I was doing there the fast few weeks I think maybe that might have helped to offset some of the negatives we got on the Eagleton thing Another problem There was a feeling on the part of a lot of the staff that after Mami there wasn't the central staff direction that should have been Whose fruit that is I don't know I found in the field a lot of confusion about who was really in charge, pushing and pulling as to where you got things cleared who had the final authority That could have been handled more smoothly than it was When you add all of those things up none of them, in my opinion comes anywhere near as serious as the fact that the Republicans were caught in the middle of the night burglarizing

our headquarters. They were killing people in Vietnam with bombing raids that were pointless from any military point of view. They were making secret deals to sell out the public interest for campaign contributions, you know, and routing money through Mexican banks and all kinds of things that just seemed to me to be scandalous.

H.S.T: Wasn't there a Harris Poll that showed that only 3 percent of the electorate considered the Watergate thing important?

McGovern: Yeah. That's right. Mistakes that we made seemed to be much more costly. I don't know why, but they were. I felt it at the time, that we were being hurt by every mistake we made, whereas the most horrendous kind of things on the other side somehow seemed to—because, I suppose, of the great prestige of the White House, the President's shrewdness in not showing himself to the press or the public—they were able to get away with things that we got pounded for.

H.S.T: Do you think it would be possible to, say, discount ... if you could just wipe out the whole Eagleton thing, and assume that, say, Mondale or Nelson had taken it and there had been no real controversy, and try to remove the vice-presidential thing as a factor. What do you think ...

McGovern: I think it would have been very close. I really do. I think we'd have gotten off the ground fast, and I think we'd have capitalized on those early trips and that the press would have been more enthusiastic about it and they'd have been reporting the size of the crowds and the enthusiasm instead of looking at the staff problem. See, once we got into the Eagleton thing, they seemed to feel almost a constraint to report that everything was unfortunate about the campaign. The campaign, actually, was very well run, compared to others that I've seen. The fund-raising was a miracle the way that was run. The crowds were large and well advanced, and the schedules went off reasonably well day after day. I didn't think there were major gaps being made in the campaign, but there were some right at the beginning that haunted us all the way through. I think if we'd have gotten off to a better start just like a—I remember when I was at Northwestern there was a great hurdler that was supposed to win the U.S. competition and probably win the Olympics, and he hit the first hurdle with his

foot, and then he hit about the next four in a row, you know, and just petered out After he hit that first hurdle, that's kind of what happened to us We got off—we broke stride on that thing right after the convention, and from then on in, I think millions of people just kind of turned us off They were skeptical and I think the mood of the country was much more conservative than we had been led to believe in the primaries We were winning those primaries on a reform program and rather blunt outspoken statement of what we were going to do

Hist That was the next question I was going to ask Have you thought about what might have happened if you'd kept up that approach?

McGovern Well I think we did keep it up I never did buy the line that we really changed our positions very much from the primary to the general I can't see where there was all that much of a shift

Hist I think it was a perceived shift There was a definite sense that you had changed your act

McGovern I'm not sure how much different we really were. I think we were pretty much hitting the same issues. What did you perceive as the difference? Maybe I can answer your question better if I

Hist Well it seemed to me when you'd selected Eagleton it was the first step sort of backwards If we assume that your term "new politics" had any validity, your choice of Eagleton was the point where it turned around and you decided that the time had come to make friends with the people you'd been fighting the whole time And without questioning the wisdom of it I

McGovern You mean because he'd been with Muskie and

H.S.T Yanh, Eagleton struck me as being a cheap hack and

When I went up to St. Louis to do what I could to get hold of some of those records to try to find out more about it, I was treated like someone who'd come up to the North Pole to blackmail Santa Claus, even by your people. But I kept hearing, from what I considered pretty reliable sources, that there's more to Eagleton's mental problems than you or anybody.

McGovern Well, see, nobody'll ever know that for sure, 'cause those records are never gonna be available. I think the F.B.I has them.

H.S.T: How the hell does the F.B.I have them? On what pretext did they get them?

McGovern: I don't know. But I was told by Ramsey Clark that the F.B.I had a very complete medical file on Eagleton, and that he (Clark) knew it at the time he was Attorney General.

H.S.T: Including the shock?

McGovern: Yeah, but I never saw the records. I was never able to get access to them.

H.S.T: Do you think that original leak to the press, Frank, and Gary came from the F.B.I?

McGovern: They might have been directly, they might have, they've been known to leak things like that to the press, and it may very well have been an F.B.I leak, but the Knight newspapers never would divulge the source.

H.S.T: Frank knew the name of that anaesthesiologist, that woman who gave him the gas during one of the shock treatments, but he wouldn't tell me...

McGovern: There were a number of journalists that were trying to get more information on it, but it's tough, very hard to do.

H.S.T: Did you ever find out what those little blue pills were that he was eating?

McGovern: No.

H.S.T: I think I did. It was Stelazine, not Thorazine like I heard originally. I did everything I could to get hold of the actual records, but nobody would even talk to me. I finally just got into a rage and just drove on to Colorado and said to hell with it. It seemed to me that the truth could have had a hell of an effect on the election. It struck me as being kind of tragic that he would be perceived as the good guy.

McGovern: I know, it was really unfair. What he should have done, he should have taken the responsibility for stepping down rather than putting the responsibility on me.

H.S.T: He almost threatened not to, didn't he? As I recall, he wasn't going to do it...

McGovern: That's right. That's right.

H.S.T: Was it true that he actually told you at one point not

to worry about those pills, because the prescription was in his wife's name?

McGovern He told me they were in his wife's name

H.S.T Let me ask you this Stoux Falls was such a bummer I didn't even want to talk to you up there, but how much of a surprise was the overall result?

McGovern I was very surprised at the landslide proportions of it I had felt the last couple of days, I'd pretty well gave up I thought we—we kept going hard, but I thought we were gonna get beat, but it never occurred to me that we did only carry a couple of states, you know the District and Massachusetts I thought we did carry a minimum of eight or ten states

H.S.T Which ones?

McGovern Well, I thought we'd carry both California and New York which would have given us some big electoral blocs I thought we'd carry Illinois I thought we'd carry Wisconsin, and I thought we'd probably carry my state

H.S.T That was a shock

McGovern Those were all ones that I thought we'd get, and I thought we'd get Rhode Island Connecticut—you know, I was surprised at the landslide character of it.

H.S.T Did you go into a kind of brooding or thinking about exactly why there'd been so much difference in the proportions than you'd thought

McGovern No and I still haven't figured it out. I mean, I still haven't really figured out the dimensions of it. I think the war thing had a big impact at the end there, the fact that Kissinger was able to say that peace was at hand just give us a few more days. It almost looked like it we threw them out it would disrupt all this effort that has gone on over the last months. You know, they kept him in orbit for weeks ahead of the election. I think that had an impact. And then the way they threw money into the economy. They ran up a hundred billion dollar deficit in four years he was in office. That's the old F.D.R deficit-financing technique, and obviously that money ended up in somebody's pockets. So I think that is a subtle factor there, that the economy wasn't good, but it was much better than it would have been had they not been pumping that kind of deficit financing into circulation.

H.S.T: Do you think the kind of campaign you ran in the primaries, a real sort of anti-politician campaign—would have any chance in '76, or do you think we all misconceived the whole thing—not just the temper of the time but the whole basic nature of the electorate.

McGovern: I don't think there ever was a majority for the approach I was using. I think we had a fighting chance.

H.S.T: No better than that? Even with all those new voters? That was a hell of a natural power base for you, wasn't it? What happened?

McGovern: I think we exaggerated the amount of the enthusiasm for change among young people. We saw the activists in the primaries, but it's always a small percentage that were really working, and you'd see those stadiums packed Saturday after Saturday with tens of thousands of people. There really are a great number of people in this country that are a helluva lot more interested in whether the Dolphins beat the Redskins than they are in whether Nixon or George McGovern ends up in the White House. I think there was a lot of apathy and a lot of feeling—also a lot of kind of weariness over the activism of the sixties—the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the crusades, the marches, the demonstrations. Nixon kind of put all that behind us. Things quieted down. He disarmed the peace movement—there were no riots, no demonstrations, and I think that people were afraid of anything that kind of looked like a fundamental change—that maybe we'd be right back into that same kind of energetic protest, dissent, and demonstrations that they'd grown weary of in the sixties.

H.S.T: Do you think the sixties ended in '68 or '72, just using very rough kind of numbers.

McGovern: I think they were beginning to—I think Nixon's election in '68 really signalled the end of that.

H.S.T: In a sense you were running a sixties campaign in the seventies.

McGovern: Yeah.

H.S.T: I've heard that said. I've thought about that.

McGovern: We were running a campaign that might have won in 1968. Might have won. Might have... You know, all

of this is speculating Hunter. I don't think any of us really know what's going on. I think there's always that pendulum action in American politics, and I expect Nixon to run into trouble in the next few years. I think there's going to be disillusionment over how far we're being to be in the great times. It's not going to get better and the problems in the great cities are going to worsen, and it may be that by '76 somebody can come along and win on a kind of platform that I was running on 77. Hist. I don't know. It's worse me and I've noticed the predominant feeling particularly among students, seems to be one of bewilderment and despirur. What the hell happened and where do we go from here and McGovern Yeah The letters they're sending in here, though, are—Jesus they're encouraging. That's what kept my spirits from collapsing. The pendulum did take a big swing but it's going to come back. I really believe that Hist How much damage do you think Humphrey did? McGovern Well he cut us up in California to the point where we probably never fully recovered from that either. Hist Here's a question you probably won't like, but it's something that's kind of haunted me ever since it happened. What in the hell possessed you to offer the vice presidency to Humphrey in public? Did you think he would take it at the end of it? It would really help? McGovern I thought it was an effort to maybe bring some of his people back on board who otherwise would go for Nixon or out out the fiction. Hist Jesus? To think that after all that stuff in California, that we might possibly end up with a McGovern/Humphrey ticket. I might have voted for Dr Spock, if it had come to that. McGovern Well, I seemed to be something that had to be done to get a majority coalition but maybe not Hist What the hell is the sense of trying to hold the Democratic Party together, if it's really a party of expediency, something that's put together every four years? That's one of the things I've been hammering on over and over. Where do we go from here? Is this the death knell of what we dimly or vaguely perceive as the new politics?

McGovern: I don't agree with that at all. I think it was the first real serious shot at it and that 28.5 million Americans said yes, and I think if George Wallace had been running to siphon off that right-wing vote from Nixon, we'd have come close to winning the election. And even without him we did almost as well as Humphrey did in terms of total percentage that we got. You know there was about four points difference between Humphrey's percentage and mine.

H.S.T: I'd like to close with some kind of optimistic shot for the next time around. Somebody said at Yale the other day that the kind of campaign you ran in the primaries probably couldn't win on a national level even four years from now. But there are places in the country where it could definitely work on a state or local level.

McGovern: Well, I believe that. I think I demonstrated in those primaries that you can go into states that are supposedly hostile and with the kind of direct-neighborhood person-to-person campaign that we were doing, you can win. And we did that in Wisconsin. We did it in Massachusetts. We did it in ten primary states. We damn near did it in New Hampshire. I got 38 percent of the vote against Muskie, you know, and that was really one of the miracles of the campaign. So I think there's no question but what the techniques and the open style campaign will work on a state level.

[Editor's Note]

The tape of Doctor Thompson's interview with Senator McGovern ends abruptly at this point. But several weeks later, in his suite at the Seal Rock Inn, we were able to record the following conversation:

Ed: Do you agree with McGovern's analysis of why he lost the election?

H.S.T: I'm not sure it really amounts to an analysis. I spent about two weeks in Washington talking to fifteen or twenty of the key people in the campaign, and I was surprised at the lack of

any kind of consensus—no hard figures or any kind of real analysis—except the kind of things that McGovern said in his interviews which were mainly speculation He was saying I think this and that might work and I'm sure this could happen if

But when I asked him for instance who the 45 percent of the voters were—eligible voters who didn't vote this year—he said he had no idea. And when I asked that same question to Mankiewicz, he said I should ask Pat Caddell. I just talked to Pat on the phone yesterday and he said it would take him a long time to get the figures together on a nationwide basis but the one thing he could say was one of the most noticeable hard facts of this '72 presidential campaign was that for the first time in almost anyone's memory fewer people voted for the President in 1 thank it was half the states than had voted for the state level offices—which on the average runs about 15 percent higher in terms of voter turn out no excuse me the presidential vote runs on an average about 15 percent higher.

Ed Usually

H.S.T In most states—between ten and fifteen percent higher Ld But not this year?

Hist No the presidential vote was lower in '72 I have the figures but here's Pat Caddell on tape from our phone talk yesterday

[Editor's Note If that follows is a tape recording of Doctor Thompson and Pat Caddell discussing the statistics of the McGovern defeat]

H.S.T (to Caddell) 10 or 15 percent ahead of the state vote? When you say that you mean Senior and Governor

Pat Right

H.S.T And this year there were thirty nine states that had both presidential and senator/governor races?

Pat A senator or governor race Some had both Most of them had one or the other In a statewide race that's the thing to look at

H.S.T In twenty of those the state office vote was higher than the presidential vote?

Pat Right

H.S.T: And in eight states it was just 1 percent less . . . and in five others it was 2 percent less?

Pat: Yeah—despite the increase in the number of people that voted this year, which is the highest number of all time...

[end Caddell phone tape]

Ed: I get a little confused with all these numbers. What's the bottom line? If more people were voting for Governor and Senator than for President, you think this showed a lack of interest in the outcome of the presidential election or a definite decision on the part of some voters not to vote for either Nixon or McGovern?

H.S.T: According to Pat's polls, based on repeat interviews with the same people all year long, it shows a conscious decision on the part of an incredibly large number of people not to vote for President, but to go in and vote for state-level offices. I'm not sure just what that means... if they felt that they had no choice, despite what somebody said that this was supposed to be the clearest choice of the century...

Ed: What were Caddell's statistical explanations for McGovern's defeat? Why did he think McGovern lost?

H.S.T: He disagreed with both McGovern and Mankiewicz, and tended to agree more with Gary Hart. There is a definite split in the McGovern camp over the explanation for the loss.

Ed: What is the Caddell/Hart position?

H.S.T: It has to do with two words: Eagleton and competence.

Ed: “Eagleton and competence?”

H.S.T: Right. The Eagleton Affair was so damaging to McGovern's image—not as a humane, decent, kind, conservative man who wanted to end the war—but as a person who couldn't get those things done even though he wanted to. 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. But according to Pat, that “radical image” didn't really hurt him at all. . . . The same conclusion appeared in a Washington Post survey that David Broder and Haynes Johnson did. . . They agreed that the Eagleton Affair was almost immeasurably damaging . . . and according to Gary Hart, it was so damaging as to be fatal. Gary understood this as early as mid-September; so did Frank—they all knew it

Ed McGoverntoo!

Hist Sure They could all see it happening but they couldn't figure how to deal with it—because the damage was already done and there was no way McGovern could prove that he was not as dangerously incompetent as the Eagleton Affair made him seem to be They couldn't figure out there was nothing they could do no issue they could manufacture no act that they could commit or anything they could say that would change people's minds on the question of McGovern's competence to get anything done regardless of what he wanted to get done In other words there were a lot of people who liked him liked what he said—but who wouldn't vote for him because he seemed like a bumbler

Ed You say Mankiewicz knew this but he didn't agree with Caddell and Hart

H.S.T Well it's never easy to be sure of what Frank really thinks But he was at least half convincing when he told me down in Owensboro that night

fd Down where?

11th In Owensboro Kentucky—when I went down to listen to his speech at Kentucky Wesleyan He seemed convinced that the Swing to the Right and the sort of silent anti n gger vote—the potential Wallace vote—was the issue that cost McGovern the election. And at one point—I'm not sure exactly when—the McGovern campaign was fairly well convinced—not the entire staff but the theorists at the top—that if Wallace had stayed in the campaign if he hadn't been shot if he had run as an Independent American whatever the hell that party was in 68 and if he did run as the same healthy lifestyle judge from Alabama that he would have split the vote that Nixon had ended up with about 60 percent.

Ld How many percent?

H.S.T 61 or 62 percent That Wallace would have split that vote with Nixon leaving McGovern with a plurality—the largest popular vote among the three candidates—but not enough electoral votes to actually become President at which point the election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives

Ed Mankiewicz & McGovern really believed that possibility H.S.T: George seemed to . . . I'm not sure how strong he thought the possibility really was. But I know that was sort of a private fear of theirs—a pretty dark view of the American electorate, I'd say: that half of the Nixon vote, given the chance, would have gone even further to the right. 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 Hart/Caddell theory was a less ominous view of the potential of the electorate. Both Gary and Pat were convinced that McGovern could have won. That was the question I asked almost every one of the staff people I talked to at any length.

Ed: What makes Caddell and Hart think he could have won? H.S.T: Primarily the provable damage that the Eagleton Affair did to the actual numbers of the McGovern constituency—the potential constituency. In July, for instance, nationally, the polls.

Ed: Caddell's polls?

H.S.T: Caddell's, and I think there were two more, Gallup and Harris. It was a rough consensus among the polls in July that Nixon had 52 percent of the vote, McGovern had 37 percent, and 11 percent were undecided. In September the figures were Nixon 56 percent, McGovern 34 percent, and 10 percent undecided.

Ed: That indicates no change.

H.S.T: On paper it indicates no change, but what it doesn't show is ... Nixon lost 9 percent of his vote in that period of time ... 9 out of the original 52. He gained 15 percent from elsewhere but he lost 9 percent of his first group. Meanwhile McGovern lost 13 points of his vote, his original 37 percent ... But the McGovern loss was apparently, according to the figures, almost entirely due to the Eagleton Affair, whereas the Nixon loss would have happened anyway, because they were mainly people who were in July had said that they were Democrats—Humphrey Democrats—who refused to vote for McGovern, but as the election drew closer they began to filter back. So Nixon's 9 percent loss was inevitable, more or less. What Nixon did was pick up a tremendous amount of mainly young, not necessarily liberal Democrats—but young, sort of educated, relatively sophisticated voters who would have stayed with McGovern, according to the polls ... according to the answers they gave the poll-takers, if it had not

been for the Eagleton disaster. That's when his image as a different kind of politician, an anti-politician, just cracked and shattered and there was no way to put it back together. According to the Hart/Caddell theory, if that hadn't happened, the race would have been at least very close. And that's where you get into another powerful factor. What the Eagleton disaster did, the worst thing it did, was to prevent the race from ever getting close, which allowed Nixon to hide. There was no pressure on him, and that altered McGovern a strategy to the point that he was always fighting with his back to the wall more or less. They were on the defensive the whole time facing this ever increasing erosion of their vote, massive margins between him and Nixon. McGovern's man strength in the primaries—up until in California I think he was always the underdog always trailing but he always closed very fast, by picking up a big chunk of the undeeded vote.

In this case—there was almost nothing he could have done. To close that kind of gap was beyond the realm of possibility. And therefore Nixon who has never been good under pressure, was never put under any sort of pressure. He could afford to just sit in the White House and watch McGovern sort of fumbling around the country. Had the race been close—anything under 10 points—the McGovern strategy, they say, would have been entirely different. But they spent the whole time trying to overcome this massive fistula on their image as it were which runs counter to the Mankiewicz/McGovern theory that it was basically a right wing tide with heavy racist undertones, or undercurrents, rip tides. The basic question in '72 was: Could McGovern have won, under any circumstances?

Ed I don't know how deeply you want to get into this, but these numbers are very interesting to me. In July Nixon had 52 percent of the vote and in September he had 56

Hist Those polls were taken before the Democratic Convention

Ed And yet you say he was losing steadily So if he was losing some of his constituency, where was Nixon gaining his votes from?

Hist According to Caddell he was gaining them from the

people who would have voted for McGovern, had he not . . .

Ed: Were it not for the Eagleton Affair . . . All right, meanwhile, you have McGovern losing 13 percent of his 37 percent in July, and still winding up with 34 percent in September. Where did he gain his strength from?

H.S.T: According to Caddell, he picked up almost all the Nixon defectors, because they were people who were angry in July over the spectacle of a gang of freaks taking over the party that even though they said they were Democrats, they wouldn't vote for McGovern.

Ed: In other words, were it not for the Eagleton Affair, Nixon was actually steadily losing, and McGovern was slowly but surely picking up the Humphrey voters . . . so the deciding factor, according to Caddell's statistics, was the massive defection from McGovern to Nixon resulting from the Eagleton Affair. I just wanted to clarify this.

H.S.T: Yes, that's it.

Ed: Now the question is: Now that we've established these two schools of thought, to which do you subscribe or do you have your own theory?

H.S.T: Well . . . I'm not sure, but I doubt that McGovern himself could have won with any kind of campaign, even without the Eagleton incident.

Ed: Why?

H.S.T: 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.

Ed: So you think it was something personal about McGovern himself?

H.S.T: I think that element of indecisiveness, and the willingness—as he said in his interview—to do anything possible to forge a “winning coalition” didn't do him any good at all . . . I think it hurt him. It hurt him drastically with the so-called “youth vote,” for instance. And I think it hurt him with the Wallace-type Democrats that I talked to up in Serb Hall in Milwaukee that day; who disagreed with him, but perceived him—that word again—as a straight, honest, different type of politician, a person who would actually do what he said, make some real changes.

Ed Do you think Eagleton was the chief reason for them changing their minds? Those Wallace people?

H.S.T No—not the Wallace people But there was a whole series of things that hurt him all across the board that trip to the L.B.J Ranch, the sucking up to Mayor Daley, the endorsement of Ed Hanrahan, state's attorney in Chicago—who was indicted for the murder of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther leader

Ed McGovern endorsed Hanrahan?

H.S.T Yeah He also endorsed Louise Day Hicks in Boston Ed Oh no!

H.S.T The racist woman, who was running for Congress Ed Did she win?

Hist No, I think she lost And Hanrahan lost, despite the McGovern endorsement all that hurt McGovern and also having his own so-called campaign director, Larry O'Brien, denounce him just before Labor Day O'Brien denounced the whole McGovern campaign as a can of worms a rolling ball of madness

incompetence a bunch of ego freaks running around in circles with nobody in charge That kind of thing couldn't possibly have helped

Ed O Brien said all that

Hist Yeah He went totally around the bend

Ed Did you vote for McGovern?

H.S.T Yeah I did

Ed Why?

Hist It was essentially an anti-Nixon vote McGovern, I don't think, would have been a bad President. He's a better Senator but I don't think that the kind of standard brand Democrat that he came to be—or that he actually was all along, and finally came out and admitted he was toward the end, more by his actions than by what he said—I'm not sure that kind of person is ever going to win a presidential campaign again. What was once the natural kind of constituency for that kind of person—the Stevenson constituency, the traditional liberal—has lost faith, I think, in everything that Liberalism was supposed to stand for. Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it. And the fact is people like Nixon—candidates like Nixon—have a running start. which gives them a tremendous advantage. My own theory, which sounds like madness, is that McGovern would have been better off running against Nixon with the same kind of neo-radical campaign he ran in the primaries. Not radical in the left/right sense, but radical in a sense that he was coming on with ... a new ... a different type of politician ... a person who actually would grab the system by the ears and shake it. And meant what he said. Hell, he certainly couldn't have done any worse. It's almost impossible to lose by more than 23 percent ... And I think that conceivably this country is ready for a kind of presidential candidate who is genuinely radical, someone who might call for the confiscation of all inherited wealth, for instance, or a 100 percent excess-profits tax ... For example, Wallace, if he'd understood how much potential strength he had, and if he hadn't been shot, could have gone to the Democratic Convention with a nasty block of votes—enough to probably dominate the convention, not to win the nomination, but enough to give him veto power on the candidate. Wallace did so much better in the primaries than even he expected, but by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late for him to file delegate slates in the states where he was running ... He came in second in Pennsylvania, beating both McGovern and Muskie, but he didn't get a single delegate. He came in second in Wisconsin, but I don't think he got any delegates up there either ... Whereas McGovern, in Pennsylvania, finishing in a virtual tie with Muskie for third—or fourth—got seventeen delegates, as I recall.

Ed: Simply because Wallace failed to file?

H.S.T: He was very erratic about it. He wound up with more than 300 delegates in Miami, but with any planning he could have won twice that—more than Humphrey.... That was just an oversight, a lack of real confidence. But I think the Wallace people were stunned at the energy they set off and by the time they realized what was there, it was too late to put it together.

Ed: And you think that this was the kind of energy which will bring forward a new candidate in '76 who could win?

H.S.T: No necessarily. There's all kinds of weird energy out there. The Youth Vote, for instance—the first-time voters, the people between eighteen and twenty-four—could have altered the out-

come drastically in states like California Illinois New York Michigan Missouri McGovern could have won those states with a big turnout among first time voters—not to mention the huge drop out vote the people between twenty five and forty who didn't vote at all

Ed Caddell's figures showed this

Hist Right There were states where he compared Humphrey's margin or his loss—whatever the figures were in 68—to the number of new voters coming into the electorate this time around and there were an incredible number of states where Pat's figures showed that even if McGovern could get at least half of them he did carry something like twelve states with this Youth Vote

Fd You have said already that you doubt McGovern could have won What do you think is going to happen in '76?

H.S.T McGovern could have won—but it was unlikely given the nature of his organization. For one thing it was technically oriented or at least the best part of it was technically oriented. The best people in the campaign were technicians at the staff command level there was almost constant confusion and McGovern's indecisiveness compounded that confusion and left the technicians often wandering around in circles wondering what the hell to do.

He had people who could do the work and could turn the vote out, but they weren't always sure what he was doing. The campaign plane would fly into a state and the staffers would have conflicting things set up for him to do. The people on the plane—Mankiewicz, Dutton Dick Dougherty the press secretary—were running a different campaign than the one on the charts in the Washington headquarters or in most of the state offices.

Ed You think he failed to provide his staff with the necessary direction or leadership?

H.S.T Yeah I think you either have to have a very strong decisive person at the top or else a really brilliant staff command And he didn't have either one actually But he did have the troops in the field

Ed Is there a possibility for marshalling those troops again in 767

Hist Yeah definitely but I doubt if a candidate like Mc Govern can marshal them again. The McGovern/McCarthy type candidacies have disappointed too many people, because of a disillusionment with the candidates themselves.

Ed: Do you have any candidate in mind that you think could marshal those forces—as opposed to the old liberal candidates, such as Stevenson, McCarthy, McGovern?

H.S.T: Gary Hart said the other day that...

Ed: Gary Hart?

H.S.T: Yeah, he said that the only person he could think of who might have been able to do it this year—who could have won by being "radical" but without being perceived as a left, knee-jerk liberal—was Harold Hughes, because he has a kind of kinky anarchistic streak in him . . . Maybe Wallace with a little help this year—if he'd gotten his campaign organized two years ago, like McGovern did, and if he'd changed his racist tune a bit—would have been very dangerous. But he never got his act together; he's finished now.

Ed: Wallace is finished in politics?

H.S.T: Yeah, but a candidate like Wallace could be very dangerous in '76—like any candidate who can convince the voters that he really intends to change the system drastically, in almost any direction, could be dangerous. I think what most people seem to be tired of are the sort of lint-headed, woolly-minded—what a lot of people call do-gooders—people who would like to do the right thing, but who just can't get it up. That kind of candidate is going out of style. I don't think Ted Kennedy, for instance, is going to win in '76. He's too much of an "old politician," in the sense that McGovern eventually ended up an "old politician." All this running around the country endorsing Hanrahan and Hicks. For instance, in Minnesota, Mondale was one of the people that

Ed: He's the Senator from Minnesota? Fritz Mondale?

H.S.T: Mondale ran almost 15 points ahead of McGovern in Minnesota, but on paper there's very little difference between their points of view or in what they stand for.

Ed: Are you considering running for office yourself?

H.S.T: Yeah, I was thinking of running for the Senate in Colorado.

Ed: The Senate in Colorado?

/I.S.T Yeah—the U.S Senate from Colorado But I might end up running against Gary Hart in the primary That would be interesting I might not run as a Democrat or I might not run at all It's a grueling rotten ordeal to go through

Ed Well you've run for office before on the Freak Power ticket when you were running for Sheriff in Aspen What were your campaign protises during that election?

Hist There were several I was going to rip up the streets for one.

Ed Rip up the streets?

H.S.T With packhammers

Ed With jckhammers?

H.S.T Send a horde of freaks into the streets on the morning after the election to tear up the streets and sod them use all the asphalt to build a huge parking lot at the edge of town And there was a certain heavy drug element in the campaign which the Wash ngton Post was responsible for

Ed Did you make any campaign promises regarding the legal utilization of any drugs?

Hist Well under state law I couldn't say that I wouldn't arrest people for breaking the law. However I agreed—in three consecutive debates with the incumbent Sheriff I found myself in front of huge audiences defending the use of mescaline by the sheriff saying that well finally I made one compromise I said I wouldn't eat mescaline while on duty if I won.

I'd What were the final numbers on that election?

H.S.T I won the city of Aspen

Ed You won the city of Aspen but you lost the election?

Hist I lost heavily in the suburbs the Agnew vote

Ed What was the final percentage?

Hist I think it was something like I got 44 percent of the vote as opposed to the 51 percent for the incumbent Democrat. What the bastards did was—which I'll never forget and I think everyone should keep it in mind in terms of trying to run a third party candidacy nationally or anywhere else—rather than see us win the other two parties did a massive telephone blitz the night before the election and combined their votes against us.

Ed If you were to run for Senate in Colorado what kind of

campaign would you conduct? Would you run as a Democrat?

H.S.T: Only if proved to be absolutely impossible to win as a third party candidate. I'd have to check and see. I don't see any point in running for anything any more unless I was serious about winning.

Ed: And what would your platform be?

H.S.T: I haven't thought about it. But it would naturally have to involve a drastic change of some kind . . . Maybe just an atavistic endeavor, but there's no point in getting into politics at all unless you plan to lash things around.

Ed: Lash things around?

H.S.T: That's one of the secrets. The other . . . well, it depends on who you're running against. But because of the Eagleton thing, Nixon didn't really have to run at all. Any candidate who'd offered a real possibility of an alternative to Nixon—someone with a different concept of the presidency—could have challenged him and come very close to beating him. That was the prevailing theory among the Democrats all along in the primaries, which is why there were so many people getting into it early . . . Nixon was so vulnerable, he was such a wretched President, that almost any Democrat could beat him.

Ed: If you were to run for Senate in Colorado and win, would you then consider running for the presidency itself?

H.S.T: Yeah, I'd do almost anything after that, even run for President—although I wouldn't really want to be President. As a matter of fact, early on in the '72 campaign, I remember telling John Lindsay that the time had come to abolish the whole concept of the presidency as it exists now, and get a sort of City Managertype President... 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 is 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'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. 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.

Ed One last question, Dr Thompson will you be covering the 1976 election as a journalist if you are not actually a candidate?

H.S.T I think so yeah There's a sort of weird, junkie, addictive quality about covering a presidential campaign You can see it in almost everybody in the press corps I noticed it particularly in Tim Crouse who got hooked so fast it was just like somebody getting hooked on one shot of heroin I doubt of Crouse will miss another campaign as long as he lies there's a tremendous adrenaline rush a hell of a high in politics particularly when you're winning or you think you have a chance to win

Ed Even for the reporter?

Hist Yeth There's an excitement and a pace to the presidential campaign that definitely keeps you wired. It's a grueling trip but that insane kind of zipping from place to place on the Monday before the election we did Kansas and both coasts

I crossed over my own house in Colorado three times. It's frantic, kind of chating after the Golden Fleece, and probably a lot more fun if you don't win or if you have no real stake in it.

Yeah it's one of the best assignments I can think of

Here's a thing I want to hit—one of the unanswered questions of this campaign—a real key question is whether or not the potential McGovern vote came out. So far nobody's been able to say I don't think it did. But if it did—if all the people who were likely to vote for McGovern actually voted for him—then the implications are nasty. There's no hope for that kind of candidacy again. Something totally different will have to be done.

Ed: Haven't Caddell's statistics proven that, in fact, the McGovern vote did not come out? Either it didn't vote at all, or it changed its vote to Nixon.

H.S.T: It's hard to say exactly who the potential McGovern vote was. Pat's theory is based on the assumption that McGovern could appeal in the end to the people who might have voted for Wallace, and the Humphrey Democrats. Forty-eight percent of the people who said they voted for Humphrey in California in the primary, ended up voting for Nixon in the general election. Pat says those figures are kinky ... he says it's more like 30 percent, but even so that's a hell of a defection.

Ed: But you don't seriously believe that the McGovern vote came out, do you? The people who might have voted for the candidate McGovern wasn't didn't really come out did they?

H.S.T: Maybe the McGovern constituency came out, but I doubt it. The people who might have voted for the candidate McGovern wasn't, like you said, they didn't turn out. Half the people I know didn't vote...

Ed: Half the people you know didn't vote?

H.S.T: Yeah. And besides that, the black vote was very low, the chicano vote was negligible . . . and it was only 47 percent of the new voters voting. McGovern was counting on at least two-thirds of those people . . . and he was getting it consistently in the primaries, but of course those were Democratic primaries . . . One of the odd things about the McGovern campaign is that nobody has any figures to explain the disastrous result. Nobody involved in the campaign seems to really have the will to understand. I don't think we learned much from the McGovern campaign.

Ed: How many months were you on the road? Nearly a year?

H.S.T: It was almost exactly a year . . .

Ed: Nevertheless you plan to do this again in '76. Why?

H.S.T: I cursed and groaned and shouted and actually quit as National Affairs Editor about four times but ... that's because your nerves get stretched so raw, you get so hellishly tense ... that ... like anything else when you're that wired, good things are very good and bad things are very bad. It's a strange kind of high ... that's the reason you get so many volunteers into politics:

campaign groupies politics junkies people till around with all this energy and talent

Fd Would you describe yourself as a political punkie?

I'll guess I have the potential for it. At the moment I'm not but now I'm just exhausted you know you know

any time you've been involved in it I mean really involved in it on a level where you have some control over it that Sheriff's campaign in Aspen was a high that I've never gotten from any kind of drug It's mainly an adrenalin high that's what it is

Ed The other day I reread the end of Hell's Angels one of my favorite books and you talked about The Edge you know that moment that I've experienced I was a minor league bike rider in my youth that moment of being on the edge and you talk about that a lot throughout your coverage this post year You said the candidates the staff and the press were all on The Edge is politics the greatest Edge you've discovered? Is that the sharpest Edge that you've personally experienced and would like to continue to experience? Politics?

H.S.T That depends on what kind of campaign it is. I couldn't think of anything it'd be hard to imagine anything stranger or wonder or higher or closer to that Edge you're talking about than a flat-out Freak Power campaign for President of the United States. The energy you could put behind that the frenzy you'd stir up would probably get you killed but Jesus Christ it would be something that nobody'd ever forget. In Aspen that theme song we had Herbie Mann's 'Battle Hymn of the Repub'

Ed That was the theme song of your campaign

11th I used it on all spots

Ed Radiospots

H.S.T There is no local television in Aspen so we used the radio And we got the people very frightened by that song Like I say the two parties combined against us All the incumbents won Both the Democrats and the Republicans dumped their challengers to make sure the Freak Power candidates didn't win

My thinking was based on the assumption of a natural con stitucency of about 35 percent, so if we could make it a three-way race, all we had to do was get about 10 percent more ... which we did but it never occurred to me that the bastards would actually combine against us. I doubt if they could do that nationally, but it's easy in a small town. Not even on the state level. That's one of the factors I'm considering in terms of running for the Senate. I've been talking to people like Rick Stearns, Carl Wagner, Sandy Berger—some of the best people in the McGovern campaign, and sort of half-seriously asking if they'd like to come out and run a neo-Freak Power campaign for the U.S. Senate in Colorado. I don't think we'd have to talk about eating mescaline on the Senate floor ... but ... there's a tremendous void between the outright Freak Power and conventional politics. In Aspen I had a set of stocks built....

Ed: Stocks? You mean the old fashioned hands and legs and...

H.S.T: Right, stocks—three holes, one for the neck, one for each wrist. They were going to be installed on the courthouse lawn for dishonest drug dealers.

Ed: Stocks for dishonest drug dealers? What else was in the platform?

H.S.T: Immediate and unceasing harassment of real estate developers . . . anybody who fouled the air with asphalt smoke or dumped scum into the river. And people went along with this platform even though—on top of everything else—I'd shaved my head completely bald. The people who voted against me thought I was the Anti-Christ, finally come back . . . finally arrived once again on earth—right there in Aspen, Colorado.

Ed: So the Edge we're talking about would be really the greatest if one were the candidate himself?

H.S.T: 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.

Ed: How about writing about it?

H.S.T: That actually isn't much fun, writing about it ... the High is in the participation, and particularly if you identify with one candidate ... I don't think that I could do it if I didn't care who won. It's the difference between watching a football game between two teams you don't care about, and watching a game where you have some kind of personal identity with one of the teams if only a huge bet. You'd be surprised how fast the adrenalin comes up, if you stand to lose $1,000 every time the ball goes up in the air. That's why the Aspen Freak Power campaign developed all that fantastic voltage. Any kind of political campaign that taps the kind of energy that nothing else can reach.

There are a lot of people just walking around bored stupid

Ed Any kind of campaign that taps that energy would

Hist Would generate a tremendous high for everybody involved in it

Ed And would ultimately for you be another paramount experience—out there on the Edge?

Hist Oh, absolutely But you know you'd be killed of course, and that would add to it considerably—never knowing when the bullet was coming.

U U U

Epitaph

Four More Years Nixon oo-ber Alles Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl

President Nixon will be sworn into office for a second term today, emboldened by his sweeping electoral triumph of last November and a Vietnam peace settlement apparently within 1/5 grasp. In the most expensive inauguration in American history—the cost is officially estimated at more than $4 million—Mr Nixon will once again take the oath on a temporary stand outside the east front of the Capitol, then ride in a parade expected to draw 200 000 people to Pennsylvania Avenue and its environs and millions more to their television sets. It will be the President's first statement to the American people since his television appearance on November 6, election eve. Since then the peace talks have collapsed, massive bombing of North Vietnam has been instituted and then called off, and the talks have resumed without extended public comment from Mr Nixon. —San Francisco Chronicle, January 20 1973

When the Great Scorer comes to write

against your name—he marks—

Not that you won or lost—

But how you played the game

—Grantland Rice who was known—prior to his death in the late fifties—as "The Dean of American Sportswriters," and one of Richard Nixon's favorite authors

They came together on a hot afternoon in Los Angeles, howling and clawing at each other like wild beasts in heat

Under a brown California sky, the fierceness of their struggle brought tears to the eyes of 90 000 God fearing fans

They were twenty-two men who were somehow more than men They were giants, idols, titans...

Behemoths.

They stood for everything Good and True and Right in the American Spirit.

Because they had guts.

And they yearned for the Ultimate Glory, the Great Prize, the Final Fruits of a long and vicious campaign.

Victory in the Super Bowl: $15,000 each.

They were hungry for it. They were thirsty. For twenty long weeks, from August through December, they had struggled to reach this Pinnacle... and when dawn lit the beaches of Southern California on that fateful Sunday morning in January, they were ready.

To seize the Final Fruit.

They could almost taste it. The smell was stronger than a ton of rotten mangoes. Their nerves burned like open sores on a dog's neck. White knuckles. Wild eyes. Strange fluid welled up in their throats, with a taste far sharper than bile.

Behemoths.

Those who went early said the pre-game tension was almost unbearable. By noon, many fans were weeping openly, for no apparent reason. Others wrung their hands or gnawed on the necks of pop bottles, trying to stay calm. Many fist-fights were reported in the public urinals. Nervous ushers roamed up and down the aisles, confiscating alcoholic beverages and occasionally grappling with drunkards. Gangs of Seconal-crazed teenagers prowled through the parking lot outside the stadium, beating the mortal shit out of luckless stragglers . . .

What? No . . . Grantland Rice would never have written weird stuff like that: His prose was spare & lean; his descriptions came straight from the gut . . . and on the rare and ill-advised occasions when he wanted to do a "Think Piece," he called on the analytical powers of his medulla. Like all great sportswriters, Rice understood that his world might go all to pieces if he ever dared to doubt that his eyes were wired straight to his lower brain—a sort of de facto lobotomy, which enables the grinning victim to operate entirely on the level of Sensory Perception. . . .

Green grass, hot sun, sharp cleats in the turf, thundering cheers

from the crowd the menacing scowl on the face of a $30,000-a-year pulling guard as he leans around the corner on a Lombardi style power sweep and cracks a sharp plastic shoulder into the line-backer's groin.

Ah yes, the simple life Back to the roots the basics—first a Mousetrap, then a Crackback & a Buttonhook off a fake triple-reverse Fly Pattern, and finally The Bomb

Indeed There is a dangerous kind of simple-minded Power/ Precision worship at the root of the massive fascination with pro football in this country, and sportswriters are mainly responsible for it With a few rare exceptions like Bob Lypsyte of The New York Times and Tom Quinn of the (now-defunct) Washington Daily News sportswriters are a kind of rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks whose only real function is to publicize & sell whatever the sports editor sends them out to cover

Which is a nice way to make a living because it keeps a man busy and requires no thought at all. The two keys to success as a sportswriter are (1) A blind willingness to believe anything you're told by the coaches flacks hustlers and other official spokesmen for the team-owners who provide the free booze and (2) A Roget's Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph.

Even a sports editor for instance, might notice something wrong with a lead that said "The precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Washington Redskins today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer jack stomps around both ends

Right And there was the genius of Grantland Rice. He earned a pocket thesaurus, so that "The thundering hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen's never echoed more than once in the same paragraph, and the "Granite-grey sky" in his lead was a "cold dark dusk" in the last lonely line of his heart, sending nerve npping stones

There was a time, about ten years ago, when I could write like Grantland Rice. Not necessarily because I believed all that sporty bullshit, but because sportswriting was the only thing I could do that anybody was willing to pay for. And none of the people I wrote about seemed to give a hoot in hell what kind of lunatic gibberish I wrote about them, just as long as it moved. They wanted Action, Color, Speed, Violence . . . At one point, in Florida, I was writing variations on the same demented themes for three competing papers at the same time, under three different names. I was a sports columnist for one paper in the morning, sports editor for another in the afternoon, and at night I worked for a pro wrestling promoter, writing incredibly twisted "press releases" that I would plant, the next day, in both papers.

It was a wonderful gig, in retrospect, and at times I wish I could go back to it—just punch a big hatpin through my frontal lobes and maybe regain that happy lost innocence that enabled me to write, without the slightest twinge of conscience, things like: “The entire Fort Walton Beach police force is gripped in a state of fear this week; all leaves have been cancelled and Chief Bloor is said to be drilling his men for an Emergency Alert situation on Friday and Saturday night—because those are the nights when Kazika, The Mad Jap, a 440-pound sadist from the vile slums of Hiroshima, is scheduled to make his first—and no doubt his last—appearance in Fish-head Auditorium. Local wrestling impresario Lionel Olay is known to have spoken privately with Chief Bloor, urging him to have “every available officer” on duty at ringside this weekend, because of the Mad Jap's legendary temper and his invariably savage reaction to racial insults. Last week, in Detroit, Kazika ran amok and tore the spleens out of three ringside spectators, one of whom allegedly called him a “yellow devil.”

“Kazika,” as I recall, was a big, half-bright Cuban who once played third-string tackle for Florida State University in Tallahassee, about 100 miles away—but on the fish-head circuit he had no trouble passing for a dangerous Jap strangler, and I soon learned that pro wrestling fans don't give a fuck anyway.

Ah, memories, memories . . . and here we go again, back on the same old trip: digressions, tangents, crude flashbacks . . . When the '72 presidential campaign ended I planned to give up this kind of thing . . .

But what the hell? Why not? It's almost dawn in San Francisco now, the parking lot outside this building is flooded about three inches deep with another drenching rain and I've been here all night drinking coffee & Wild Turkey, smoking short Jamaican eigars and getting more & more watered on the Allman Brothers' "Mountain Jam" howling out of four big speakers hung in all four corners of the room.

Where is the M.D.A? With the windows wide open and the curtains blowing into the room and the boore and the coffee and the smoke and the music beating heavy in my ears, I feel the first rising edge of a hunger for something with a bit of the crank in it

Where is Mankiwicz tonight?

Sleeping peacefully?

No probably not After two years on The Edge, involuntary retirement is a ha d thing to cope with I tried it for a while, in Woody Creek but three weeks without even a hunt of crisis left me so nervous that I began gobbling speed and babbling distractedly about running for the U S Senate in '74 Finally, on the verge of desperation I took the bush plane over to Denver for a visit with Gary Hart, McGovern's ex-campaign manager, telling him I couldn't actually put him on the payroll right now, but that I was counting on him to organize Denver for me

He smiled crookedly but refused to commit himself and later that night I heard from an extremely reliable source, that Hart was planning to run for the Senate himself in 1974

Why? I wondered Was it some kind of subliminal, un focused need to take vengeance on the press?

On me? The first journalist in Christendom to go on record comparing Nixon to Adolph Hitler?

Was Gary so blinded with bite that he would actually run against me in The Primary? Would he risk splitting the "Three A's' vote and maybe sink us both?

I spent about twenty-four hours thinking about it, then flew to Los Angeles to cover the Super Bowl—but the first person I ran into down there was Ed Muskie. He was wandering around in the vortex of a big party on the main deck of the Queen Mary, telling anybody who would listen that he was having a hell of a hard time deciding whether he was for the Dolphins or the Redskins. I introduced myself as Peter Sheridan, “a friend of Donald Segretti.” “We met on the 'Sunshine Special' in Florida,” I said. “I was out of my head . . .” But his brain was too clouded to pick up on it . . . so I went up to the crow's nest and split a cap of black acid with John Chancellor.

He was reluctant to bet on the game, even when I offered to take Miami with no points. A week earlier I'd been locked into the idea that the Redskins would win easily—but when Nixon came out for them and George Allen began televising his prayer meetings I decided that any team with both God and Nixon on their side was fucked from the start.

So I began betting heavily on Miami—which worked out nicely, on paper, but some of my heaviest bets were with cocaine addicts, and they are known to be very bad risks when it comes to paying off. Most coke freaks have already blown their memories by years of over-indulgence on marijuana, and by the time they get serious about coke they have a hard time remembering what day it is, much less what kind of ill-considered bets they might or might not have made yesterday.

Consequently—although I won all my bets—I made no money.

The game itself was hopelessly dull—like all the other Super Bowls—and by half time Miami was so clearly in command that I decided to watch the rest of the drill on T.V at Cardoso's Hollywood Classic/Day of the Locust-style apartment behind the Troubadour ... but it was impossible to keep a fix on it there, because everybody in the room was so stored that they kept asking each other things like "How did Miami get the ball? Did we miss a kick? Who's ahead now? Jesus, how did they get 14 points? How many points is ... ah ... touchdown?"

Immediately after the game I received an urgent call from my attorney, who claimed to be having a terminal drug experience in his private bungalow at the Chateau Marmont ... but by the time I got there he had finished the whole jar.

Later, when the big rain started, I got heavily into the gin and read the Sunday papers. On page 39 of California Living magazine

Eptaph

I found a hand lettered ad from the MacDonald's Hamburger Corporation one of Nixon's big contributors in the 72 presidential campaign

Press on it sud Nothing in the World can take the Place of Persistence Talent will not Nothing is more Common than Unsuccessful Men with Talent Genius will not Unrewarded Genius is Almost A Proverb Education Alone will not the World is Full of Educated Derelicts Persistence and Determination Alone are Omnipotent

I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning. Then when it came to me I called Mankiewicz immediately.

"Keep your own counsel" he said. Don't draw any conclusions from anything you see or hear.

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.

Four Years More Years Four More Years

Robert C. Scheu, 44; Neil Benson, 51; Annie Leibovitz, 51, 122, 145, 153, 200, 206, 224, 232, 239, 249, 423, 441; Stuart Bratesman, 68, 94, 170, 179, 200, 257, 288, 296, 369, 407, 298; Michael Dobo, 80; Boyd Hagen, 99; Terry Arthur, 122, 506; The Islander News, 126; Owen Franken, 138, 308; Elihu Blotinek, 153; Arthur Pollock, 153; Mark Perlstein, 181, 249; Wide World Photos, 212, 353; Mark Diamond, 344, 389; Hank Lebo, 398; J. Anthony Lucas, 412; Tom W. Benton, 415; U.P.I, 465.

Special thanks from Straight Arrow Books to: The Seal Rock Inn, Sabine Gnittk, Sandra MacDonald, Margaret Wolf, Mercury Printing Co., Inc., Chong Lee, Linda Gunnarson, Bill Burgower, John Clancy, Tom Benton, Ralph Steadman, Sandy Thompson, Jane Wenner, Lynn Nesbit, Jim Naughton, Bill Greider, Angelo Scaramastra, David Charlesen, John Chancellor, Alexander Pushkin, Suzanne Lipsett, Stephanie Franklin, Cathy Crosby, Sarah Lazin, Charles Perry, Paul Scanlon, Tim Crouse, Annie Leibovitz, Barbara Ziller, Robert Kingsbury, Rosemary Powell, the rest of the staff of Rolling Stone and above all, Jann Wenner.