Fear and Loathing by Hunter S. Thompson
"Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" is a seminal work by Hunter S. Thompson that captures the tumultuous atmosphere of the 1972 presidential election through a personal lens. The narrative centers on George McGovern, the idealistic Democratic candidate who embodies the underdog spirit in opposition to the entrenched Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon. Thompson, serving as a political correspondent for Rolling Stone, presents a diary-like account of the campaign, offering insights into the cultural and political climate shaped by the shadows of McCarthyism and the aftermath of the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In his gonzo style, Thompson critiques both McGovern's progressive platform—calling for amnesty for draft evaders and withdrawal from the Vietnam War—and the mainstream media's neglect of McGovern's candidacy in favor of more charismatic figures. This critique extends to the relationship between politicians and media conglomerates, which Thompson views as corrupt and detrimental to true democratic discourse. As the campaign unfolds, Thompson's initial support for McGovern wanes, reflecting his disillusionment with the candidate's compromises and decisions, leading him to conclude that McGovern ultimately succumbs to the very establishment he aimed to challenge. The culmination of this narrative is McGovern's defeat by Nixon in the election, symbolizing the broader themes of ambition, failure, and the elusive nature of the American Dream.
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Fear and Loathing by Hunter S. Thompson
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1973
Type of work: Nonfiction
The Work
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, much like its immediate predecessor Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, picks up a sort of master narrative of the futile attempts of the proverbial underdog striving for and achieving the American Dream, only to be crushed at the end by the general milieu of the postmodern world. The hero that Thompson utilizes in this autobiography of his coverage of the 1971-1972 presidential race is George McGovern, the idealistic Democratic candidate whom Thompson characterizes as the great underdog of the election versus entrenched Republican incumbent President Nixon.
Two points require immediate articulation. First, Thompson again writes a veritable diary of his position (both ideological and logistical as Rolling Stone’s political correspondent) as a chronological and cartographical narrative of what he believed to be the cultural moment. Writing in the shadows of McCarthyism and the debacle of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, he paints Richard Nixon as this narrative’s villain and an entrenched evil permeating America. From Thompson’s perspective, McGovern does, to a fault, represent the furthest left agenda, perhaps to a naïve degree, as he endorses extreme policies such as full amnesty for draft evaders of the Vietnam War and total unilateral withdrawal from the conflict itself. In effect, the gonzo journalist finds a gonzo candidate. Second, given his strong polemical position regarding journalism, Thompson argues that the great mass media conglomerate largely and inappropriately dismisses McGovern as a viable candidate worth their attention (focusing rather on more notable and charismatic candidates such as Ted Kennedy). Thompson, who is literally following and critiquing McGovern, among others, in the trenches of their campaigns to almost microscopic detail, believes his perspective, no matter how biased, offers a greater degree of accuracy. For this, Thompson finds the media contemptuous for their lack of vision and objectivity—noting how the major politicians are as much indebted to “Big Media” and vice versa—and vilifies them to almost the same extent that he does the Nixon administration. Thompson finds that McGovern, without major media ties or traditional support, must largely rely upon youth platforms, grassroots politics, and the youth vote, all of which he perceives to be politically suicidal.
When McGovern rises as the Democratic frontrunner and eventual presidential candidate by mid-April, Thompson’s attitude (whose gonzo narrative does not take the liberty to revise his prior notions concerning McGovern, thus preserving all prior dismissals of him as even a forethought) toward him appears to take a decisively negative turn heading into October. From Thompson’s perspective, McGovern’s compromises and politics seem to equate to a reversal and further breakdown of the Democratic Party’s political machine. His defeat at Nixon’s hands seems predestined by Thompson, whose scrutiny of McGovern intensifies with every action he categorizes as mistaken, cowardly, and in total abandonment of the policies that landed him the nomination in the first place. As Thompson sees it, McGovern becomes part of the establishment that he so valiantly seemed to wish to fight. American history has recorded the resultant effect of that assessment as Thompson’s underdog, McGovern, is swiftly defeated by Nixon in the presidential elections of 1972.
Bibliography
Falconer, Delia. “From Alger to Edge-Work: Mapping the Shark Ethic in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Antithesis 6, no. 2 (1993): 111-125.
Hellmann, John. “Corporate Fiction, Private Fable, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.” Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 21, no. 1 (1979): 16-30.
Johnson, Michael. “Other New Journalists: The Youth and Radical Scene and the New Muckrakers.” In The New Journalism: The Underground Press, the Artists of Nonfiction, and Changes in the Established Media. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1971.
McKeen, William. Hunter S. Thompson. Boston: Twayne, 1991.
Perry, Paul. Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992.
Sickles, Robert. “A Countercultural Gatsby—Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The Death of the American Dream and the Rise of Las Vegas, USA.” Popular Culture Review 11, no. 1 (February, 2000): 61-73.
Weingarten, Marc. The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution. New York: Crown, 2005.