The Great Shark Hunt, page 31
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 all agreed on that—but by May he was all they had left.
Not much, for sure. Any political party that can’t cough up anything better than a treacherous brain-damaged old vulture like Hubert Humphrey deserves every beating it gets. They don’t hardly 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 slither 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 GOP 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 Alioto, 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 all 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 TV journalism in many months appeared on the CBS 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-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-meister Rick Stearns announced that George was over the hump. The New York blitz was the clincher, pushing him over the 1350 mark and mashing all but the flimsiest 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 caucuses and by Sunday, 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 fixers 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. Squane. 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 Squane 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 Squane 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… Squane is definitely big-time.
“See you at seven,” he says, moving away.
The knock comes at 7:02—but instead of Squane it’s a beautiful silver-haired 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 it’ll make us both crazy.”
* * *
Many hours later, 4:30 A.M. Soaking wet, falling into the lobby, begging for help: No wallet, no money, no ID. 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.”
J. D. Squane, still grinning. “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 someplace 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, Squane! 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.”
Squane 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 there 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?”
Squane 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?”
Squane 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.”
Squane 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?”
Squane 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 High is very real in both worlds, for those who are into it—but anybody who has ever tried to live with a smack junkie 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 ratbastard 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 smack 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 understanding 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 machinery 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.
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail,
San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973
September
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 Chiefs 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 TV. 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—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 Man 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 lie 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 cannister of gin and grapefruit juice, watch the horses nuzzling each other in the pasture across the road, big logs in the fireplace at night; Herbie Mann, John Prine, 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 treacheries the local greedheads rammed through while I was gone, watch the late TV news and curse McGovern for poking another hole in his own boat, then stop by the Jerome on the way out of town for a midnight beer with Solheim.
