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t wasn't until I
read about the
burglary in
President Bush's
campaign office in
Spokane, Wash., that
the revelation hit
me: We've been liv-
ing a "been there,
HARRY
done that" existence
KIRSBAUM
all along.
Columnist
When you look at
the current times, a
vicious political campaign, an unpopu-
lar war in a land far away, an America
that's seemingly cleaved in half — it all
seems so unlikely that it will ever get
better.
But it will, because it's happened
before.
It's been a long time since I've
reached for those two books on
the shelf, but I just happened to
notice them during a spring-
cleaning episode last week.
The Boys on the Bus, by
Timothy Crouse and Fear and
4, a, ;; .
248.851.2804 for a personal appointment
tkt;
ww-w.closetdesi ns.net
trs 8,14
Loathing on the Campaign
Trail 72 by Dr. Hunter S.
Thompson are two books
written in the aftermath of
the 1972 presidential elec-
tion by two counter-culture
writers who were not con-
sidered journalists by the
establishment at the time.
They still hooked a lot of people on
politics because of their insight, their
prose and the way they helped change
campaign coverage.
Crouse said the transformation start-
ed 12 years before with Theodore
White's book, The Making of the
President 1960, which described an
insider's account of John R Kennedy's
presidential campaign.
White's book became the standard
upon which future presidential cam-
paign coverage would be measured.
By 1972, the media's role became
almost as powerful as the political par-
ties themselves, and the press replaced
the smoke-filled back rooms as the way
Americans pick the leader of the free
world.
"By reporting a man's political
strengths, they made him a frontrun-
ner; by mentioning his weaknesses and
liabilities, they cut him down," Crouse
Eft
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Harry Kirsbaum's e-mail address is
hkirsbaum@thejewishnews.com
wrote. "The press was no longer simply
guessing who might run and who
might win; the press was in some way
determining these things."
Crouse wrote about the pack of jour-
nalists who followed the candidates
from one event to another, and had to
file something to their editors by the
end of the day. Usually it was the same
story with the same hook, because they
were controlled by what they covered
and to whom they had access.
Stories were told of both Nixon press
secretary Ron Ziegler and McGovern
campaign director Gary Hart (yes, that
Gary Hart) who tried to tilt events to
favor their candidate.
And boy, were those events intense.
Third-party candidate George
Wallace was nearly assassinated;
Watergate was just heating up; the
Vietnam War was still raging;
and McGovern
dropped his running
mate Thomas Eagleton
just days after the nomi-
nation.
The news cycle at the
time was 24 hours, snail's
pace compared to the
instant news today, but
the stories were just as seri-
ous and compelling as
today.
Hunter Thompson's
drug-laden account of the
1972 campaign will never be
duplicated, and his description of the
Republican Convention in Miami is
worth the price of the book alone
($1.75 for the 1973 paperback edition).
The photographs used in Boys on the
Bus show political reporters David
Broder of the Washington Post and the
Chicago Sun Times' Robert Novak in
more youthful times.
Fear and Loathing provides drawings
from Ralph Steadman and photos of
Sammy Davis Jr. hugging Richard
Nixon as well as McGovern wooing the
Chasidic vote.
Now the counter-culture journalists
have been replaced by bloggers or
movie-makers like Michael Moore and
Alexandra Pelosi — people who don't
have to answer to editors.
Yes, we're in the middle of a war that
doesn't appear to have an end, gasoline
prices are skyrocketing, the country is
divided, and everything looks hopeless.
Welcome to the 2.0 version of
1972.
-
❑