everything you do is just all right

According to the Gallup Polls, however, -------[Hunter Thompson excerpt]------- the Underculture vote is building up a fearful head of steam behind Ted Kennedy; and this drift has begun to cause genuine alarm among Bigwigs and "pros" in both parties.  The mere mention of Kennedy's name is said to give Nixon bad cramps all over his body, such as it is.  His thugs are already starting to lash Kennedy with vicious denunciations -- calling him a "liar" and a "coward" and a "cheater."

And this is only December of 1971; the election is still ten months away.

The only person more nervous than Nixon about Kennedy's recent surge in the polls seems to be Kennedy himself.  He won't even admit that it's happening -- at least not for the record -- and his top-level staffers, like Jim Flug, find themselves walking a public tightrope.  They can see the thing coming -- too soon, perhaps, but there's nothing they can do about that either.  With the boss hunkered down, insisting he's not a candidate, his lieutenants try to keep their minds off the storm by working feverishly on Projects.

When I called Flug the other night at the office he was working late on a doomed effort to prevent Earl Butz from being confirmed by the Senate as Nixon's new Secretary of Agriculture.

"Too hell with Butz," I said, "what about Rehnquist?  Are they actually going to put a swine like that on the Supreme court?"

"They have the votes," he replied.

"Jesus," I muttered, "is he as bad as all the rotten stuff I've read about him?"

"Worse," Flug said.  "But I think he's in.  We tried, but we can't get the votes."

--------------
...Live steady.  Don't fuck around.  Give anything weird a wide berth -- including people.  It's not worth it.  I learned this the hard way, through brutal overindulgence.

And it's also a nasty fact that I have to catch a plane for Chicago in three hours -- to attend some kind of national Emergency Conferene for New Voters, which looks like the opening shot in this year's version of the McCarthy / Kennedy uprising in '68 -- and since the conference starts at six o'clock tonight, I must make that plane . . .

. . . Back to Chicago; it's never dull out there.  You never know exactly what kind of terrible shit is going to come down on you in that town, but you can always count on something.  Every time I go to Chicago I come away with scars.

[end excerpt]
==================

...Oh daddy,
If I can make you see,
If there's been a fool around,
It's got to be me.

Why are you right when I'm so wrong,
I'm so weak but you're so strong,
Everything you do is just alright,
And I can't walk away from you, baby
If I tried.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
{book excerpt -- Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson.  Copyright, 1973 - San Francisco, CA:  Straight Arrow Books}
{song excerpt -- "Oh Daddy" - written by Christine McVie.  Rumours.  Fleetwood Mac.  1977.}

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