uncertainty remains

----------[Hunter Thompson excerpt]-------------- What happened after that, between April and November of 1968, plunged a whole generation of hyper-political young Americans into a terminal stupor.  Nixon blamed it on communist drugs and said he had The Cure, but what he never understood was that the simple stark fact of President Nixon was the problem, or at least the main symbol.  It is hard to even remember precisely -- much less explain -- just what a terrible bummer the last half of '68 turned into.

Actuallly, it took less than three months.  Martin Luther King was murdered in April, Bobby Kennedy in June . . . then Nixon was nominated in July, and in August the Democrats went to Chicago for the final act.

By Labor Day it was all over.  "The Movement" was finished, except for the trials, and somebody else was dealing.  The choice between Nixon & Humphrey was no choice at all -- not in the context of what had already gone down, between Selma and Chicago.  To be offered Hubert Humphrey as a sort of withered booby prize for all those bloody failures seemed more like a deliberate insult than a choice.

Milwaukee Journal, April 4, 1972:
McGovern Wins;
Strong Wallace Vote Edges Humphrey;
Fourth Place Finish Staggers Ex-Frontrunner Muskie;
Lindsay Quits Race

Failure comes easy at a time like this.  After eight days in this fantastic dungeon of a hotel, the idea of failing totally and miserably in my work seems absolutely logical.  It is a fitting end to this gig -- not only for me, but for everyone else who got trapped here, especially journalists.

The Wisconsin primary is over now.  It came to a shocking climax a few hours ago when George McGovern and George Wallace ran a blitz on everybody.

The results were such a jolt to the Conventional Wisdom that now -- with a cold grey dawn bloating up out of Lake Michigan and Hubert Humphrey still howling in his sleep despite the sedatives in his room directly above us -- there is nobody in Milwaukee this morning, including me, who can even pretend to explain what really went down last night....

A week earlier it would have been considered a sign of madness, among those who knew the score, to bet McGovern any better than a respectable third -- but toward the end of the final week the word went out that George had picked up a wave and was showing surprising strength in some of the blue-collar hardhat wards that had been more or less conceded to either Humphrey or Muskie.

...I was sorely tempted to pickup some easy  money from Tom Morgan, Lindsay's press secretary, who emptied his pockets one afternoon in the Schroeder hotel bar and came up with $102 to back his conviction that Lindsay would get between 10 and 15 percent -- but I had to back off because I had come to like Lindsay; he struck me as the most interesting of all the Democratic candidates in the sense that he seemed open to almost any kind of idea . . . so I regretfully declined Morgan's bet on the grounds that I would feel uncomfortable by profiting from Lindsay's misfortune....

But this was not the story I meant to write -- or avoid writing -- here; the idea was to say only that we suffered a terrible disaster on election night.  All our finely laid plans were blasted into offal by the TV network computers before the night even got into first gear.

When the polls closed at eight, Tim Crouse and I were still sitting idly around the T-shaped bar and desk in our National Affairs Suite at the Sheraton-Shroeder Hotel, laying detailed plans for what we assumed would be the next five or six hours of hellish suspense while the votes were being counted.  It would be at least midnight, we felt, before the results would begin to take shape . . . and if it looked at all close we were prepared to work straight through until dawn or even noon, if necessary.

The lead article in Sunday's Washington Post echoed the unanimous conviction of all the five or six hundred big-time press/politics wizards who were gathered here for what they all called "the crunch" -- the showdown, the first of the national primaries that would finally separate the sheep from the goats, as it were.

After a month of intense research by some of the best political journalists in America, the Post had finally concluded that (1) "The Wisconsin primary election seems likely to make dramatic changes in the battle for the 1972 presidential nomination" . . . and (2) that "an unusually high degree of uncertainty remains as the contest nears its climax."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
'Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you get bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too

Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down.

======================
{book excerpt -- Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72 -- Hunter Thompson -- 1973.}
{song:  "Landslide" -- Stevie Nicks.  Fleetwood Mac, 1975.  Reprise.}

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