July 1972, posthaste

Hunter Thompson:

Now, walking down a long empty white corridor in the Atlanta airport on a Sunday night in July, I had a very clear memory of my last visit to this place -- but it seemed like something that had happened five years ago, instead of only five months.  The Lindsay campaign was a loose, upbeat trip while it lasted, but there is a merciless kind of "out of sight, out of mind" quality about a losing presidential campaign . . .

As it turned out, the Lindsay campaign was fatally flawed from the start. 

It was all tip and no iceberg -- the exact opposite of the slow-building McGovern juggernaut....


Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

July 13, 1972:

When I got back to the Doral, I found a message saying to call Senator McGovern, URGENT....We were ushered in rather quickly....

McGovern was as composed, natural, unaffected and wryly humorous as ever. 

I don't know why one always expects that winning the nomination will produce an immense change in a man you know well;

but one always does (or at least I always do), and then one is astonished to see that they are about the same today as they were yesterday. 

(It is different, though, when they are elected President.)...

George said he had been trying to reach me about Kevin White, the mayor of Boston, whose name had inexplicably boiled up in the last moments of the vice presidential consideration.


Keith Richards:

I remember the gig in Boston on July 19, 1972, for two reasons.  The first was the motorcade the Boston police provided to get us to the stadium when their buddies in Rhode Island had wanted to lock us up....I got arrested. 

And Mick and Bobby Keys and Marshall Chess demanded to be arrested with me....

But in Boston that day there was a riot going on in the South End.  And the mayor of Boston [Kevin White] was saying, you let those [people] go right now, because I've got to deal with this riot, and don't give me a Rolling Stones riot on the same day.  And so we were sprung, and these cops escorted us to Boston posthaste, with outriders and civic fanfare.


Pat Moynihan:

13 July 1972

Dr. Clark Kerr
Chairman
Carnegie Commission on Higher Education

Dear Clark:

...I went to the Harvard Commencement this year....If, as would seem likely, the Administration [Nixon admin.] is returned to office, I would hope some efforts would be made to establish better relations with the university world. 

I cannot approve what has gone on the past four years; on either side. 

Perhaps if Richard Nixon is re-elected and it is finally over -- no more chance to beat him, no more chance for him to beat -- some persons might grow more sensible.  I grow contemptuous of the leaders of higher education who seek to secure the good opinion of their undergraduates by vulgar attacks on the President of the United States. 

I mean vulgar.  Not a trace of elegance....

My impression of our graduating class this year was of persons who had apparently scarcely had an adult conversation in their full four years. ...

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{References}
Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72.  Hunter S. Thompson.  Copyright 1973 - Straight Arrow / Warner Books.
Journals, 1952-2000, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.  Edited -- Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger.  Copyright 2007 - Penguin.
Life.  Keith Richards, with James Fox.  Copyright 2010 - Back Bay / Little, Brown.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary.  Edited -- Steven R. Weisman.  Copyright 2010 - Public Affairs / (Perseus Books Group).

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