"If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."
~ Shirley Chisholm
------------------- [Hunter Thompson excerpt] -------------------
The Chisholm strength shocked everybody. She was one of twelve names on the ballot--which included almost every conceivable Democratic candidate from Hubert Humphrey to Patsy Mink, Wilbur Mills, and Sam Yorty--but after Muskie and Lindsay dropped out, the Caucus was billed far and wide as a test between McGovern and McCarthy.
There was no mention in the press or anywhere else that some unknown black woman from Brooklyn might seriously challenge these famous liberal heavies on their own turf . . . but when the final vote came in, Shirley Chisholm had actually beaten Gene McCarthy, who finished a close third.
The Chisholm challenge was a last-minute idea and only half-organized, on the morning of the Caucus, by a handful of speedy young black politicos and Women's Lib types--but by 6:00 that evening it had developed from a noisy idea into a solid power bloc.
What began as a symbolic kind of challenge became a serious position after the first ballot--among this overwhelmingly white, liberal, affluent, well-educated, and over-thirty audience--when almost half of them refused to vote for George McGovern because he seemed "too conventional," as one long-haired kid in a ski parka told me.
They had nothing against McGovern; they agreed with almost everything he said--but they wanted more; and it is interesting to speculate about what might have happened if the same people who showed up at McCarthy's Holy Cross rally on Friday night had come out to Assumption on Sunday.
There were not many Youth / Freak vote types at the Rad / Lib Caucus; perhaps one out of five, and probably not even that. The bulk of the crowd looked like professors and their wives from Amherst....
A lot has been written about McGovern's difficulties on the campaign trail, but most of it is far off the point. The career pols and press wizards say he simply lacks "charisma," but that's a cheap and simplistic idea that is more an insult to the electorate than to McGovern.
The assholes who run politics in this country have become so mesmerized by the Madison Avenue school of campaigning that they actually believe, now, that all it takes to become a Congressman or a Senator--or even a President--is a nice set of teeth, a big wad of money, and a half-dozen Media Specialists.
McGovern, they say, doesn't make it on this level. Which is probably true. But McCarthy was worse. His '68 campaign had none of the surface necessities. He had no money, no press, no endorsements, no camera-presence . . . his only asset was a good eye for the opening, and a good enough ear to pick up the distant rumble of a groundswell with nobody riding it.
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{Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson. Copyright 1973, Straight Arrow Books.}
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