Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (34 page)

Hubert Humphrey’s opinion of Tony Boyle was best expressed when they appeared together at the United Mine Workers Convention in Denver in 1968, and Humphrey referred to Boyle as “My friend, this great American.”

For whatever it’s worth, the UMW is one of the most powerful political realities in West Virginia, where Humphrey recently won his fourth primary in a row.

The Democratic Convention in Miami begins on July 10, and the only major political event between now and then is the California primary on June 6. If Humphrey loses in California—and he will, I think—his only hope for the nomination will be to make a deal with Wallace, who will come to Miami with something like 350 delegates, and he’ll be looking around for somebody to bargain with.

The logical bargainee, as it were, is Hubert Humphrey, who has been running a sort of left-handed, stupid-coy flirtation with Wallace ever since the Florida primary, where he did everything possible to co-opt Wallace’s position on busing without actually agreeing with it. Humphrey even went so far as to agree, momentarily, with Nixon on busing—blurting out “Oh, thank goodness!” when he heard of Nixon’s proposal for a “moratorium,” which amounted to a presidential edict to suspend all busing until the White House could figure out some way to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court.

When somebody called Hubert’s attention to this aspect of the problem and reminded him that he had always been known as a staunch foe of racial segregation, he quickly changed his mind and rushed up to Wisconsin to nail down the black vote by denouncing Wallace as a racist demagogue, and Nixon as a cynical opportunist for saying almost exactly the same things about busing that Humphrey himself had been saying in Florida.

There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible, and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey really is until you’ve followed him
around for a while on the campaign trail. The double-standard realities of campaign journalism, however, make it difficult for even the best of the “straight/objective” reporters to write what they actually think and feel about a candidate.

Hubert Humphrey, for one, would go crazy with rage and attempt to strangle his press secretary if he ever saw in print what most reporters say about him during midnight conversations around bar-room tables in all those Hiltons and Sheratons where the candidates make their headquarters when they swoop into places like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis.

And some of these reporters are stepping out of the closet and beginning to describe Humphrey in print as the bag of PR gimmicks that he is. The other day one of the
Washington Post
regulars nailed him:

“Humphrey has used the campaign slogans of John Kennedy (‘let’s get this country moving again’) and of Wallace (‘stand up for America’) and some of his literature proclaims that 1972 is ‘the year of the people,’ a title used by Eugene McCarthy for a book about his 1968 campaign.”

T
HE
W
ISDOM

I predict regretfully that you in California will see one of the dirtiest campaigns in the history of this state—and you have had some of the dirtiest.

—Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, speaking in San Francisco

No hope for this section. Crouse is caving in downstairs; they have him on two phones at once and even from up here I can hear the conversation turning ugly . . . so there is not much time for anything except maybe a flash round-up on the outlook for California and beyond.

George Wallace himself will not be a factor in the California primary. His handlers are talking about a last-minute write-in campaign, but he has no delegates—and the California ballot doesn’t list candidates; only
delegates pledged to candidates
. So a write-in vote for Wallace won’t even be counted.

Wallace is not even likely, now, to have any real bargaining at the
convention. Even before he was shot—and before he won Michigan and Maryland—his only hope for real leverage in Miami depended on Humphrey coming into the convention with enough delegates of his own (something like 700–800) to bargain with Wallace from strength. But as things stand now, Humphrey and Wallace between them will not have 1,000 delegates on the first ballot—and McGovern is a pretty good bet, today, to go down to Miami with almost 1,300.

Humphrey’s last chance for leverage now is to win California, and although the polls still show him ahead I doubt if even Hubert believes it. Even before his weak showings in Michigan and Maryland, one of Humphrey’s main strategists—Kenny O’Donnell—was quietly leaking word to the press that Hubert didn’t really
need
California to get the nomination.

This is an interesting notion—particularly after Humphrey himself had de-emphasized the importance of winning the New York primary a few days earlier. He understood, even then, that there was no point even thinking about New York unless he could win in California.

And that’s not going to happen unless something very drastic happens between now and June 6. Hubert’s only hope in California was a savage, all-out attack on McGovern—a desperate smear campaign focused on Grass, Amnesty, Abortion, and even Busing. And to do that he would have to consciously distort McGovern’s positions on those issues . . . which is something he would find very hard to do, because Humphrey and McGovern have been close personal friends for many years.

I have said a lot of foul things about Hubert, all deserved, but I think I’d be genuinely surprised to see him crank up a vicious and groundless attack on an old friend. His California managers have already said they will try to do it, with or without his approval—but Hubert knows he could never carry that off. In Ohio he got away with letting Jackson do his dirty work, and in Nebraska he let his supporters smear McGovern in a Catholic newspaper, the
True Voice
. . . but Hubert himself never got down in the ditch; he stayed on what he likes to call “the high road.”

But he won’t have that option in California. His only hope for winning out there is to go flat out on the Low Road.

Maybe he will, but I doubt it. The odds are too long. McGovern would probably win anyway—leaving Humphrey to rot in the history books for generations to come.

July 6, 1972

In my own country I am in a far-off land.
I am strong but have no force or power
I win all yet remain a loser
At break of day I say goodnight
When I lie down I have a great fear of falling.

—François Villon

There is probably some long-standing “rule” among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: “When you start stealing from your own work you’re in bad trouble.” And it may be true.

I am growing extremely weary of writing constantly about politics. My brain has become a steam-vat; my body is turning to wax and bad flab; impotence looms; my fingernails are growing at a fantastic rate of speed—they are turning into claws; my standard-size clippers will no longer cut the growth, so now I carry a set of huge toenail clippers and sneak off every night around dusk, regardless of where I am—in any city, hamlet, or plastic hotel room along the campaign trail—to chop another quarter of an inch or so off of all ten fingers.

People are beginning to notice, I think, but fuck them. I am beginning to notice some of
their
problems, too. Drug dependence is out in the open now: some people are getting heavy into downers—reds, Quaaludes, Tuinals—and others are gobbling speed, booze, Maalox, and other strange medications with fearsome regularity. The 1972 presidential
campaign is beginning to feel more and more like the second day of a Hells Angels Labor Day picnic.

And we are only halfway home: five more months . . . the moment I finish this goddamn thing, I have to rush up to New York for the June 20 primary, then back to Washington to get everything packed for the move to Colorado . . . and after that to Miami for the Democratic Convention, which is shaping up very fast these days as one of the most brutal and degrading animal acts of our time.

After Miami the calendar shows a bit of a rest on the political front—but not for me: I have to go back out to California and ride that goddamn fiendish Vincent Black Shadow again, for the road tests. The original plan was to deal with the beast in my off-hours during the California primary coverage, but serious problems developed.

Ten days before the election—with McGovern apparently so far ahead that most of the press people were looking for ways to
avoid
covering the final week—I drove out to Ventura, a satellite town just north of L.A. in the San Fernando Valley, to pick up the bugger and use it to cover the rest of the primary. Greg Jackson, an ABC newscaster who used to race motorcycles, went along with me. We were both curious about this machine. Chris Bunche, editor of
Choppers
magazine, said it was so fast and terrible that it made the extremely fast Honda 750 seem like a harmless toy.

This proved to be absolutely true. I rode a factory-demo Honda for a while, just to get the feel of being back on a serious road-runner again . . . and it seemed just fine: very quick, very powerful, very easy in the hands, one-touch electric starter. A very civilized machine, in all, and I might even be tempted to buy one if I didn’t have the same gut distaste for Hondas that the American Honda management has for
Rolling Stone
. They don’t like the image. “You meet the nicest people on a Honda,” they say—but according to a letter from American Honda to the
Rolling Stone
ad manager, none of these
nicest people
have much stomach for a magazine like this one.

Which is probably just as well; because if you’re a safe, happy,
nice
young Republican, you probably don’t want to read about things like dope, rock music, and politics anyway. You want to stick with
Time
, and for weekend recreation do a bit of the laid-back street-cruising on your
big fast Honda 750 . . . maybe burn a Sportster or a Triumph here & there, just for the
fun
of it: but nothing serious, because when you start that kind of thing you don’t meet many
nice people
.

Jesus! Another tangent, and right up front, this time—the whole
lead
, in fact, completely fucked.

What can I say? Last week I blew the whole thing. Total failure. Missed the deadline, no article, no wisdom, no excuse . . . Except one: yes, I was savagely and expertly duped by one of the oldest con trips in politics.

By Frank Mankiewicz, of all people. That scurvy, rumpled, treacherous little bastard . . . If I were running for president I would hire Mankiewicz to run my campaign, but as a journalist I wouldn’t shed a tear if I picked up tomorrow’s paper and saw where nine thugs had caught poor Frank in an alley near the Capitol and cut off both of his big toes, making it permanently impossible for him to keep his balance for more than five or six feet in any direction.

The image is horrible: Mankiewicz gets a phone call from Houston, saying the Texas delegation is on the verge of selling out to a Humphrey-Wallace coalition . . . he slams down the phone and lunges out of his cubicle in “McGovern for President” headquarters, bouncing off the door-jamb and then grabbing the Coke machine in order to stay upright—then lunging again into Rick Stearns’ office to demand a detailed breakdown on the sex lives and bad debts of every member of the Texas delegation . . . then trying to catch his breath, gasping for air from the terrible exertion, and finally lunging back down the hall to his own cubicle.

It is very hard to walk straight with the big toes gone; the effect is sort of like taking the keel off a sailboat—it becomes impossibly top-heavy, wallowing crazily in the swells, not even the sea-anchor will hold it upright . . . and the only way a man can walk straight with no big toes is to use a very complex tripod mechanism, five or six retractable aluminum rods strapped to each arm, moving around like a spider instead of a person.

Ah . . . this seems to be getting heavy. Very harsh and demented language. I have tried to suppress these feelings for more than a week, but every time I sit down at a typewriter they foam to the surface. So it is probably better—if for no other reason than to get past this ugly hangup
and into the rest of the article—to just blow it all out and take the weight off my spleen, as it were, with a brief explanation.