Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail '72

Thompson flies aboard the airplane chartered for the journalists covering the McGovern campaign. The “fifty or sixty drunken journalists” (393) roll about in the aisles and consume drugs. After a brief interlude about the Jefferson County jail, the editor intervenes to announce that Thompson has “suffered a series of nervous seizures” (396). Therefore, Thompson’s prose is replaced by an extended conversation between Thompson and the editor that is presented verbatim. Thompson describes the party atmosphere aboard the journalists’ plane, which becomes “crazier and crazier” (398), while the atmosphere in the plane on which McGovern flies with his staff grows increasingly despondent and somber. The Eagleton debacle, the staff now understands, was “terminal” for the campaign.

The formerly maverick anti-politician that McGovern was in the primaries is gone; he is now seen as expedient and pragmatic, like every other politician. Thompson presents this as a difference between perception and reality. Eagleton, he believes, deserved to be dropped for hiding his potential scandal from McGovern. Eagleton was always a bad choice, in Thompson’s view, beyond the scandal. This is the reality, but the perception (in the voters’ minds) is that McGovern dumped Eagleton for “political expedience” (406).