Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

A self-described political junkie, Thompson fixes his sights early on McGovern as the candidate to whom he will attach himself. Dismissing 1968 Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey as a "hopeless old hack" and presumed nominee Senator Edmund Muskie, whose campaign Thompson says exudes a "stench of death", Thompson was vindicated in his choice of McGovern. The nomination of McGovern was not assured, however, as others in the Democratic Party attempted to recruit Ted Kennedy to run or focused on George Wallace's perceived ability to win the South.

With brutal honesty Thompson narrates the smallest decisions on what speech to give where (from school gymnasiums for young voters, to public halls in heavily Polish districts of Milwaukee, to the attempt to create buzz for Muskie through an old-fashioned and disastrous whistle-stop train tour through Florida dubbed the Sunshine Special) to the ill-fated selection of Thomas Eagleton as the Vice-Presidential candidate.

The book is notable for its introduction not only to the candidates of 1972 but also its early glimpses of future political leaders. Gary Hart of Colorado, who served as McGovern's campaign manager and would later win a seat in the U.S. Senate, and Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, who would himself capture the 1976 Democratic nomination and Presidency, are two examples.

Thompson's hatred of Richard Nixon is on display throughout—in diatribes on policy, as well as personal invective directed at Nixon and his inner circle. Despite this, Thompson humanizes the incumbent through several episodes, including recounting a private interview with Nixon in New Hampshire during the 1968 presidential election that largely focused on their mutual fascination with football. In later years and articles, Thompson recounted his amazement that Nixon was not just talking about football but that he seemed to have a "genuine interest" in the game, and often cited the encounter as further evidence of how Nixon's every public maneuver was politically calculated even if it hid his true self.

By the end of the 1972 campaign and its disastrous defeat for McGovern (who won only Massachusetts and Washington D.C., losing even his home state of South Dakota), Thompson was clearly thoroughly exhausted and burned out on the process of politics.

As much as it is about the candidates and their various political processes, the book is equally a critical look at the mainstream media coverage of the campaigns and politics. Criticizing the various pundits and political "experts", Thompson rails against the often incestuous relationships between politicians and those who write about them. He cites as a well-known fact among political journalists the matter of Thomas Eagleton, the United States senator who was removed after just 18 days as McGovern's running mate, when news that he had previously undergone electroshock therapy for depression was broken through the press as a scandal of the press's own making.

This position of portraying the campaigns as much as a media compilation of the stories they wished to cover instead of the presenting all the stories that occurred was widely recognized as depicting a previously unspoken truth. Frank Mankiewicz, McGovern's campaign manager, would often say in later years that the book, despite its embellishments, represented "the least factual, most accurate account" of the election.

Timothy Crouse, who provided supplemental coverage of the campaign for Rolling Stone, wrote a memoir called The Boys on the Bus (1973) that critically analyzes the coverage of the '72 presidential campaign. In the book, often a standard text in university journalism courses, Crouse echoes Thompson's observations on the pack journalism mentality of the reporters covering the campaign, who were greatly dependent on the access provided by the Nixon campaign staff. Crouse describes Thompson as the one reporter who broke from the pack, however, and later printings of The Boys on the Bus contain an introduction by Thompson.