Excerpts from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing on the 1972 Campaign Trail:

"...but the MAIN reason I'm working for (Ed Muskie)," he said, "is that he's the only guy we have that can beat Nixon. (...) That's the real issue this time. Beating Nixon. It's hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years."

I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but "regrettably necessary" holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? (...)

Now, with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year, is Beating Nixon. But this was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960- and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

More:

There is a sense of muted desperation in the Democratic ranks at the prospect of getting stuck- and beaten once again- with some tried and half-true hack like Humphrey or Jackson or Muskie... and George McGovern, the only candidate in either party worth voting for, is hung in a frustrated limbo created mainly by the gross cynicism of the Washington Press Corps. "He'd be a fine President," they say, "but of course he can't possibly win."

Why not?

Well... the wizards haven't bothered to explain that, but their reasoning appears to be rooted in the hazy idea that the people who could make McGovern President- that huge & confused coalition of students, freaks, blacks, anti-war activists & dazed dropouts- won't even bother to register, much less drag themselves to the polls on election day.

Maybe so... but it is hard to recall many candidates, in recent history, who failed to move what is now called "The McGovern Vote" to the polls if they ACTUALLY REPRESENTED IT.

How long, O Lord... How long? When will it end? The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasing likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct.
A lot of people are seriously worried about this, but I am not one of them. I have never been much of a Party Man myself... and the more I learn about the realities of national politics, the more I'm convinced that the Democratic Party is an atavistic endeavor- more an Obstacle than a Vehicle- and that there is really no hope of accomplishing anything genuinely new or different in American politics until the Democratic Party is done away with.

Remember the Whigs, Larry? They went belly up, with no warning at all, when a handfull of young politicians like Abe Lincoln decided to move out on their own, and fuck the Whigs... which worked out very nicely, and when it became almost instantly clear that the whig hierarchy was just a gang of old impotent windbags with no real power at all, the Party just curled up and died... and any politician stupid enough to "stay loyal" went down with the ship.

No other speaker at the (1968 Republican) Convention was allowed to ignore the time limit laid out for him in the split-second script, but Goldwater was encouraged to rave and snarl at the cameras until he ran out of things to say. His speech set the tone for the whole convention, and his only real competition was Ronald Reagan. Compared to those two, both Agnew and Nixon sounded like bleeding-heart liberals.

There is no point in kidding ourselves about what Richard Nixon really WANTS for America. When he stands at his White House window and looks out on an anti-war demonstration, he doesn't he "dissenters," he sees CRIMINALS. Dangerous parasites, preparing to strike at the heart of the Great American System that put him where he is today.

So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here- not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Politics has its own language, which is often so complex that it borders on being a code, and the main trick in political journalism is learning how to translate- to make sense of the partisan bullshit even your friends will lay on you- without crippling your access to the kind of information that allows you to keep functioning.