Later that day George Wallace was shot at a rally in Maryland about twelve minutes away from my house. It was the biggest political story of the year, and those five goddamn pages were still blank. Crouse flew back immediately from Boston and straggled back from New York, but by the time we got there it was all over.
What follows, then, is one of the most desperate last-minute hamburger jobs in the history of journalism—including the first known experiment with large-scale Gonzo Journalism—which we accomplished, in this case, by tearing my Ohio primary notebook apart and sending about fifty pages of scribbled shorthand notes straight to the typesetter.
But we had no choice. The fat was in the fire. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Ed Muskie said that.
My next job—after getting my brother elected President of the United States—will be the political destruction of Hubert Humphrey.
—Robert Kennedy; after the West Virginia primary in 1960
Strange, how a thing like that can stick in the memory. I may have a word or two wrong, but the balls of that quote are intact… and now, twelve years later on a rainy grey dawn in Omaha, Nebraska, it comes back to me with a vengeful clarity that makes me wonder once again if my head is entirely healthy.
That was back in Bobby’s “ruthless” period… which is a pretty good word for the way I’m feeling right now after watching the CBS Morning News and seeing that Hubert just won the West Virginia primary. He beat George Wallace, two to one… and now he’s moving on to California, for the nut-cutting ceremony on June 6th.
Which is very convenient for me, because I plan to be in California myself around that time: going out to do a road test on the new Vincent Black Shadow… and maybe follow Hubert for a while, track him around the state like a golem and record his last act for posterity.
Remember me, Hubert? I’m the one who got smacked in the stomach by a billy club at the corner of Michigan and Balboa on that evil Wednesday night four years ago in Chicago… while you looked down from your suite on the twenty-fifth floor of the Hilton, and wept with a snout full of tear gas drifting up from Grant Park.
I have never been one to hold a grudge any longer than absolutely necessary, Hubert, and I get the feeling that we’re about to write this one off. Big Ed was first… then you… and after that—the Other One.
Nothing personal. But it’s time to balance the books. The Raven is calling your name, Hubert; he says you still owe some dues—payable, in full, on June 6th. In the coin of the realm; no credit this time, no extensions.
My head is not quite straight this morning. These brutal Tuesday nights are ruining my health. Last week at this time I was pacing around my room on the seventh floor of the Neil House Motor Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, pausing now and then to stare out the window at the early morning buses just starting to move down on High Street… listening to the Grateful Dead, sipping Wild Turkey, and trying not to identify with a wino slumped in the doorway of Mister Angelo’s Wig Salon down there behind the stoplight and beyond the cool green lawn of the state Capitol Building.
Moments earlier I had left Pat Caddell, McGovern’s voter-analysis wizard, muttering to himself in the hallway outside the Situation Room—where he and Frank Mankiewicz and about six others had been grappling all night with botched returns from places like Toledo and Youngstown and Cincinnati.
“Goddamnit,” he was saying. “I still can’t believe it happened! They stole it from us!” He shook his head and kicked a tin spittoon next to the elevator. “We won this goddamn election! We had a lock on the nomination tonight, we had it nailed down—but the bastards stole it from us!”
Which was more or less true. If McGovern had been able to win Ohio with his last-minute, half-organized blitz it would have snapped the psychic spine of the Humphrey campaign… because Hubert had been formidably strong in Ohio, squatting tall in the pocket behind his now-familiar screen of Organized Labor and Old Blacks.
By dawn on Wednesday it was still “too close to call,” officially—but sometime around five Harold Himmelman, McGovern’s national overseer for Ohio, had picked up one of the phones in the Neil House Situation Room and been jolted half out of his chair by the long-awaited tallies from midtown Cleveland. McGovern had already won three of the four Congressional Districts in Cuyahoga County (metropolitan Cleveland), and all he needed to carry the state, now—along with the thirty-eight additional conventional delegates reserved for the statewide winner—was a half-respectable showing in the twenty-first, the heartland of the black vote, a crowded urban fiefdom bossed by Congressman Louis Stokes.
Ten seconds after he picked up the phone Himmelman was screaming: “What? Jesus Christ! No! That can’t be right!” (pause…) Then: “Awww, shit! That’s impossible!”
He turned to Mankiewicz: “It’s all over. Listen to this…” He turned back to the phone: “Give that to me again… okay, yeah, I’m ready.” He waited until Mankiewicz got a pencil, then began feeding the figures: “A hundred and nine to one! A hundred and twenty-seven to three!… Jesus…”
Mankiewicz flinched, then wrote down the numbers. Caddell slumped back in his chair and shook both fists at the ceiling. Himmelman kept croaking out the figures: a fantastic beating, unbelievable—the twenty-first district was a total wipeout. “Well…,” he said finally. “Thanks for calling, anyway. What? No… but we’ll damn well do something. Yeah, I realize that…” (pause) “Goddamnit I know it’s not your fault! Sure! We’re gonna put some people in jail… yeah, this is too obvious…” (starts to hang up, then pauses again) “Say, how many more votes do they have to count up there?”
“As many as they need,” Mankiewicz muttered.
Himmelman glanced at him, grimaced, then hung up.
“What does that project to,” Frank asked Caddell. “About thirty thousand to six?”
The wizard shrugged. “Who cares? We got raped. We’ll never make that up—not even with Akron.”
At that point the ancient black bell captain entered, bringing a pot of coffee and a small tin box that he said contained the two Alka-Seltzers I’d asked for—but when I opened the box it was full of dirty vaseline.
“What the fuck is this?” I said, showing it to him.
He took the box back and examined it carefully for a long time. “Well… damn-nation,” he said finally. “Where did this stuff come from?”
“Probably Nashville,” I said. “That’s White Rose Petroleum Jelly, sure as hell.”
He nodded slowly. “Yesss… meebee so…”
“No maybe about it,” I said. “I know that stuff. WLAC… around 1958… Jesus Christ, man! That grease is fourteen years old! What are you keeping it for?”
He shrugged and dropped the tin box in the pocket of his white waiter’s smock. “Damn if I know,” he said. “I thought it was Alka-Seltzer.”
I signed the tab for the coffee, then helped him load about a dozen stale glasses on his tray… but he seemed very agitated and I thought it was because of his blunder: Of course, the poor old bugger was feeling guilty about the dollar I’d given him for the seltzer.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll find some. Bring it up with the next pot of coffee.”
He shook his head and gestured at the big round wooden table where Mankiewicz, Himmelman, and Caddell were brooding over the tally sheets.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He was jabbing his finger at the half gallon of Early Times, but I was slow to understand… so he picked up one of the coffee cups he’d just brought us, and gestured again at the bottle.
“Ah ha!” I said. “Of course.” He held the cup with both hands while I filled it to the brim with fresh whiskey… feeling grossly out of sync with my surroundings: Here I was in the nerve center of a presidential campaign that even such far-out latent papists as Evans & Novak considered alarmingly radical, and at the peak of the crisis I was taking time out to piece off some befuddled old Darkie with a cup full of bourbon… then I opened the door for him as he shuffled
out into the hallway with his stash, still holding it with both hands and mumbling his thanks.
A very weird scene, I thought as I closed the door. A flashback to Gone With the Wind… and as I went back to pour myself a cup of coffee I had another flash: And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I was tempted to lay it on Frank, just to see how he’d handle it. The McGovern campaign has been hagridden from the start with unsettling literary references: Mankiewicz apparently sees the whole thing through the eyes of a latter-day Gertrude Stein; Gary Hart, the national manager, is hung up on Tolstoy… and Chris Lydon, the resident New York Times correspondent, has an ugly habit of relating mundane things like a bomb scare on the press bus or a low turnout in the Polak wards to pithy lines from Virgil. On the morning of election day in Nebraska I was talking to Lydon in the lobby of the Omaha Hilton when he suddenly wrapped off the conversation with: “You know, Virgil wanted to burn The Aeneid.”
I stared at him, trying to remember if Virgil was maybe one of McGovern’s advance men for Scott’s Bluff that I hadn’t met yet, or… “You pointy-head bastard,” I said. “Wait till Wallace gets in. He’ll kick your ass all over the street with Virgil.”
Meanwhile… back in Columbus, Ohio, it was 5:05 A.M. on a cool Wednesday morning and Frank Mankiewicz is calling the Secretary of State, getting him out of bed to protest what he gently but repeatedly refers to as “these fantastic irregularities” in the vote-counting procedure. McGovern’s slim lead has suddenly fallen apart; the phones are ringing constantly, and every call brings a new horror story.
In Cincinnati the vote-counters have decided to knock off and rest for twelve hours, a flagrant violation of Sec. 350529 of the State Election Code, which says the counting must go on, without interruption, until all the votes are tallied. In Toledo, McGovern is clinging to a precarious eleven-vote lead—but in Toledo and everywhere else the polling places are manned by local (Democratic) party hacks not friendly to McGovern, and any delay in the counting will give them time to… ah…
Mankiewicz studiously avoids using words like “fraud” or “cheat” or “steal.” Earlier that day Pierre Salinger had gone on the air to accuse the Humphrey forces of “vote fraud,” but the charge was impossible to substantiate at the time and Humphrey was able to broadcast an embarrassing counterattack while the polls were still open.
In Cleveland, in fact, 127 polling places had remained open until midnight—on the basis of an emergency directive from the state Supreme Court.
At this point we were forced to switch the narrative into the straight Gonzo mode. The rest of the Ohio section comes straight out of the notebook, for good or ill.
12:00—Cronkite comes on—barely able to talk—and says Humphrey has won Indiana 46 to 41 percent over Wallace (Caddell had Wallace at 29 percent) but only 17 percent of the Ohio vote is counted as of now, so far showing Hump. with the same 41 to 36 percent lead he had at 9:45.
… wandering around the hotel with Dick Tuck—into Humphrey Hq: “Mr. Banjo…” Returns: H—58,000 to M—53,000.
Midnight—NBC-Columbus (polls just closed in Cleveland) ABC has delegates 55-22 in HH Hq just before McGovern speaks. NBC has 41-39, 91,244 to 86,825. Five thousand difference & the polls just closed in Cleveland. Muskie 24,000.
Mankiewicz’s speech in the ballroom was a careful downer; speaking out of one side of his mouth for the mob of young McGovern volunteers & out of the other side for the national press—claiming a victory in Ohio, but also saying that even a narrow defeat would be victory enough… I was standing with Warren Beatty while Frank spoke. “What does this mean, Hunter?” he asked with his weird hustler’s smile.
“It means McGovern will come into Miami with less than enough to win, and it means pure hell on the convention floor.”
Meanwhile, CBS has some kind of wild west cowboy drama… Jimmy Stewart, Brig. Gen. USAF rolling in the dust under cow hoofs.
Old woman shooting at the feet of a cowhand tempted to jump in with a six-shooter on the Late Show…
She fires the 30-30 and warns to “let ’em fight.”
“Where you come from, stranger?”
“I come from Laramie and you better get used to me being here.”
“I own this town, stranger.”
(Like Daley-Meany to McGovern—“I own this town, stranger.”)
But maybe not.
Midnight and the polls just closed in Cleveland—41-39 percent.
12:25—Call Mank on the phone in Situation Room No. 258: “Yeah, we’ll be up for four to five more hours.” (pause) “Yeah, come on down if you want. But you’ll have to bring twenty hamburgers. Otherwise, the press is barred, as always…”
“Twenty? Who’ll pay?”
“Ask Pierre—he has the cash.”
12:33—CBS: 91,000 to 86,000—same 5,000 split.
12:35—Hump. says he has a “great victory in Indiana—Mr. Wallace has made this a sort of second Alabama.” And adds, “I doubt that anyone is going to come to that convention with enough votes to win on the first ballot.”
So the bloodbath looms. Heavy duty in Miami.
12:36—McGov. tense on CBS interview: Schoumacher: “Do you regret this decision to come into Ohio?” McG: “Not at all.”
2:30—Arrive in Situation Room with twenty hamburgers and receive $20 from Pierre Salinger…
2:36—Mank on phone to Washington says “Hell, let’s scrub it.” (NBC invitation for McGov. appear on Today Show at dawn.)
Yancy Martin: “Sheeitt! McGovern says scrub it to The Today Show. Man, we’re gettin’ big.”
Mank: “Hell, we used to have to fight to get on Uncle Bob—or The Flintstones.”
2:38—Mank: “It looks like we’re winning in Districts 23, 20 & 22—Scammon says he thinks we’ll come out of Cuyahoga County with a plurality of 60,000.”
Mank: “He [Scoop Jackson] went out like he came in—with a lot of class, huh?”
2:52—bad news from 21.
Himm. (on phone): “Come on, don’t play games—how much are we gonna lose by?… (pause; jots down figures) “Shit. We’re dead if that happens!”
Bitterness about Stokes brothers in Ohio—“When we win this thing they’re gonna have to crawl, goddamnit.”
3:03—The down feeling again. Caddell shrugs: “I don’t know, I just feel pessimistic.”
What you tend to forget is that two weeks ago McGov. couldn’t have pulled twenty percent in Ohio.
Recall quote from Sunday night:
“If we’d only had one more week.”
H. Humphrey in ’68—“one more month—even two weeks.”
But you don’t get any overtimes in this game—“there ain’t no instant replay in the football game of life” (Mitch Greenhill).
Caddell: “Watching the map is sort of like watching the clock.” (snarling)
3:05—Definite funk setting in now/not going to win. But hope forever springs, etc….
Phone slamming—“The goddamn 21st district is what’s killing us. We’ll probably carry the other three….”
Himm: “Wagner says it’s an 8 to 1 loss in the 21st. JESUS CHRIST!”
Yancy Martin answers all phones with eerie: “Good Morning.”
3:34—Door opens and John Chancellor wanders in.
Mank: “Hi, Jack—what do you hear?”
Chancellor: “Well we ended up saying you won… so I hope you do.”
Mank: “You want a drink, Jack?”
“Yeah… But the point is not whether you won, but how close you came.”
3:51—It comes down to the 21st.
Caddell (staring gloomily at Chancellor, confirming Mank’s wisdom): “Yes, if I had to generalize, I’d say it comes down to the 21st.”
3:53—phone rings—“But still no news from the 21st…”
Weird, even this presidential election comes down to some student and/or housewife poll watcher….
Himm (yelling at girl): “Goddamnit, I want
you to call me on every precinct!”
3:59—Delegate count is 55-37, McGovern.
Mank (on phone to lawyers): “What I think is that Stokes is sitting there and waiting to be told how many they need.”
4:11—The whole state now hinges on the outcome in the 21st Congressional District, midtown Cleveland.
Returns from only three precincts out of more than 400 in the 21st District.
4:15—Mank: “Well, I’m at the point where I’m ready to start getting judges out of bed.”
4:36—Phone rings. Himmelman answers. 21st starts in: “What! What was that?” (shouting) Then aside to Mank and Caddell, “Black middle class—109 to 1! Jesus Christ!”
4:48—The hammer falls. Incredible ratios from black precincts in Cleveland.
4:55—Mank holding phone. Turns to Caddell—“Who is this?”
Caddell: “Jim.” (shrugs) “I think he’s our man in Cincinnati.”
Mank: “Jim—what do they want?” (answer from phone, “They want you to consult with your lawyer and get his agreement to stop counting until 6 P.M.”)
(Pause)
Mank: “Well, tell ’em you just talked to your lawyer and he says there’s no way he can acquiesce in a violation of the law. And your lawyer’s name is Frank Mankiewicz—member of the bar in California and the Supreme Court of the United States!… No, I simply can’t go along with the breaking of the law.”
5:16—Mank on phone to Secretary of State Brown: “Mr. Brown, we’re profoundly disturbed about this situation in the 21st. We can’t get a single result out of there. The polls have been closed for 12 hours. I can’t help but think they’re lying in the weeds up there.”
Weird conversation with Brown, a tired & confused old man who’s been jerked out of bed at 5:15. Mank talking very fast, cool, and vaguely menacing. Brown obviously baffled—end of a bad day. It began when Governor John Gilligan said he (Brown) should resign for reasons of gross incompetence.