The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time

  "That's fine," I said. "Bring me three Budweisers."

  She nodded. "With three glasses?"

  "No. One glass."

  She hesitated, then wrote the order down and lumbered off toward wherever she kept the beer. I carried my plate over to an empty table and sat down to eat and read the local paper. . . but there was no salt and pepper on the table, so I went back up to the smorgasbord to look for it & bumped into somebody in a tan garbardine suit who was quietly loading his plate with carrots & salami.

  "Sorry." I said.

  "Pardon me," he replied.

  I shrugged and went back to my table with the salt and pepper. The only noise in the room was coming from the L.A. Times corner. Everybody else was either reading or eating, or both. The only person in the room not sitting down was the man in the tan suit at the smorgasbord table. He was still fumbling with the food, keeping his back to the room. . .

  There was something familiar about him. Nothing special -- but enough to make me glance up again from my newspaper; a subliminal recognition-flash of some kind, or maybe just the idle journalistic curiosity that gets to be a habit after a while when you find yourself drifting around in the nervous murk of some story with no apparent meaning or spine to it. I had come up to New Hampshire to write a long thing on the McGovern campaign -- but after twelve hours in Manchester I hadn't seen much to indicate that it actually existed, and I was beginning to wonder what the fuck I was going to write about for that issue.

  There was no sign of communcation in the room. The press people, as usual, were going out of their way to ignore each other's existence. Ham Davis was brooding over the New York Times, Crouse was re-arranging the contents of his knapsack, Michelle Clark was staring at her fingernails, Bruckner and Dougherty were trading Sam Yorty jokes. . . and the man in the tan suit was still shuffling back and forth at the smorgasbord table -- totally absorbed in it, studying the carrots. . .

  Jesus Christ! I thought. The Candidate! That crouching figure up there at the food table is George McGovern.

  But where was his entourage? And why hadn't anybody else noticed him? Was he actually alone?

  No, that was impossible. I had never seen a presidential candidate moving around in public without at least ten speedy "aides" surrounding him at all times. So I watched him for a while, expecting to see his aides flocking in from the lobby at any moment. . . but it slowly dawned on me that The Candidate was by himself: there were no aides, no entourage, and nobody else in the room had even noticed his arrival.

  This made me very nervous. McGovern was obviously waiting for somebody to greet him, keeping his back to the room, not even looking around -- so there was no way for him to know that nobody in the room even knew he was there.

  Finally I got up and walked across to the food table, watching McGovern out of the corner of one eye while I picked up some olives, fetched another beer out of the ice bucket. . . and finally reached over to tap The Candidate on the arm and introduce myself.

  "Hello, Senator. We met a few weeks ago at Tom Braden's house in Washington."

  He smiled and reached out to shake hands. "Of course, of course," he said. "What are you doing up here?"

  "Not much, so far," I said. "We've been waiting for you."

  He nodded, still poking around with the cold cuts. I felt very uneasy. Our last encounter had been somewhat jangled. He had just come back from New Hampshire, very tired and depressed, and when he arrived at Braden's house we had already finished dinner and I was getting heavily into drink. My memory of that evening is somewhat dim, but even in dimness I recall beating my gums at top speed for about two hours about how he was doing everything wrong and how helpless it was for him to think he could even accomplish anything with that goddamn albatross of a Democratic Party on his neck, and that if he had any real sense he would make drastic alterations in the whole style & tone of his campaign and remodel it along the lines of the Aspen Freak Power Uprising, specifically, along the lines of my own extremely weird and nerve-rattling campaign for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado.

  McGovern had listened politely, but two weeks later in New Hampshire there was no evidence to suggest that he had taken my advice very seriously. He was sitll plodding along in the passive/underdog role, still driving back & forth across the state in his lonely one-car motorcade to talk with small groups of people in rural living rooms. Nothing heavy, nothing wild or electric. All he was offering, he said, was a rare and admittedly lonsghot opportunity to vote for an honest and intelligent presidential candidate.

  A very strange option, in any year -- but in mid-February of 1972 there were no visible signs, in New Hampshire, that the citizenry was about to rise up and drive the swine out of the temple. Beyond that, it was absolutely clear -- according to the Wizards, Gurus, and Gentlemen Journalists in Washington -- that Big Ed Muskie, the Man from Maine, had the Democratic nomination so deep in the bag that it was hardly worth arguing about.

  Nobody argued with the things McGovern said. He was right, of course -- but nobody took him very seriously, either. . .

  7:45 a.m. . . The sun is fighting through the smog now, a hot grey glow on the street below my window. Friday morning business-worker traffic is beginning to clog Wilshire Boulevard and the Glendale Federal Savings parking lot across the street is filling up with cars. Slump-shouldered girls are scurrying into the big Title Insurance & Trust Company and Crocker National Bank buildings, rushing to punch in on the time clock before 8:00.

  I can look down from my window and see the two McGovern press buses loading. Kirby Jones, the press secretary, is standing by the door of the No. 1 bus and herding two groggy CBS cameramen aboard like some kind of latter-day Noah getting goats aboard the ark. Kirby is responsible for keeping the McGovern press/media crowd happy -- or at least happy enough to make sure they have the time and facilities to report whatever McGovern, Mankiewicz, and the other Main Boys want to see and read on tonight's TV news and in tomorrow's newspapers. Like any other good press secretary, Kirby doesn't mind admitting -- off the record -- that his love of Pure Truth is often tempered by circumstances. His job is to convince the press that everything The Candidate says is even now being carved on stone tablets.

  The Truth is whatever George says; this is all ye know and all ye need to know. If McGovern says today that the most important issue in the California primary is abolition of the sodomy statues, Kirby will do everything in his power to convince everybody on the press bus that the sodomy statues must be abolished. . . and if George decides tomorrow that his pro-sodomy gig isn't making it with the voters, Kirby will get behind a quick press release to the effect that "new evidence from previously obscure sources" has convinced the Senator that what he really meant to say was that sodomy itself should be abolished.

  This kind of fancy footwork was executed a lot easier back there in the early primaries than it is now. Since Wisconsin, McGovern's words have been watched very carefully. Both his mushrooming media entourage and his dwindling number of opponents have pounced on anything even vaguely controversial or potentially damaging in his speeches, press conferences, position papers, or even idle comments.

  McGovern is very sensitive about this sort of thing, and for excellent reason. In three of the last four big primaries (Ohio, Nebraska & California) he has spent an alarmingly big chunk of his campaign time denying that behind his calm and decent facade he is really a sort of Trojan Horse candidate -- coming on in public as a bucolic Jeffersonian Democrat while secretly plotting to seize the reins of power and turn them over at midnight on Inauguration Day to a Red-bent hellbroth of radicals, Dopers, Traitors, Sex Fiends, Anarchists, Winos, and "extremists" of every description.

  The assault began in Ohio, when the Senator from Boeing (Henry Jackson, D-Wash.) began telling everybody his advance man could round up to listen to him that McGovern was not only a Marijuana Sympathizer, but also a Fellow Traveler. . . Not exactly a dope-sucker and a card-carrying Red, but almost.

/>   In Nebraska it was Humphrey, and although he dropped the Fellow Traveler slur, he added Amnesty and Abortion to the Marijuana charge and caused McGovern considerable grief. By election day the situation was so grim in traditionally conservative, Catholic Omaha that it looked like McGovern might actually lose the Nebraska primary, one of the kingpins in his Coverall strategy. Several hours after the polls closed the mood in the Omaha Hilton Situation Room was extremely glum. The first returns showed Humphrey well ahead, and just before I was thrown out I heard Bill Dougherty -- Lt. Gov. of South Dakota and one of McGovern's close friends and personal advisors -- saying: "We're gonna get zinged tonight, folks."

  It was almost midnight before the out-state returns began offsetting Hubert's big lead in Omaha, and by 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday it was clear that McGovern would win -- although the final 6 percent margin was about half of what had been expected ten days earlier, before Humphrey's local allies had fouled the air with alarums about Amnesty, Abortion, and Marijuana.

  Sometime around 11:30 I was readmitted to the Situation Room -- because they wanted to use my portable radio to get the final results -- and I remember seeing Gene Pokorny slumped in a chair with his shoes off and a look of great relief on his face. Pokorny, the architect of McGovern's breakthrough victory in Wisconsin, was also the campaign manager of Nebraska, his home state, and a loss there would have badly affected his future. Earlier that day in the hotel coffee shop I'd heard him asking Gary Hart which state he would be assigned to after Nebraska.

  "Well, Gene," Hart replied with a thin smile. "That depends on what happens tonight, doesn't it?" Pokorny stared at him, but said nothing. Like almost all the other key people on the staff, he was eager to move on to California.

  "Yeah," Hart continued. "We were planning on sending you out to California from here, but recently I've been thinking more and more about that slot we have open in the Butte, Montana office."

  Again, Pokorny said nothing. . . but two weeks later, with Nebraska safely in the bag, he turned up in Fresno and hammered out another McGovern victory in the critically important Central Valley. And that slot in Butte is still open. . .

  Which is getting a bit off the point here. Indeed. We are drifting badly -- from motorcycles to Mankiewicz to Omaha, Butte, Fresno. . . where will it end?

  The point, I think, was that in both the Ohio and Nebraska primaries, back to back, McGovern was confronted for the first time with the politics of the rabbit-punch and the groin shot, and in both states he found himself dangerously vulnerable to this kind of thing. Dirty politics confused him. He was not ready for it -- and especially not from his fine old friend and neighbor, Hubert Humphrey. Toward the end of the Nebraska campaign he was spending most of his public time explaining that he was Not for abortion on demand. Not for legalized Marijuana, Not for unconditional amnesty. . . and his staff was becoming more and more concerned that their man had been put completely on the defensive.

  This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson's early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent's life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

  "Christ, we can't get away with calling him a pig-fucker," the campaign manager protested. "Nobody's going to believe a thing like that."

  "I know," Johnson replied. "But let's make the sonofabitch deny it."

  McGovern has not learned to cope with this tactic yet. Humphrey used it again in California, with different issues, and once again George found himself working overtime to deny wild, baseless charges that he was: (1) Planning to scuttle both the Navy and the Air Force, along with the whole Aerospace industry, and (2) He was a sworn foe of all Jews, and if he ever got to the White House he would immediately cut off all military aid to Israel and sit on his hands while Russian-equipped Arab legions drove the Jews into the sea.

  McGovern scoffed at these charges, dismissing them as "ridiculous lies," and repeatedly explained his position on both issues -- but when they counted the votes on election night it was obvious that both the Jews and the Aerospace workers in Southern California had taken Humphrey's bait. All that saved McGovern in California was a long-overdue success among black voters, strong support from chicanos, and a massive pro-McGovern Youth Vote.

  This is a very healthy power base, if he can keep it together -- but it is not enough to beat Nixon in November unless McGovern can figure out some way to articulate his tax and welfare positions a hell of a lot more effectively than he did in California. Even Hubert Humphrey managed to get McGovern tangled up in his own economic proposals from time to time during their TV debates in California -- despite the fact that toward the end of that campaign Humphrey's senile condition was so obvious that even I began feeling sorry for him.

  Indeed. Sorry. Senile. Sick. Tangled. . . That's exactly how I'm beginning to feel. All those words and many others, but my brain is too numb to spit them out of the memory bank at this time. No person in my condition has any business talking about Hubert Humphrey's behavior. My brain has slowed down to the point of almost helpless stupor. I no longer even have the energy to grind my own teeth.

  So this article is not going to end the way I thought it would. . . and looking back at the lead I see that it didn't even start that way either. As for the middle, I can barely remember it. There was something about making a deal with Mankiewicz and then Seizing Power in American Samoa, but I don't feel ready right now. Maybe later. . .

  Way out on the far left corner of this desk I see a note that says "Call Mankiewicz -- Miami Hotel rooms."

  That's right. He was holding three rooms for us at the convention. Probably I should call him right away and firm that up. . . or maybe not.

  But what the hell? These things can wait. Before my arms go numb there were one or two points I wanted to make. This is certainly no time for any heavy speculation or long-range analysis -- on any subject at all, but especially not on anything as volatile and complex as the immediate future of George McGovern vis-à-vis the Democratic Party.

  Yet it is hard to avoid the idea that McGovern has put the Party through some very drastic changes in the last few months. The Good Ole Boys are not pleased with him. But they can't get a grip on him either -- and now, less than three weeks before the convention, he is so close to a first-ballot victory that the old hacks and ward-heelers who thought they had total control of the Party less than six months ago find themselves skulking around like old winos in the side alleys of presidential politics -- first stripped of their power to select and control delegations, then rejected as delegates themselves when Big Ed took his overcrowded bandwagon over the high side on the first lap. . . and now, incredible as it still seems to most of them, they will not even be allowed into the Party convention next month.

  One of the first people I plan to speak with when I get to Miami is Larry O'Brien: shake both of his hands and extend powerful congratulations to him for the job he has done on the Party. In January of 1968 the Democratic Party was so fat and confident that it looked like they might keep control of the White House, the Congress, and in fact the whole U.S. Government almost indefinitely. Now, four and a half years later, it is a useless bankrupt hulk. Even if McGovern wins the Democratic nomination, the Party machinery won't be of much use to him, except as a vehicle.

  "Traditional Politics with a Vengeance" is Gary Hart's phrase -- a nutshell concept that pretty well describes the theory behind McGovern's amazingly effective organization.

  "The Politics of Vengeance" is a very different thing -- an essentially psychotic concept that Hart would probably not go out of his way to endorse.

  Vehicle. . . vehicle. . . vehicle -- a very strange looking word, if you stare at it for eight or nine minutes. . . "Skulking" is
another interesting-looking word.

  And so much for that.

  The morning news says Wilbur Mills is running for President again. He has scorned all invitations to accept the Number Two spot with anyone else -- especially George McGovern. A very depressing bulletin. But Mills must know what he's doing. His name is said to be magic in certain areas. If the Party rejects McGovern, I hope they give it to Mills. That would just about make the nut.

  Another depressing news item -- out of Miami Beach this time -- says an unnatural number of ravens have been seen in the city recently. Tourists have complained of being kept awake all night by "horrible croaking sounds" outside their hotel windows. "At first there were only a few," one local businessman explained. "But more and more keep coming. They're building big nests in the trees along Collins Avenue. They're killing the trees and their droppings smell like dead flesh."

  Many residents say they can no longer leave their windows open at night, because of the croaking. "I've always loved birds," said another resident. "But these goddamn ravens are something else!"

  Later in June

  Mass Burial for Political Bosses in New York. . . McGovern over the Hump. . . The Death by Beating of a Six-Foot Blue-Black Serpent. . . What Next for the Good Ole Boys?. . . Anatomy of a Fixer. . . Treachery Looms in Miami. . .

  It is now clear that this once small devoted band has become a great surging multitude all across this country -- and it will not be denied.

  -- George McGovern, on the night of the New York primary

  The day after the New York primary I woke up in a suite on the twenty-fourth floor of Delmonico's Hotel on Park Avenue with a hellish wind tearing both rooms apart and rain coming in through all the open windows. . . and I thought: Yes, wonderful, only a lunatic would get out of bed on a day like this; call room service for grapefruit and coffee, along with a New York Times for brain food, and one of those portable brickdome fireplaces full of oil-soaked sawdust logs that they can roll right into the suite and fire up at the foot of the bed.