Well … shit, what can I say? Objective Journalism is a hard thing to come by these days. We all yearn for it, but who can point the way? The only man who comes to mind, right offhand, is my good friend and colleague on the Sports Desk, Raoul Duke. Most journalists only talk about objectivity, but Dr. Duke grabs it straight by the fucking throat. You will be hard pressed to find any argument, among professionals, on the question of Dr. Duke’s Objectivity.
As for mine … well, my doctor says it swole up and busted about ten years ago. The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid much attention to it until one of those known, heavy, out-front shoplifters came into the place … but when that happened, everybody got so excited that the thief had to do something quick, like buy a green popsicle or a can of Coors and get out of the place immediately.
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.
And so much for all that, too. There was at least one more thing I wanted to get into here, before trying to wind this down and get into something human. Like sleep, or that 550 watt Humm Box they have up there in the Ree-Lax Parlor at Silver Spring. Some people say they should outlaw the Humm Box, but I disagree.
Meanwhile, all that venomous speculation about what McCarthy is up to these days leaves a crucial question hanging: The odd truth that almost everybody in Washington who is paid to analyze & predict the behavior of Vote Blocs seems to feel that the much-publicized ‘youth vote’ will not be a Major Factor in the ’72 presidential campaign would be a hell of a lot easier to accept if it weren’t for the actual figures …
What the experts appear to be saying is that the sudden addition of 25 million new voters between the ages of 18 and 25 will not make much difference in the power-structure of American politics. No candidate will say this, of course. For the record, they are all very solicitous of the ‘youth vote.’ In a close election even ten percent of that bloc would mean 2.5 million votes – a very serious figure when you stack it up against Nixon’s thin margin over Humphrey in 1968.
Think of it: Only ten percent! Two and a half million. Enough -even according to Nixon’s own wizards – to swing almost any election. There is a general assumption, based on the outcome of recent presidential elections, that it takes something genuinely vile and terrifying to cause either one of the major party candidates to come away with less than 40 percent of the vote. Goldwater managed to do this in ’64, but not by much. Even after allowing Johnson’s TV sappers to cast him as a stupid, bloodthirsty ghoul who had every intention of blowing the whole world off its axis the moment he got his hands on ‘the button,’ Goldwater still got 27,176,799 votes, or 38 percent.
The prevailing wisdom today is that any candidate in a standard-brand, two-party election will get about 40 percent of the vote. The root assumption here is that neither party would nominate a man more than 20 percent different from the type of person most Americans consider basically right and acceptable. Which almost always happens. There is no potentially serious candidate in either major party this year who couldn’t pass for the executive vice-president for mortgage loans in any hometown bank from Bangor to San Diego.
We are talking about a purely physical-image gig here, but even if you let the candidates jabber like magpies about anything that comes to their minds, not even a dangerous dingbat like Sam Yorty would be likely to alienate more than 45 percent or 50 percent of the electorate.
And even that far-left radical bastard, George McGovern – babbling a maddening litany of his most Far Out ideas – would be hard pressed to crank up any more than a 30 percent animosity quotient.
On balance, they are a pretty bland lot. Even Spiro Agnew – if you catch him between screeds – is not more than 20 percent different from Humphrey or Lindsay or Scoop Jackson. Four years ago, in fact, John Lindsay dug Agnew so much that he seconded his nomination for the vice-presidency. There are a lot of people who say we should forget about that this year ‘because John has already said he made a mistake about Agnew,’ but there are a lot of others who take Lindsay’s ‘Agnew Mistake’ seriously – because they assume he would do the same thing again next week or next month, if he thought it would do him any good.
Nobody seems very worried about Lindsay right now; they are waiting to see what kind of action he can generate in Florida, a state full of transient and old transplanted New Yorkers. If he can’t make it there, he’s done for. Which is just as well. But if he scores big in Florida, we will probably have to start taking him seriously -particularly if Muskie looks convincing in New Hampshire.
A Muskie-Lindsay ticket could be one of those ‘naturals,’ a marriage made in heaven and consummated by Larry o’Brien … Which gets us back to one of the main reasons why the political wizards aren’t counting on much of a ‘youth vote’ this year. It is hard to imagine even a zealot like Allard Lowenstein going out on the trail, once again, to whip up a campus-based firestorm for Muskie and Lindsay … particularly with Gene McCarthy lurking around, with that ugly mouth of his, and all those deep-bleeding grudges.
Another nightmare we might as well start coming to grips with is the probability that Hubert Humphrey will be a candidate for the Democratic nomination this year … And … there is probably some interesting talk going down around Humphrey headquarters these days:
‘Say … ah, Hube, baby. I guess you heard what your old buddy Gene did to Muskie the other day, right? Yeah, and we always thought they were friends, didn’t we? (Long pause, no reply from the candidate …)
‘So … ah … Hube? You still with me? Jesus Christ! Where’s that sunlamp? We gotta get more of a tan on you, baby. You look grey. (Long pause, no reply from the candidate …) Well, Hube, we might just as well face this thing. We’re comin’ up fast on what just might be a real nasty little problem for you … let’s not try to kid ourselves, Hube, he’s a really mean sonofabitch. (Long pause, etc …) You’re gonna have to be ready, Hube. You announce next Thursday at noon, right? So we might as well figure that crazy fucker is gonna come down on you like a million pound shithammer that same afternoon. He’ll probably stage a big scene at the Press Club – and we know who’s gonna be there, don’t we Hube? Yeah, every bastard in the business. Are you ready for that, Hube Baby? Can you handle it? (Long pause, no reply, etc. – heavy breathing.) OK, Hube, tell me this: What does the bastard know? What’s the worst he can spring on you?’
What indeed? Was McCarthy just honing up his act on Ed Muskie? Or does he really believe that Muskie – rather than Humphrey -was the main agent of Johnsonian policy at the ’68 Convention?
Is that possible? Was Muskie the man behind all that treachery and bloodletting? Is McCarthy prepared to blow the whole lid off? Whose head does he really want? And how far will he go to get it? Does the man have a price?
This may be the only interesting question of the campaign until the big whistle blows in New Hampshire on March 7th. With McCarthy skulking around, Muskie can’t afford anything but a thumping win over McGovern in that primary. But Mad Sam is up there too, and even Muskie’s local handlers concede Yorty at least 15 percent of the Democratic vote, due to his freakish alliance with the neo-Nazi publisher of New Hampshire’s only big newspaper, the Manchester Union-Leader.
The Mayor of Los Angeles has never bothered to explain the twisted reasoning behind his candidacy in New Hampshire, but every vote he gets there will come off Muskie’s pile, not McGovern’s. Which means that McGovern, already sitting on 20 to 25 percent of the vote, could zap Muskie’s whole trip by picking up another 10