Monday, May 30, 2011

Hunter S. Thompson On Mitch Daniels

A few months back there was numerous postings on Twitter about the late Hunter S. Thompson, his ESPN.com column that followed the attacks on September 11, 2001, and his predictions on the post-9/11 Bush administration reaction. Some say Thompson nailed it correctly, all I know is that he was dead-on with: This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush.

Imagine then my surprise this past weekend when I was reading Generation of Swine: Gonzo Papers, Volume 2, a collection of Thompson's columns for the San Francisco Examiner in the eighties in which I find him writing about Mitch Daniels.

Ah yes, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana who top-notch Republicans were begging to get into the race because ... he wasn't Mitt Romney. Daniels recently decided not to run, so the GOP elite is now trying to recruit Texas governor Rick Perry ("Governor Perry ... have you met General Sherman?"), former Florida governor Jeb Bush (we are assured that Jeb is "the smart one", though there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the unnnamed individual who Jeb is supposedly smarter than) (and let's elect another Bush ... because after President Obama brings the troops home it's time for another Iraq invasion, right?), and New Jersey governor Chris Christie (insert fatboy joke already used on Minnesota GOP chair Tony Sutton here.)

Back in 1987 when Thompson was penning his column that mentioned Daniels, he was then a chief political adviser to President Reagan. And what was Thompsons' take on Daniels?

He is a flimsy little yuppie who looks like something that got rejected at birth, in the throes of some mixup at the hospital, when the mother had to choose between it and some healthy-looking fetus that turned out to be Patrick Buchanan.
   "Take the strong one," she said. "He will have a long life and be a comfort to me in my later years."