Thompson covered George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone.

Thompson’s political reporting carried the same volatile energy as his travel writing. He covered George McGovern’s 1972 campaign for Rolling Stone in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, making the reporter’s personality part of the political spectacle. The result was not neutral stenography. It was an intimate, furious account of campaigns as theatre, ambition, exhaustion, and human weakness—seen from inside the travelling machine.