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The Boys on the Bus
Cheap booze. Flying fleshpots. Lack of sleep. Endless spin. Lying pols.
Just a few of the snares lying in wait for the reporters who covered the 1972 presidential election. Traveling with the press pack from the June primaries to the big night in November, Rolling Stone reporter Timothy Crouse hopscotched the country with both the Nixon and McGovern campaigns and witnessed the birth of modern campaign journalism. The Boys on the Bus is the raucous story of how American news got to be what it is today. With its verve, wit, and psychological acumen, it is a classic of American reporting.
Just a few of the snares lying in wait for the reporters who covered the 1972 presidential election. Traveling with the press pack from the June primaries to the big night in November, Rolling Stone reporter Timothy Crouse hopscotched the country with both the Nixon and McGovern campaigns and witnessed the birth of modern campaign journalism. The Boys on the Bus is the raucous story of how American news got to be what it is today. With its verve, wit, and psychological acumen, it is a classic of American reporting.
416 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1973
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July 4, 2024
”Hell, political reporters,” Stout said, disgustedly. “Shit, they’re like sportswriters. The job’s a lot the same. It’s fun to do. And the quality isn’t very high. Anybody can be a political reporter or sportswriter.”
This book is a classic in every positive sense of the word. It is enduring. It defines its genre. After more than half a century its message remains relevant. And it is damn fun to read.
In 1972, Rolling Stone sent two correspondents to cover that year’s presidential campaign. Hunter S. Thompson covered the politicians, and wrote the most provocative and outrageous campaign book ever — Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. Timothy Crouse went meta instead — he covered the journalist who covered the politicians. The candidates, the campaign stories — they’re there, but they are stage props. The focus of The Boys on the Bus is the men reporting the campaign.
Crouse has an incredible ear for capturing not just the facts of his subject, but its feel:
”There was giddy camaraderie mixed with fear and low-grade hysteria. To file a story late, or to make one glaring factual error, was to chance losing everything — one’s job, one’s expense account, one’s drinking buddies, one’s mad-dash existence, and the methedrine buzz that comes from knowing stories that the public would not know for hours and secrets that the public would never know.”
When he describes a particular person or event, his word portraits make them pop from the page:
”He had the pale, hounded look of a small liquor store owner whose shop had just been held up for the seventh time in a year.”
”It looked like New Year’s Eve in Valhalla.”
His assessments of the various reporters he profiles are clear, clever, and occasionally devastating:
”He was an absolutely thorough and ‘objective’ stenographer, reporting every official happening, never tainting his copy with the smallest speck of insight.”
Crouse’s most valuable insight was identifying the fundamental flaws and weaknesses of the way “objective” journalism is done in America. When covering the Nixon non-campaign, he demonstrated how a savvy, media aware politician can use their knowledge of how the press operates to thoroughly neutralize them. (What Crouse wrote about this in 1972 is even more apparent now, over fifty years later.) His most lasting contribution was in identifying and naming the phenomenon of “pack journalism,” a term that has entered journalistic culture because it identifies a basic flaw in the system:
”Campaign journalism is, by definition, pack journalism; to follow a candidate you must join a pack of other reporters; even the most independent journalists cannot completely escape the pressure of the pack.”
Add to this what most editors won’t take a risk on running, and the constant conundrum of not offending any large part of the audience, and the reason most campaign journalism lacks substance and only covers the “horse race” story becomes evident.
”There is an inverse proportion between the number of persons a reporter reaches and the amount he can say. The larger the audience, the more inoffensive and inconclusive the article must be.”
The Boys on the Bus is simply brilliant. It’s insightful. It’s a riot to read. It is a must read for anyone with an interest in politics and how we report it.
This book is a classic in every positive sense of the word. It is enduring. It defines its genre. After more than half a century its message remains relevant. And it is damn fun to read.
In 1972, Rolling Stone sent two correspondents to cover that year’s presidential campaign. Hunter S. Thompson covered the politicians, and wrote the most provocative and outrageous campaign book ever — Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. Timothy Crouse went meta instead — he covered the journalist who covered the politicians. The candidates, the campaign stories — they’re there, but they are stage props. The focus of The Boys on the Bus is the men reporting the campaign.
Crouse has an incredible ear for capturing not just the facts of his subject, but its feel:
”There was giddy camaraderie mixed with fear and low-grade hysteria. To file a story late, or to make one glaring factual error, was to chance losing everything — one’s job, one’s expense account, one’s drinking buddies, one’s mad-dash existence, and the methedrine buzz that comes from knowing stories that the public would not know for hours and secrets that the public would never know.”
When he describes a particular person or event, his word portraits make them pop from the page:
”He had the pale, hounded look of a small liquor store owner whose shop had just been held up for the seventh time in a year.”
”It looked like New Year’s Eve in Valhalla.”
His assessments of the various reporters he profiles are clear, clever, and occasionally devastating:
”He was an absolutely thorough and ‘objective’ stenographer, reporting every official happening, never tainting his copy with the smallest speck of insight.”
Crouse’s most valuable insight was identifying the fundamental flaws and weaknesses of the way “objective” journalism is done in America. When covering the Nixon non-campaign, he demonstrated how a savvy, media aware politician can use their knowledge of how the press operates to thoroughly neutralize them. (What Crouse wrote about this in 1972 is even more apparent now, over fifty years later.) His most lasting contribution was in identifying and naming the phenomenon of “pack journalism,” a term that has entered journalistic culture because it identifies a basic flaw in the system:
”Campaign journalism is, by definition, pack journalism; to follow a candidate you must join a pack of other reporters; even the most independent journalists cannot completely escape the pressure of the pack.”
Add to this what most editors won’t take a risk on running, and the constant conundrum of not offending any large part of the audience, and the reason most campaign journalism lacks substance and only covers the “horse race” story becomes evident.
”There is an inverse proportion between the number of persons a reporter reaches and the amount he can say. The larger the audience, the more inoffensive and inconclusive the article must be.”
The Boys on the Bus is simply brilliant. It’s insightful. It’s a riot to read. It is a must read for anyone with an interest in politics and how we report it.
December 19, 2016
I really fascinating look at the journalists responsible for covering the 1972 campaign which ended with Nixon beating McGovern and then later stepping down from the presidency due to watergate. I don't know if I've mentioned this but I want to be a reporter some day and I also am a bit of a political junkie so being a political reporter would be a dream job. I will admit right now that this book could be boring to people if this is not a topic they are interested in but I love this kind of thing. Political reporting is very interesting and Nixon is a very fascinating character as well. I definitely didn't know as much about McGovern or his campaign so that was definitely interesting to read about. I think reading this book right after the 2016 presidential election made this all the more interesting. In one part of the book it was discussed how many of the reporters longed to be able to put more analysis and opinions in their stories and how reads wanted that as well. Now reporters are accused of being too biased. In another part of the book it was discussed how reporters were breaking with tradition and fact checking their stories more and now in this election we saw the complete disregard of facts so it's interesting to see that in many ways we have come full circle back to pre 1972 election coverage so hopefully journalism will have another renaissance and people will appreciate it again because while I agree that journalism and news today can be better I also agree with Jefferson that if I had to choose a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government I would not hesitate to choose the latter and I think that Nixon is a perfect example as to the damage that can be done when the press and its access is restricted and the determination that it will take to uncover the truth. I think books like this are extremely important right now to reminded us that while we might not always like or agree with the press, the press will always be important.
January 12, 2011
Rolling Stone reporters produced two epochal books documenting the 1972 presidential campaign: Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" and Tim Crouse's "Boys on the Bus." I read this book while I was a totally green reporter -- as Crouse was in 1972 -- covering the 2008 McCain campaign and found myself relating completely. While it was a great read, it was a bit discouraging to find that Crouse already had every insight I was coming up with, precluding the need for me to write about my experience in-depth. A quintessential campaign book focused on the people telling the stories -- the hard-drinking, road warrior reporters -- more than the candidates. Definitely worth a read, if you're into that sort of thing.
October 16, 2022
Reading this book for the first time fifty years after the 1972 U.S. presidential election was an interesting experience. Timothy Crouse covered the press covering the primaries and the presidential election for Rolling Stone (while his more famous - or infamous - counterpart, Hunter S. Thompson, covered the campaigns themselves), which served as the foundation for this book, which in turn serves as a kind of time capsule for an era and an event that happened literally on the eve of the Watergate blowup. Much of what is taken for granted today – wall-to-wall media coverage, journalists as analysts, journalists as influencers, journalists as patsies, journalists being lauded as heroes and detested as parasites – all of that showed its nascent beginnings with the 1972 campaign, which Richard Nixon won in an historic landslide over Democrat George McGovern. The incumbent Nixon’s stage-managed non-campaign (and V.P. Spiro Agnew’s equally vapid charade) was little more than empty-headed invitation-only pep rallies occasionally disrupted by war protesters who would get beat up by rabid Nixon supporters. In the meantime, McGovern flailed through anemic rallies and mercilessly axed his first running mate just weeks ahead of the election, so… whatever. The press, acting as an exhausted, hostage pack, generally wasn’t analyzing or even reporting these things, and though their approach would change in later years, this was arguably the time when the nation needed more in-depth, investigatory reporting. Reporters who did file honest stories about it either had them killed by their editors or had their press privileges revoked.
This book is as much about how the press covered the election as how the press relations teams handled the press, and it offers some intriguing previews of how election journalism would evolve. Watergate was first reported on in August of that year, though it was a slow-building story that had little impact on the election (which is amazing to consider when both Agnew and Nixon would be forced to resign over it over the next two years). Crouse devotes a chapter to the Washington Post team that broke the story – Woodward and Bernstein – but this book was published in mid-1973, when the full details of the scandal, and the subsequent public and political outrage, still hadn’t fully emerged. This is a thorough, insightful, and entertaining look at the campaign press corps, as iconic for its coverage of the 1972 election as Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and it seems remarkable to me today that both of these works originated with Rolling Stone, of all publications.
This book is as much about how the press covered the election as how the press relations teams handled the press, and it offers some intriguing previews of how election journalism would evolve. Watergate was first reported on in August of that year, though it was a slow-building story that had little impact on the election (which is amazing to consider when both Agnew and Nixon would be forced to resign over it over the next two years). Crouse devotes a chapter to the Washington Post team that broke the story – Woodward and Bernstein – but this book was published in mid-1973, when the full details of the scandal, and the subsequent public and political outrage, still hadn’t fully emerged. This is a thorough, insightful, and entertaining look at the campaign press corps, as iconic for its coverage of the 1972 election as Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and it seems remarkable to me today that both of these works originated with Rolling Stone, of all publications.
February 1, 2024
This is a book that is very fun to read but extremely dated 📰
August 11, 2021
Probably an unfair rating. I struggled to get through this book, picking it up and putting it down over the course of a year. The problem was me -- I just wasn't well-versed enough in the people and politics of the early 1970s to stay connected. The second half of the book, narrowed to the two presidential campaigns, flowed easier for me. It is something to read issues in the 1972 campaign coverage -- a quote from Brit Hume stands out -- remain today nearly 50 years later.
On a lighter note, it was fun seeing where a few bits in "The West Wing," my favorite television show, originated. Good writers borrow, etc.
On a lighter note, it was fun seeing where a few bits in "The West Wing," my favorite television show, originated. Good writers borrow, etc.
February 24, 2017
Couldn't help draw some parallels to present day. I like reading about the press.
December 22, 2025
This is a wonderful, penis-heavy record of a time that now seems quaint. My whole life it’s been a truism that journalism as an industry is too old fashioned, too slow to evolve, too milquetoast in the face of calamitous injustice and an almost universally hostile political class. It’s somehow reassuring to read that that was also the case more than half a century ago. I enjoyed the profiles of various long forgotten contenders, both the politicians and those who covered them. There are fascinating segments on the early days of presidential press trains (three dozen men typing out the day’s events in cars furnished with sawdust and picnic tables, windows cracked to ventilate the smell of forty unshowered bodies), Watergate (this book is so old that Crouse refers to them as “Bernstein and Woodward”), Merriman Smith, the Time-Newsweek divide, life on the campaign press bus/plane junket, a young Robert Novak (I remember him decades later on CNN’s CrossFire, the faded right wing eminence defending Bush II even when Tucker Carlson, still thin and bow-tied, wouldn’t) and Edmund Muskie’s wife smooshing a White House shaped birthday cake into an unfriendly writer’s face.
Hunter S. Thompson plays a marginal role in only a few chapters, but he ends up providing one of the most memorable passages, which I’ll quote at length for its prescience and for its doleful resonance more than a year on from the 2024 presidential election…
“This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it— that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to makes us uncomfortable.
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his imprecise talk about ‘new politics’ and ‘honesty in government,’ is really one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it all end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”
In 2025, we may now know.
Hunter S. Thompson plays a marginal role in only a few chapters, but he ends up providing one of the most memorable passages, which I’ll quote at length for its prescience and for its doleful resonance more than a year on from the 2024 presidential election…
“This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it— that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to makes us uncomfortable.
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his imprecise talk about ‘new politics’ and ‘honesty in government,’ is really one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it all end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”
In 2025, we may now know.
April 15, 2018
Interesting to see the parallels between campaigns today and back in the 60s and 70s, even as some things have changed so much. That said, I don't think this book has aged particularly well since it assumes a very high level of knowledge about the people and events of the time and preceding years, much of which isn't common knowledge if you didn't live through those years yourself.
December 12, 2012
My boss at work saw me reading "All the Presidents Men" and "Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein over the summer and thought I would like this book by Timothy Crouse, which details how the media, both print and television, but mostly print, covered the 1972 Presential Election. Gets very detailed, but never that slow except for a few chapters. Obviously the funniest parts seem to be with Hunter Thompson, but it's interesting to read about a younger Dan Rather and Connie Chung to name just a few. A lot of newspaper writers have short profiles in this book before it seems to go into the main story, which I liked. It seems to focus more on McGovern than Nixon and that was interesting to me as well to get the other side of things since Nixon is featured so much in "All the Presidents Men" and even more so in "Final Days". It was also nice to read what another reporter had to say about Woodward and Bernstein's reporting on Watergate. The author, Crouse, basically says that if they weren't nobodies at the time, the story may never have happened. But since they were young and hungry reporters looking for something to prove and eager to find the truth, a great important story was told. I recommend this book to ALL journalists, but probably read "All the Presidents Men" first. In the end, I'm glad my boss let me borrow this one. Should have read it around election time though.
November 15, 2013
An account of the reporters who covered the Presidential Election of 1972. I really enjoyed this book because it gave a honest, mostly unbiased account of the candidates (Nixon and McGovern) and turned the eyes of the press on themselves. I'm sure many of those journalist highlighted - David Broder, "Johnny" Apple, Robert Novak, Haynes Johnson and Hunter Thompson cringe at the honest, albeit gossipy candor in which they were portrayed (well maybe not Hunter S.). Though there are numerous people mentioned in the book, the reader is able to sympathize and feel respect for the majority of them.
While the coverage of the election was fascinating, the coverage of the journalism - which has unfortunately become a dead art - was as electric. In one passage of the book, Crouse talks about recognizing when the candidate's campaign is all but lost. For the journalist, it's a more exciting time because the candidate has less to lose and will say almost anything. At that point, the candidate allows the press to get closer to them.
This is one of the few books I've read twice and I recommend it to anyone having an interest in journalism, politics and the human psyche.
While the coverage of the election was fascinating, the coverage of the journalism - which has unfortunately become a dead art - was as electric. In one passage of the book, Crouse talks about recognizing when the candidate's campaign is all but lost. For the journalist, it's a more exciting time because the candidate has less to lose and will say almost anything. At that point, the candidate allows the press to get closer to them.
This is one of the few books I've read twice and I recommend it to anyone having an interest in journalism, politics and the human psyche.
February 25, 2014
Forget it; after 2 months and not making it more than halfway through this book (and repeatedly turning to lowbrow comic books to avoid reading it), I concede defeat. It's not that this is poorly written, it's just not particularly interesting to me -- and that's coming from a guy who loves the '70s.
I had high hopes for it going in, based largely on Hunter S. Thompson's strong recommendation (I believe he once called it the best book about political journalism he's ever read?). But it's time for me to admit that it's just not my cup of tea and move on to greener pastures. Sorry Mr. Crouse, I'm sure I would've liked it if I'd been old enough to read it when it first came out, but the world has moved on and I'm going with it.
I had high hopes for it going in, based largely on Hunter S. Thompson's strong recommendation (I believe he once called it the best book about political journalism he's ever read?). But it's time for me to admit that it's just not my cup of tea and move on to greener pastures. Sorry Mr. Crouse, I'm sure I would've liked it if I'd been old enough to read it when it first came out, but the world has moved on and I'm going with it.
January 14, 2021
I only had Katy Tur's book on my iPad and so during the 2019 caucuses she was at Drake I asked her to sign "The Boys on the Bus." It was a book that she had mentioned in her "Unbelievable" book. I explained how I couldn't let her sign my iPad, but would be honored if she would sign a copy of a book that she said that she wished she had written. I was giddy. While I am sure she is approached by many fans, I recalled that it seemed that our conversation was more than superficial. Her father was one of the first helicopter pilots who had developed live television from a helicopter and was a pioneer in the new way of news coverage...(The Slow Speed Chase: O.J.)
May 31, 2010
For being written in 1972, The Boys on the Bus did not seem like a dated campaign account at all. That says something since other standard political books of the time -- for instance The Selling of the Presidency, about Nixon's manipulation of television -- do show their age. One thing I kept thinking about...it seems ironic given today's vapid and understaffed media environment that someone would be bemoaning the state of the press as Watergate unfolded.
September 3, 2012
Extremely detailed account of the experience of covering the 1972 presidential election. When it came out, it was probably a revelation. Now, it's more of a period piece that confirms what we already know about the politics and partying that were part of the press culture in the Nixon era. Does contain interesting insight into which reporters commanded the most respect from the corps. Also a good primer as to the ways in which information management was evolving in the period.
October 15, 2018
This book hasn't aged as well as I'd like--you need a lot of background knowledge--but this remains a classic, nonetheless. Crouse has a sharp eye and he can teach us to ask how the structure of political campaign shapes the reporting, how hidden incentives might be at play, and how those, in turn, shape our democracy.
This doesn't have the zing it did in '73, but still well worth reading to better understand how to think about how the media covers politics.
This doesn't have the zing it did in '73, but still well worth reading to better understand how to think about how the media covers politics.
October 29, 2018
A gift from my daughter which hung around a bit before I got to it and I am glad I did. As I was picking through it I saw the foreword by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, read that, and knew I was all in. Author Timothy Crouse covered the media who covered the 1972 presidential race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, highlighting the changing media landscape in 1972, and offering his take on how the media did its job.
Some of the critiques I saw of the book mention that it may not have aged well but I think it is worth a look. It may be less enjoyable for those that do not know or remember some of the very notable media giants that are covered. We have Evans and Novak, Jules Witcover, James Reston, R.W. (Johnny) Apple, Dan Rather, and many others, including the inimitable Dr. Thompson. Despite that the book does offer some amazing insights. This book shows us the start of modern political journalism, critiquing the press honestly, showing us the system that brought us the news as flawed, and subject to manipulation by press savvy media operations like President Nixon’s. Crouse is not a Nixon fan, with Press Secretary Ron Ziegler taking a pretty good beat down in the book. The Ziegler coverage betrays some grudging respect of the ruthless operation of the Nixon re-election effort, with access to the “inside” of the Nixon effort carefully rationed, with “bad” stories bringing punishment to the offending journalists. Crouse gives his take of Nixon, and the hard lessons he learned from his losing campaigns in 1960 and 1962:
“Richard Nixon, however, was different. Nixon felt a deep, abiding, and vindictive hatred for the press that no President, with the possible exception of Lyndon Johnson, had ever shared. Nixon had always taken personally everything that the press wrote about him. The press, he believed, never forgave him for pulling the mask off its darling, Alger Hiss; so the press tortured him, lied about him, hated him. Over the years Nixon conceived and nursed one of the monumental grudges of the century, a loathing so raw, ugly, and obvious that it only served to make him vulnerable. To borrow a phrase from Iago, Nixon wore his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at. The daws had a field day. Painfully, Nixon learned his lesson. He learned to control and disguise his hatred, to use it in subtle ways to defeat his enemies in the press. It was precisely for this reason, because Nixon hated for so long and studied his foes so well, that he had become the nemesis of the press. No other President had ever worked so lovingly or painstakingly to emasculate reporters.”
Crouse, Timothy “The Boys on the Bus” page 180
Crouse is fair about looking at how the press did its job, hitting critical points but taking into account the difficult environment that they were operating in. The issue of “pack” writing is frankly looked at, as well as some of his criticism of the “objective” style of covering Nixon and McGovern, where both sides of a controversy are covered, with the reporter making no judgement in the story as to which side of the controversy may be more credible. It is a major criticism issued these days by Paul Krugman over at the New York Times. These challenges in journalism are covered pretty well in the book. We see the rivalry between print and TV, the differences in print between daily newspapers and news magazines, when news magazines had pretty big circulation numbers. Things have obviously changed considerably, but some things look the same (on steroids.)
Crouse was working for Rolling Stone when he wrote this book, connecting him to Hunter Thompson, and bringing to mind the Thompson book on the 1972 campaign, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72.” I read that book many years ago but may need to take another look. Crouse includes some of the good Doctor’s more outrageous antics.
“The first sign that Hunter had caught on with the straight press was when they began searching newsstands all over the country or phoning their home offices to get them a copy of his lengthy chronicle of the Florida primary. Thompson had loaned his press card to a freak, who had run amuck aboard Muskie’s whistle-stop train, insulting reporters and heckling the candidate when he tried to speak at the final stop in Miami. Many of the reporters, seeing only the badge on the freak’s lapel, had taken him for Hunter S. Thompson of Rolling Stone. In the article, Thompson explained the mistake but revelled in its consequences. The piece was a big hit with the press corps, and they soon began to read him regularly. Thompson’s best lines were quoted in Newsweek. ‘Ed Muskie talked like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow on next year’s crop.’Hubert Humphrey was a ‘treacherous, gutless old ward-healer who who should be put in a bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.’”
Crouse, Timothy “The Boys on the Bus” page 313
I always felt that Hunter Thompson was a bit hard on Humphrey, but I digress. The lifelong war with the press that Richard Nixon engaged in has been ramped up by the current occupant of the Oval Office, making Nixon, in my view, a piker by comparison. But the seeds of the coming war with the press were planted in the campaign of 1972, and Crouse covers it admirably. A good historical book, and a great media book. After all these years it still has relevance.
Some of the critiques I saw of the book mention that it may not have aged well but I think it is worth a look. It may be less enjoyable for those that do not know or remember some of the very notable media giants that are covered. We have Evans and Novak, Jules Witcover, James Reston, R.W. (Johnny) Apple, Dan Rather, and many others, including the inimitable Dr. Thompson. Despite that the book does offer some amazing insights. This book shows us the start of modern political journalism, critiquing the press honestly, showing us the system that brought us the news as flawed, and subject to manipulation by press savvy media operations like President Nixon’s. Crouse is not a Nixon fan, with Press Secretary Ron Ziegler taking a pretty good beat down in the book. The Ziegler coverage betrays some grudging respect of the ruthless operation of the Nixon re-election effort, with access to the “inside” of the Nixon effort carefully rationed, with “bad” stories bringing punishment to the offending journalists. Crouse gives his take of Nixon, and the hard lessons he learned from his losing campaigns in 1960 and 1962:
“Richard Nixon, however, was different. Nixon felt a deep, abiding, and vindictive hatred for the press that no President, with the possible exception of Lyndon Johnson, had ever shared. Nixon had always taken personally everything that the press wrote about him. The press, he believed, never forgave him for pulling the mask off its darling, Alger Hiss; so the press tortured him, lied about him, hated him. Over the years Nixon conceived and nursed one of the monumental grudges of the century, a loathing so raw, ugly, and obvious that it only served to make him vulnerable. To borrow a phrase from Iago, Nixon wore his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at. The daws had a field day. Painfully, Nixon learned his lesson. He learned to control and disguise his hatred, to use it in subtle ways to defeat his enemies in the press. It was precisely for this reason, because Nixon hated for so long and studied his foes so well, that he had become the nemesis of the press. No other President had ever worked so lovingly or painstakingly to emasculate reporters.”
Crouse, Timothy “The Boys on the Bus” page 180
Crouse is fair about looking at how the press did its job, hitting critical points but taking into account the difficult environment that they were operating in. The issue of “pack” writing is frankly looked at, as well as some of his criticism of the “objective” style of covering Nixon and McGovern, where both sides of a controversy are covered, with the reporter making no judgement in the story as to which side of the controversy may be more credible. It is a major criticism issued these days by Paul Krugman over at the New York Times. These challenges in journalism are covered pretty well in the book. We see the rivalry between print and TV, the differences in print between daily newspapers and news magazines, when news magazines had pretty big circulation numbers. Things have obviously changed considerably, but some things look the same (on steroids.)
Crouse was working for Rolling Stone when he wrote this book, connecting him to Hunter Thompson, and bringing to mind the Thompson book on the 1972 campaign, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72.” I read that book many years ago but may need to take another look. Crouse includes some of the good Doctor’s more outrageous antics.
“The first sign that Hunter had caught on with the straight press was when they began searching newsstands all over the country or phoning their home offices to get them a copy of his lengthy chronicle of the Florida primary. Thompson had loaned his press card to a freak, who had run amuck aboard Muskie’s whistle-stop train, insulting reporters and heckling the candidate when he tried to speak at the final stop in Miami. Many of the reporters, seeing only the badge on the freak’s lapel, had taken him for Hunter S. Thompson of Rolling Stone. In the article, Thompson explained the mistake but revelled in its consequences. The piece was a big hit with the press corps, and they soon began to read him regularly. Thompson’s best lines were quoted in Newsweek. ‘Ed Muskie talked like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow on next year’s crop.’Hubert Humphrey was a ‘treacherous, gutless old ward-healer who who should be put in a bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.’”
Crouse, Timothy “The Boys on the Bus” page 313
I always felt that Hunter Thompson was a bit hard on Humphrey, but I digress. The lifelong war with the press that Richard Nixon engaged in has been ramped up by the current occupant of the Oval Office, making Nixon, in my view, a piker by comparison. But the seeds of the coming war with the press were planted in the campaign of 1972, and Crouse covers it admirably. A good historical book, and a great media book. After all these years it still has relevance.
November 27, 2019
Read Boys on the Bus as a student in the University of Maryland school of Journalism.
Boys on the Bus is a timeless introduction to the physical, emotional, financial and ethical demands of reporters literally following presidential candidates, from one campaign stop to another.
If Boys on the Bus were to be rewritten today, the title should be updated to GIRLS and Boys on the Bus.
Boys on the Bus is a timeless introduction to the physical, emotional, financial and ethical demands of reporters literally following presidential candidates, from one campaign stop to another.
If Boys on the Bus were to be rewritten today, the title should be updated to GIRLS and Boys on the Bus.
March 7, 2020
Fly on the wall reporting on reporters. Dated in the way that all the reporters are men, heavy liquor and cigarette consumption, and the painful lack of technology that we take for granted. Otherwise pretty cool parallels between the sitting Goofball and Nixon, and the Dems who need to depose the Toxic One.
June 30, 2020
My all-time favorite non-fiction. You'll get as much out of this book than you would in any four years of journalism ethics courses. It's a warm, cozy, thoughtprovoking blanket. Equal parts hilarious as it is sad. A love letter-- and a window into the soul of-- a profession full of idealists beaten into cynicism.
November 26, 2017
More lucid take on the same presidential campaign covered in Hunter S. Thompson's justly admired (but unjustly more admired) Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. You tend to learn more about the 'drink palsied' journalists than about the campaign they were sent to cover however.
February 24, 2019
A journalist's account of the general chaos surrounding political campaigns. Gives the reader an appreciation for the hard lives of the reporters, who cover the campaigns and how news/scandals broke in the pre-internet era of public phone booths.
Hilarious and sobering at the same time.
Hilarious and sobering at the same time.
October 8, 2019
Though dated (Nixon vs. McGovern campaigns), it was interesting to see how the reporting was done, what happens behind the scenes and to find out that Presidents have never thought much of journalists
November 21, 2021
Great stuff, plain and simple. Compelling reading. Remember talking about this sort of writing at a high school journalism camp at UC Santa Barbara summer of ‘81. This writing and those memories all add up to the good ol’ days for sure.
January 13, 2009
Excellent piece of reporting on an era when the print media actually meant something
September 5, 2012
Amazing, and a somewhat frightening, how little has changed in journalism, and politics, in the 40 years since this book was published. Entertaining and insightful.
July 14, 2013
Interesting account of the '72 campaign but sad to see how little political journalism has progressed in the intervening 4 decades since this book was published.
July 14, 2013
Another journalism classic, also assigned reading in Father Schroth's Intro to Mass Comm course.
December 7, 2023
A milestone of journalism, Timothy Crouse gives a full account of the 1972 United States presidential campaign trail. This book relays daily life for correspondents through the miserable frenzy of politics.
For most of the public who didn't live through the time, we know only of the Watergate scandal and that it eventually led to Nixon's impeachment. The Boys on the Bus includes the investigation in later chapters, but more importantly, sets the context to explain why the scandal didn't result in Nixon losing the reelection.
Crouse was on the press bus for George McGovern's campaign. He describes in great detail the atmosphere of cheap hotels, cigarettes, and alcohol that filled the long hours of journalism. The tools of the trade were notepads, tape recorders, typewriters, and pay phones. The newsmen were hard pressed to find new ways of telling the same story daily for the daily papers. Mostly, they were dragged through airports to sit in the press room and hammer out copy at the next event. The reader will find more color behind the scenes than the black and white in print. Hunter Thompson appears writing for Rolling Stone, and Crouse tells us about Thompson's point-blank writing style when he portrays a candidate grappling for votes like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow on next year's crop.
White House correspondents during the Nixon era before Watergate were merely the complacent squares who would file the handout provided. Ron Ziegler, press secretary, could answer questions without answering them. It was impossible to nail down Nixon on anything to do with Vietnam, or even to admit that the campaign was a campaign. His organization was like a well-oiled machine when it came to feeding the story to the press. This was, Crouse understood, to keep reporters from asking too many questions.
This was a time of upheaval; civil rights and Vietnam. Television was a developing medium, upstarts with big cameras boxing out the paper journalists, but Crouse describes the most groundbreaking piece about Nixon's campaign as a short overview given by a young TV journalist named Cassie Mackin who simply said what she observed, that the President was in control of what people thought about him, so he didn't need to give press conferences or speak directly about an issue.
We hardly ever remember the losing candidate. McGovern was the frontrunner of the opposition, a former WWII bomber pilot and senator from South Dakota. Supporters rallied around the illusion that McGovern's sincerity meant he would make a good president. Journalists who were also supporters glared with hard questions through rose-colored glasses to show they could be unbiased.
What is interesting to consider from a historical perspective is how much things have stayed the same. Candidates who hate the press, like Nixon did, have hard fought methods to use them as a mouthpiece. Politicians who appear to keep their integrity, like McGovern, don't grasp how to control the story and decay into a lost cause. American voters watch the next election with the hope that it will be different from the last.
For most of the public who didn't live through the time, we know only of the Watergate scandal and that it eventually led to Nixon's impeachment. The Boys on the Bus includes the investigation in later chapters, but more importantly, sets the context to explain why the scandal didn't result in Nixon losing the reelection.
Crouse was on the press bus for George McGovern's campaign. He describes in great detail the atmosphere of cheap hotels, cigarettes, and alcohol that filled the long hours of journalism. The tools of the trade were notepads, tape recorders, typewriters, and pay phones. The newsmen were hard pressed to find new ways of telling the same story daily for the daily papers. Mostly, they were dragged through airports to sit in the press room and hammer out copy at the next event. The reader will find more color behind the scenes than the black and white in print. Hunter Thompson appears writing for Rolling Stone, and Crouse tells us about Thompson's point-blank writing style when he portrays a candidate grappling for votes like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow on next year's crop.
White House correspondents during the Nixon era before Watergate were merely the complacent squares who would file the handout provided. Ron Ziegler, press secretary, could answer questions without answering them. It was impossible to nail down Nixon on anything to do with Vietnam, or even to admit that the campaign was a campaign. His organization was like a well-oiled machine when it came to feeding the story to the press. This was, Crouse understood, to keep reporters from asking too many questions.
This was a time of upheaval; civil rights and Vietnam. Television was a developing medium, upstarts with big cameras boxing out the paper journalists, but Crouse describes the most groundbreaking piece about Nixon's campaign as a short overview given by a young TV journalist named Cassie Mackin who simply said what she observed, that the President was in control of what people thought about him, so he didn't need to give press conferences or speak directly about an issue.
We hardly ever remember the losing candidate. McGovern was the frontrunner of the opposition, a former WWII bomber pilot and senator from South Dakota. Supporters rallied around the illusion that McGovern's sincerity meant he would make a good president. Journalists who were also supporters glared with hard questions through rose-colored glasses to show they could be unbiased.
What is interesting to consider from a historical perspective is how much things have stayed the same. Candidates who hate the press, like Nixon did, have hard fought methods to use them as a mouthpiece. Politicians who appear to keep their integrity, like McGovern, don't grasp how to control the story and decay into a lost cause. American voters watch the next election with the hope that it will be different from the last.
May 10, 2022
In 1972, we had a presidential election that would ultimately impact the course of American history and democracy in ways unimaginable to the men and women who followed the two candidates on the campaign trail during that long, divisive year. In due time, the winner, Richard Nixon, would be brought down to earth by his own scheming and "dirty tricks" to win re-election. The loser, George McGovern, would be vindicated in his notion that Nixon didn't deserve the high office of the presidency. And journalists like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would become heroes for helping to uncover the rot at the core of the Nixon Administration, all on account of a "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate Hotel.
But in the nitty-gritty world of the 1972 campaign, Timothy Crouse found another story. "The Boys On the Bus" is his in-depth look at the media who followed the campaigns (mostly McGovern, because of Nixon's attempts to stonewall the press during his re-election campaign) and how they covered the race and its many issues. The verdict is pretty damning: Crouse paints a picture of reporters with egos the size of jumbo jets or partisan leanings just a little to the left of Attila the Hun, striving to make something out of the inevitable defeat that all could sense lay in wait for any Democratic challenger to "Tricky Dick." Hard-drinking, bound by notions of objectivity that precluded any effort to help save the nation from Nixon's machinery, and burnt-out after months on the road, most of the journalists profiled here don't come off so noble.
Crouse, sent to cover the race for "Rolling Stone" should the erstwhile national correspondent (a legendary writer named Hunter S. Thompson) prove unable to meet a deadline, found that the real story was in the journalists who covered the race and the changing ways in which television was beginning to dominate the news cycle. Newspapers still held a lot of sway in 1972, as did magazines, but television was slowly encroaching on the territory, and it wouldn't be long before cable news became a thing. Oddly enough, the unlikely voice of reason calling for more substantial reporting in 1972 was Brit Hume, now a Fox News stalwart and apologist for all things Trump. Fifty years is a long time, of course, but still, I was shocked to see him quoted at length about "following the money" in political campaigns.
This is a fantastic book, and a great look into the way in which news is made (and manipulated) in our country, then and now. Once I got good and into it, I couldn't stop reading. "The Boys On the Bus" helps to put the pack journalism of most political campaigns into focus, both why it's used and why it's often unable to make sense of the national political landscape. Bitterly funny at times, sober and mournful at others, "The Boys On the Bus" deserves a place on every political or news junkie's book shelf.
But in the nitty-gritty world of the 1972 campaign, Timothy Crouse found another story. "The Boys On the Bus" is his in-depth look at the media who followed the campaigns (mostly McGovern, because of Nixon's attempts to stonewall the press during his re-election campaign) and how they covered the race and its many issues. The verdict is pretty damning: Crouse paints a picture of reporters with egos the size of jumbo jets or partisan leanings just a little to the left of Attila the Hun, striving to make something out of the inevitable defeat that all could sense lay in wait for any Democratic challenger to "Tricky Dick." Hard-drinking, bound by notions of objectivity that precluded any effort to help save the nation from Nixon's machinery, and burnt-out after months on the road, most of the journalists profiled here don't come off so noble.
Crouse, sent to cover the race for "Rolling Stone" should the erstwhile national correspondent (a legendary writer named Hunter S. Thompson) prove unable to meet a deadline, found that the real story was in the journalists who covered the race and the changing ways in which television was beginning to dominate the news cycle. Newspapers still held a lot of sway in 1972, as did magazines, but television was slowly encroaching on the territory, and it wouldn't be long before cable news became a thing. Oddly enough, the unlikely voice of reason calling for more substantial reporting in 1972 was Brit Hume, now a Fox News stalwart and apologist for all things Trump. Fifty years is a long time, of course, but still, I was shocked to see him quoted at length about "following the money" in political campaigns.
This is a fantastic book, and a great look into the way in which news is made (and manipulated) in our country, then and now. Once I got good and into it, I couldn't stop reading. "The Boys On the Bus" helps to put the pack journalism of most political campaigns into focus, both why it's used and why it's often unable to make sense of the national political landscape. Bitterly funny at times, sober and mournful at others, "The Boys On the Bus" deserves a place on every political or news junkie's book shelf.
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