Politics & Power Quote by Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson doesn’t call Nixon corrupt first; he calls him addicted. That’s the poison dart here. By framing the president as a “serious politics junkie,” he drags politics out of the realm of civic duty and into compulsion: a private need dressed up as public service. “Serious” twists the knife. This isn’t the playful operator who games the system and goes home; this is someone whose identity is fused to power, who can’t stop, won’t stop, and doesn’t even pretend to want a normal life. The metaphor does what Thompson’s best work always does: it makes the abstract feel bodily, sweaty, desperate.

The subtext is that Nixon’s danger isn’t just what he believes, but how he moves through the world. A junkie doesn’t weigh consequences; he chases the next hit. Translate that into the Oval Office and you get paranoia, enemies lists, the obsessive management of perception, the relentless hunt for leverage. Thompson is implying a president who treats governing like scoring: you’ll lie, steal, bug, whatever it takes to stay high on control.

Context matters. Thompson is writing in the post-60s hangover, when the “best and brightest” myth has collapsed and Watergate is either looming or detonating, depending on the exact date. Public trust is already brittle. Calling Nixon “a bummer to have around” is gallows comedy with a point: this isn’t just a personal insult, it’s an indictment of what it feels like to live under leadership driven by fixation rather than judgment. Thompson’s genius is making that national mood sound like something you’d say at a party right before you leave.