This is perhaps de Antonio's hardest to see film. The filmmaker's notes for a 1974 BFI retrospective read: "The 1968 campaign for Democratic presidential nomination seen from the POV of liberals and Eugene McCarthy. Failure of liberal, peace politics and why. Detailed material from New Hampshire and Wisconsin primaries which brought down LBJ. The intellectual in politics, Senator Eugene McCarthy. Chicago 1968 seen from inside Convention Hall rather than the streets." He told Jonas Mekas, who interviewed him during the editing, that the "assumption of the film" was that McCarthy "was the last best hope of working within the system in a national election."