GEORGE WALLACE'S POTENTIAL FOR MISCHIEF

...He could pick one of eleven other examples, but his heavy-handed irony leads him to compare himself with The Great Emancipator...

...He focuses it not Openly against Negroes, but against the Federal Government, and the bureaucrats, and "the pseudo-intellectuals," and the press, and the Communists...

...Jones acknowledged that fund-raising has been harder without an active, visible candi-datei "The money is still coming in," he said, "but it comes in in almost direct proportion to the exposure of your candidate...

...Before that happens, he says, "one of the other candidates may be persuaded to make a solemn covenant with the American people" to adopt some of the Wallace philosophy of states' rights—and all the social retrogression that term now implies...

...He called it a "senseless, regrettable, tragic act...

...Wallace's health...

...King's slaying helped him...

...They pulled away only after another half an hour of George milling around outside the car, with Mrs...

...But if he could reach "a covenant" with neither Republican nor Democratic contender and the election did go to the House, Wallace presumably would control one vote for each state he carried...

...Rumors were circulating in the state that the combination of political turnabouts, her illness, and a shortage of campaign money was causing Wallace to consider withdrawing from the Presidential race...

...Oh sure, your daddy's got the gas station up there...

...Even now, after Mrs...

...The Wallace foreign policy, on the basis of all he says publicly and privately, would be to escalate the bombing of North Vietnam, give the Joint Chiefs of Staff a free hand on military strategy, pressure those countries that "stand behind our nuclear shield to share the burden of defending against the Communist threat," cut off foreign aid to those countries that do not help arid that criticize the United States, and "collect what they owe us, from World War I right on down...

...Well, that's a funny thing...

...Until February 8, when he formally announced his candidacy, Wallace's aides continued to collect their state salaries, but now he says they are paid from the campaign fund...

...His whole demeanor when I called on him in late April was less confident, less flamboyant than I had found on all previous occasions...

...There are general references to the achievements of his own administration in Alabama, which include: A much-broadened education system, with the number of junior colleges increased from three to seventeen and the number of trade schools from seven to twenty-eight...

...Transferring this folksy campaign style to the North, where Wallace has no kin and where the tie is not somebody's daddy but only the mutual fear of social change, has created some definite problems for him...

...Only circumstances and the state of the nation this summer and fall are likely to provide a reliable indicator...

...The Gallup Poll of May 12 gave Wallace twelve to eighteen per cent of the total vote, and the Harris Survey of mid-May gave him thirteen to nineteen per cent, depending on the identity of the major-party candidates...

...That is not precisely the way George Wallace expects it to happen...

...increases in taxes on beer, cigarettes, automobiles, all of which are borne heavily by the "little people" he champions...

...If the hopelessness of ghetto life is undiminished and another summer of riots and retribution lies ahead, Wallace's coded but transparent pitch to the white backlash—"law and order, support the police, states' rights, property rights"—can be the rallying cry for a considerable vote of bigotry, fear, and protest...

...There is hate in large doses among Wallace's followers, to be sure...

...Of withdrawal speculation, Bill Jones, Wallace's chief troubleshooter, told me flatly: "There never has been any thought given to it...

...It was no strain for George, though, no strain at all...

...What can we do for y'all...

...The visitor is quickly ushered into the office of the man who possesses the forty-seven Electoral College votes, Nixon needs to become President...

...Wallace nearly had a car turned over on him at Dartmouth last spring, he had to be rushed in and out of the Syracuse fieldhouse by a cordon of police, and he is said to have used a special portable bulletproof podium for his speeches in California, where he enlisted 107,000 registrants to put his third party on the state ballot...

...I smiled back and told him I would try not to disappoint him...

...Witcover's articles have appeared in The New Republic, the Saturday Evening Post, and Columbia Journalism Review...

...Wallace, exhorting her to join him in the old-time politicking...

...His state police bodyguards remained on the public payroll, because Alabama law assigns them to guard both governor and spouse...

...Not "Wallace-for-President" or anything so specific and transitory...

...We got some mighty fine folks down here, every bit as good as any folks anywhere...

...abolition of an old racket of "liquor agents" who acted as unofficial middlemen in the state-controlled liquor retail trade...

...All I say is they seem to be getting worse, and nobody wants to try to stop it —and that's all I want to say about that particular subject...

...We feel once he begins moving again, the money will increase accordingly...

...Wallace all the while sitting quietly in the back seat, waiting...

...It's not gonna happen that way...

...Wallace's endurance —ran out, and they got into a car to leave the grounds...

...Wallace acknowledged that "any breakdown of law and order is going to support the position of anybody like me who is against a breakdown of law and order...

...What's on your mind...

...A few days later, however, he was back on the old track...

...Lurleen, come over and meet some kinfolk...

...Without fail, the revelation would bring catcalls and menacing looks— until Wallace would get off a good crack about the bumbling press, and the hostility would turn to laughter and ridicule...

...Wallace dismisses the increasingly prevalent idea that his showing in November will throw the election into the House of Representatives, as is required by the Constitution when no candidate has a majority in the Electoral College...

...the most notable suspect is H. L. Hunt, the Texas multi-millionaire and sponsor of ultra-right radio shows and sundry extremist tracts...

...but he keeps it impersonal, and hence more comfortable...

...The Stars and Stripes are out of sight, still relegated to a pole on the back lawn...

...And then you take that Richard Milhous Nixon, and that Earl Warren, who doesn't have enough legal brains to try a chicken thief in my home county, and you shake 'em up...

...His potential for creating mischief,1 and for fanning passions in both North and South, rests not only on the state of racial unrest in the big Northern cities and the country at large...

...It was a spiel that paid off for Mrs...

...He has said repeatedly that regardless of what happened, he had an obligation to the people of Alabama and to the American people [to run...

...A George Wallace who did not want to talk more about the breakdown of law and order was indeed a change for me from the Wallace who had trumpeted the theme in his earlier campaigning in Northern trouble spots...

...Brewer's press secretary, Bob Inman, told me that protection by the state police for anyone "is extended at the pleasure of the governor...

...I don't want to be helped that way...

...a per capita expenditure for elementary and high school students of $282.26 based on average daily attendance, compared to $192.96 in Patterson's last year...

...With Johnson having withdrawn, Wallace's attack on centralized government in Washington loses its favorite ogre...

...would have ample time to confer and bargain with the Democratic and Republican candidates and throw his Electoral College votes to the highest bidder...

...As for what Wallace would do nationally if he were President, his har-rangues on the stump provide only a few clues...

...Only under such an antiquated elective system could such an obviously unqualified man emerge as a king-maker...

...When I asked Wallace whether he had read the book, he said with a trace of impatience: "Well, I read some of it...

...The pitch goes something like this: "You take that Lyndon Baines Johnson, and that Hubert Horatio Alger Humphrey, and that Gene McCarthy, and you put them in a sack...

...McCarthy...

...Discussing the recent "shindigs" [riots], he told Norman C. Miller of The Wall Street Journal that "the people are tired of the pseudo-intellectuals talking about the reason and cause of riots...

...Or it may have been concern over Mrs...

...Yes, I remember...

...How it is going to happen as far as Wallace is concerned will depend a good deal on the identity of the Republican nominee, on the degree of racial unrest in the Northern cities this summer, and on Wallace's ability to capitalize on the prevailing political climate...

...A covenant," he emphasizes...

...But Wallace denied there are any such angels, and said specifically that Hunt is not backing him...

...He was proudly touring Jacksonville State College, established under his administration, and when I introduced myself, Wallace cordially welcomed me aboard the campus bus and asked me how I liked Alabama...

...But the system, and the man, have come together at a critical time...

...Before Nixon can respond, the telephone on Wallace's desk rings...

...Humphrey (or Mr...

...And for all of Wallace's flailing at the evils of centralized government, he has eagerly reached for Federal funds for a variety of programs, and as a central administrator he has tried to impose his racist views from Montgomery on local school districts which were ready and willing to abide by Federal aid-to-education guidelines he so bitterly opposes...

...He claims, rather, that he will receive a plurality of the popular vote in the three-man race in November in enough states to win a majority in the Electoral College and take the Presidency outright—as Lincoln did in 1861...

...Lurleen...

...He seemed really disappointed when hands to shake—and Mrs...

...The people know the way to stop a riot is to hit someone on the head...

...It may have been the temporary shock of the month of frenzied political drop-outs and drop-ins that had so radically changed the 1968 political picture...

...George Corley Wallace, former governor of Alabama, candidate of the American Independent Party, and winner of the popular vote for President in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina, twists a cheap cigar around in his pursed lips, gets up, and extends his stubby little boxer's hand: "Well, hello there, Mr...

...extension of the state's free textbook program to all students in grades one through twelve (it had applied only through the fifth grade...

...One thing is disturbingly clear: If there is any politician who can make hay while the cities burn, that politician is George Wallace, self-styled champion of the "little people"—and articulator of their deepest fears, frustrations, and prejudices...

...All this might stamp Wallace as a moderately progressive Dixie populist if it were not for the source of revenues for many of these expensive programs: an increase in the state's bonded indebtedness of $188.5 million (virtually all of which was incurred without popular referenda...

...But to me he insisted the dollars were pouring in, and he outlined plans to have his name on every state ballot in the nation before November...

...Where y'all from...

...extensive dock expansion at Mobile and the inland waterways...

...I don't want to see any headlines that say Wallace is helped by the riots...

...Well, hello there, Mr...

...modernization of the state prison system...

...It always does...

...Hi, sure is good to see you folks...

...For more than three hours, Wallace picked his way through the crowd in that unmistakably compulsive way of his: grabbing every extended hand, chattering in the excessively cordial way of the Deep South, looking back occasionally for a lagging, wanly smiling Mrs...

...Yet if recent national polls are to be believed, it is conceivable that neither the Republican nor the Democratic nominee will muster a majority of the Electoral College...

...But that loss is more than made up by the increased concern among Northern white property owners about the racial crisis in the cities and all it implies to their insulated affluence...

...George Wallace's Potential for Mischief by JULES WITCOVER Montgomery, Alabama It is mid-November, 1968, and only the slightest chill is in the air as a taxi pulls up to the handsome white capitol of the Old Confederacy...

...Wallace always laboring to keep up, sometimes smiling genuinely—gratefully, even— on confronting a familiar face, more often woodenly, dutifully plodding along in her blue blazer and white skirt...

...In Russell Baker's recent political fantasy, Our Next President, in which this very scenario occurs, both the Republican and the Democratic candidates reject the Wallace covenant...

...As the bus drove along, Wallace stood in the aisle and announced to the assembled educators and hangers-on that there was a newspaper reporter from Washington present who, he said with a smile, "came down here to write a lot of distortions and lies about me...

...For example: The first time I met George Wallace was in the fall of 1966, when he was taking his wife around the state to get her elected as his front for the second term the Alabama legislature had denied him...

...On and on it went, up one midway and down the next, Mrs...

...Also, the addition of $1.8 billion in new and expanded industry in Alabama under his administration, providing an estimated 100,000 new jobs in the fields of textiles, paper and allied products, chemicals, primary metals, rubber, food processing, and others...

...The assassination of Dr...

...Sure was nice of you to come see us, y'heah...

...The most apparent is the need for security...

...Y'all come down to Montgomery and see us, y'heah...

...It is important, therefore, to ask: Is George Wallace, this living caricature of old-time Dixie demagoguery, really a man to take seriously...

...In the North, the Wallace fans are brought out at a price, especially at the universities—counter-demonstrations that often are as hostile and irrational as those the demonstrators accuse him of fomenting in his Yankee excursions into backlash neighborhoods...

...It draws amused chuckles on the campuses, but before business groups in Pittsburgh and Chicago, the applause and knowing nods are as disturbingly genuine as in Dixie...

...Gadsden...

...Witcover's article was written before President Johnson's special order, following Senator Kennedy's assassination, for Secret Service protection of Presidential candidates.—Editor's note) Although burly state police guard Wallace wherever he goes in Alabama, their work usually is to protect him from zealous admirers...

...Sure, I remember him well...

...Because national campaigning is so expensive these days, it is widely suspected that Wallace has some fat-cat conservative angels...

...I was just fixin' to talk about that with a Republican fella who just came in from Noo Yawk...

...He would charge with treason anyone "who sends blood to the Vietcong," and he would replace retiring Supreme Court justices with men who don't excuse a criminal "because his daddy didn't carry him, to see the Los Angeles Rams play when he was a boy...

...Hello there, sure is good to see y'all...

...His speeches are geared toward firing up potential contributors (sometimes a hat is passed through the crowd) rather than enlightening the electorate about his own qualifications to be President...

...Wallace in 1966, and it wows lots of them for George in 1968, North and South...

...Nixon, how you...

...There is no reason or cause for riots...

...Your daddy is kin to my wife's folks...

...Without any high-powered fund-raising operation, the burden of keeping the campaign coffers filled falls heavily on Wallace himself, through his speaking forays around the country...

...Don't call it a deal—that don't sound good...

...What's your daddy's name...

...The new governor, Albert Brewer, announced shortly after taking office that he would instruct the Alabama state police to provide security for Wallace wherever he goes this year—in or out of the state...

...Wallace's death, he continues to receive that protection free...

...Thereafter, it became a regular game—at every campaign stop, Wallace would tell the crowd about the Yankee reporter traveling with him, "writiri' down all them things about how we talk and dress in Alabama...

...Yeah, honey, put him on...

...Those votes, however, were cast in primaries, where a protest can be made without really risking much...

...Even in this bizarre election year of 1968, there is nothing more incongruous than the thought that the Presidency of the United States may somehow be horse-traded, with a one-time truck driver and political medicine man the decisive broker who determines who shall lead America in the perilous period ahead...

...Well, I sure am proud you came out to see us...

...Belling the scapegoat always has been easy for Wallace in his home state and throughout the Deep South...

...But his aides con"His potential for creating mischief, and for fanning passions in both North and South, rests not only on the state of racial unrest . . ." tinued their ballot qualification and fund-raising efforts...

...Because he has established himself as "one of the little folks" he always talks to, talks about, and feels comfortable with, he has all the trappings of the genuine populist—albeit a white populist...

...Wallace's surprisingly strong showing in three 1964 Democratic primaries, in Wisconsin (thirty-four per cent), Indiana (thirty per cent), and Maryland (forty-three per cent)—when racial tensions were not nearly so high and widespread as they are today—suggests the worst...

...After Mrs...

...Because the Electoral College does not meet in each state until December to cast votes for President, Wallace JULES WITCOVER, political analyst for the Newhouse National News Service, has covered George C. Wallace extensively in the South and on his national speaking trips...

...In November, the Presidency itself will be at stake...

...If so, each then will be faced with the cheerless prospect of making a deal with Wallace before or after the election is thrown into the House...

...It is bolstered by this clever and cocky little man's considerable talent for wrapping racism in rationalizations that permit many voters to go along without much nagging from their consciences...

...I made a quick tour of his campaign headquarters and found several women volunteers opening letters and sorting scores of checks in amounts anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred...

...Most of the checks do indeed seem to come from Wallace's "little people" —average working men and women from all over the country who scrawl a letter in longhand stating their fears, pledging their support, and enclosing a small check...

...In the late stages of Lurleen Wallace's 1966 campaign, I accompanied the Wallaces on a visit to -the Alabama State Fair in Birmingham...

...He talks of getting rid of Federal anti-segregation guidelines in all of the programs of aid to states and localities, especially in the educational field, and of making Northern city streets "safe to walk at night" by lining them "every few feet" with troops with bayOnets ready to lower the boom on the first molester...

...But just as it would be a mistake to underestimate the racial polarization of the country as a political factor, it would be folly to dismiss Wallace as a noisy but harmless backwoods bumpkin...

...Thus denied the degree of close-up campaigning that is his forte in Alabama, Wallace has had to rely almost entirely on his message—that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans offer the voters a real choice, and if you want to be protected from the "pseudo-intellectuals and the bureaucrats in Washington who want to tell you when to get up in the mornin' and when to go to bed at night," you'd better vote for George Wallace...

...Defending "property rights" is just as effective, and the message just as clear, North and South, the way George Wallace delivers it...

...It was a warmish Friday night and the garish exhibits were jammed with country people in a holiday-mood trip to town...

...I just hope they catch the one who did it...

...Alabamians who voted him into the State House in 1962 and gleefully accepted his wife as a standin in 1966 are less likely to refer to him as a great man than as "one of us...

...He never mentions racism, and increasingly he has put his candidly segregationist views on the back burner...

...And you turn that sack upside down, and the first one that falls out, you pick him up by the back of the neck and drop him right back in again, because there's not a dime's worth of difference in any of 'em...

...That's just a story...

...an increase in the state budget appropriation for education to $284 million for his last two years, compared to $160 million for his predecessor, Governor John Patterson...

...I wish we could stop all this shooting...

...If there is one thing at which Alabama's former governor excels, it is using a scapegoat for political advantage...

...But when I visited him shortly afterward in Montgomery, he was uncharacteristically cautious about discussing the situation...

...At the same time, as the current urban crisis grows, one must hope that the same sober rationality that led the overwhelming number of Americans to shun inflammatory and simplistic answers four years ago will prevail again in an even more critical time...

...Martin Luther King, Jr., and the subsequent outbreak of big-city riots, predictably brought more talk of repression as the answer, which is right up Wallace's alley...

...Didn't he carry you over to see me when I was runnin' for governor...

...But repeatedly he emphasized that he did not want it said that Dr...

...a massive highway construction program...

...Wallace's death about a month after I saw him last, Wallace went into seclusion...

...Some of these scattered goals presumably would find their way into the "covenant" Wallace would seek to extract from one of the two leading Presidential candidates if he should win enough electoral votes in November to move the election toward the House of Representatives for resolution...

...Richard M. Nixon, the Republican candidate who has won 223 electoral votes and needs forty-seven more to be the next President, gets out, glances quickly around, starts up the steps and through a door marked, simply, "The Wallace Campaign...

...How you like Alabama...

...Atop the building he can see the Alabama state flag just barely fluttering, and directly below it the Confederate banner...

...And then you put in that Socialist, Nelson Rockyfeller, and that left-winger George Romney and that Clifford Case of New Jersey and that Wild Bill Scranton of Pennsylvania and that radical Jacob Javits of Noo Yawk, and you shake 'em all up...

...You be sure to tell him hello for me, y'heah...

...two ten per cent salary increases to teachers, bus drivers, and school staff members (and another four per cent to teachers starting next fall) ; a boost in the average salary for secondary teachers from $3,934 when he took office to $5,117 when he "stepped aside" for his wife...

...We've been grounded almost completely since February 1. We're not flush, but we're able to continue...

...He flicks his cigar ash in a wastebasket, leans over and answers it: "Hello...

...In the grossly unrepresentative one-state, one-vote procedure required for a decision by the House, Alabama (population 3,266,000) would have just as much to say about choosing the President as New York (population 16,782,000)—which would dovetail nicely with Wallace's oft-voiced view that "Alabamians are just as good folks as you can find in Noo Yawk...

...When Wallace has traveled in the past, it often has been by private plane loaned by a backer, Henry L. Seale, Dallas aviation executive, with former state aides clearing the way...