Nation: THE WALLACE FACTOR

He has no platform, no ticket mate, no realistic hope of occupying the White House. Yet there he is, running for President with the approval of perhaps a fifth or more of the electorate—no fewer than 13.5 million adult Americans. Not since Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party emerged in 1912 has a third party so seriously challenged the two-party system. Not since 1825 has an election been decided by the House of Representatives, as this one possibly threatens to be. Yet, starting from the narrowest of bases, with a single stock speech and not one constructive proposal to offer a troubled nation, Alabama’s George Corley Wallace has profoundly affected the context of the 1968 campaign.

Though he is clearly a sectional candidate, Wallace has won surprising support in all parts of the country. Though he appeals primarily to what he calls the “rednecks, pea pickers, peckerwoods and crackers,” mostly people of modest means, he has had no trouble raking in substantial sums for campaign expenditures. And though he is almost universally derided in print and on TV, he only grows stronger, turning the scorn of the “pseudo intellectuals” to his own advantage among those who have always distrusted the press.

Four to Nine. Even “pointed-headed” newsmen, as he calls them, now concede Wallace anywhere from four to nine Southern states in November and a large, though still unpredictable, impact on the vote in much of the rest of the country. Union members in industrial areas are deserting the Democratic standard in droves, even as large numbers of suburbanites and white-collar workers, who might be expected to vote Republican, are declaring for Wallace. Something like 2,500,000 voters have signed petitions to put Wallace’s name on the ballot in the 50 states.

His audiences nearly everywhere are as big as or even bigger than Richard Nixon’s or Hubert Humphrey’s, and usually twice as enthusiastic. Often they are downright fanatical. Even in such relatively tranquil and liberal states as Connecticut, Kansas and Washington, Wallace support is abundantly in evidence. “We have no racial issues,” says Washington’s Republican Representative Catherine May. “Who are these people in a liberal state who will spend a buck for a Wallace sticker?”

They are, in almost every case, the discontented, a classification that crosses ethnic, social and income barriers. Typically, outside the South anyway, they are factory workers or others in low-to middle-income brackets who are tired of being told that Negroes have equal rights. “I guess I’m what you might call a racist,” explains Joe Galbraith, a millwright at Ford’s Rouge complex outside Detroit. “I’ve lived with Negroes. I’ve slept with them. I’ve fought with them. And I’ve had it. These people want everything for nothing. They don’t want to work.”

Briefcases in the Potomac. Many Wallace followers are well dressed, well housed and relatively well educated. Though racism is the heart of Wallace’s appeal, he also touches a responsive chord with almost anyone who, for one reason or another, is unhappy with the way things are. While the New Left claims protest as its own, the little Alabamian has turned dissent into a potentially explosive political force of the New Right. Bureaucrats have ‘never been popular; Wallace pledges to throw “their briefcases into the Potomac.” If a left-wing protester ever lies down in front of his car when he is President, it will be the last time that dissenter “ever lays down” in front of a car, says Wallace.

The emphasis is on the negative. Dissent will be curbed; foreign aid (“money down a rathole”) will be trimmed to pennies. There is no credibility gap with Wallace. Everyone knows what he is against. But in a grotesque way, Wallace’s pitch is also positive. “Wallace,” says Washington Political Analyst Richard Scammon, “is not really preaching revolution. He’s calling for a return of those middle-class values that are prized by millions of Americans.”

Scaring Somebody. Many of his followers are convinced, despite the cold facts of arithmetic, that Wallace can win. Others realize that he has no hope of presiding over the Government. They are nevertheless determined to support him, if only to show their discontent with the other parties. Says William Tomchuk, a farmer from Belfield, N. Dak.: “Maybe we can help scare somebody else into doing something.”

The other candidates have already done something. Wallace, says Edmund Muskie, is a “definite factor” in the campaign equation. Spiro T. Agnew, chosen to help the Republicans with the law-and-order issue in the South, owes his nomination almost as much to Wallace as to Nixon. The whole negative tone of the campaign, with its strong stress on ending dissent, reflects the influence of the former Alabama Governor—though even he would have to give some credit to black extremists and New Left demonstrators. In varying degrees, both Nixon and Humphrey have bowed to the Wallace concept of law and order, neglecting the basic problems that bother the nation. Yet neither can hope to out-Wallace Wallace, who, just as he boasts, was the first to sniff political profit in fear and hate.

Until lately, both parties have tended to underestimate him. The Democrats, when they thought about Wallace at all, seemed to think he could hurt only Nixon, who in muted terms is addressing himself to many of Wallace’s issues. Some observers believed that Wallace would take away Nixon votes in the South, Humphrey votes in the North. Taken together, it was felt, the losses would cancel each other out.

In fact, no one knows even approximately how many votes Wallace will draw or whom he will hurt more. The feeling—and it is only that—is that Nixon will probably suffer more, if only because he will be forced to split the vote that he could normally claim as the challenger of an unpopular administration. Nixon has already chalked off to Wallace some of the Southern states that he was counting on before August, hopes instead to capture industrial states that were given to the Democrats as recently as July.

Less Outlandish. For all of its emotional punch, the Wallace question will be largely academic so long as the gap between Nixon and Humphrey remains as wide as it appears to be now. On present form, Nixon may not need Wallace states in the South. If Humphrey inches forward in the polls, however, Wallace will pose a more serious danger.

The prospect that the election might go to the House—if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes—remains highly unlikely. But it is less outlandish than it was only a month ago. Leaders of both parties are looking more closely at races for the House, and the Republicans are working extra hard to overcome the present Democratic majority. “There is no reason why I should kid you,” Gerald Ford, the G.O.P. leader, told TIME’s Neil MacNeil last week. “A lot of us are really worried by the threat of a third party.”

The Wallace factor can be overestimated. Many voters who now say they are for Wallace may, as both parties hope, change their minds on Election Day, realizing that a vote for the Alabamian will in fact be wasted. The evidence, however, indicates that Wallace’s strength is actually growing, in defiance of all predictions. Even if he dropped out of the race today, George Wallace would still have had a profound, disturbing effect on the 1968 election.