Politics: Support from the Guts

Have a lot of people underestimated George C. Wallace? His adroit performance last week left even the skeptics concerned about his effect on the 1968 election. “If you dismiss him out of hand as a clown in an Uncle Sam suit,” said Political Analyst Richard Scammon, “you make a grievous error. He is a tough, competent, shrewd politician who has support within the guts of the American electorate—the low income white voters.”

Under a sign exhorting “Stand Up for America,” Wallace mounted a rostrum at the Pittsburgh Hilton to address his first Northern audience since announcing for the presidency. While an S.R.O. crowd of 2,000 cheered and shouted “Amen!” and “Tell it like it is, George!”, Alabama’s former Governor sneered, winked and thundered through a 50-minute attack on everything from the Supreme Court to his favorite target, “pseudo-intellectuals.” When it was over, he had in hand a thousand more signatures than the 10,551 needed to place his American Independent Party on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot.

Hominy Homily. Wallace demonstrated that his appeal does not stop with the blue-collar workers usually linked to his campaign. During his two-day tour of Pennsylvania’s industrial heartland, his audience appeared to be largely lower-middle-class suburbanites. Also, a few well-dressed men sporting John Birch Society pins trailed him everywhere. After George finished a hominy-and-homily speech in his best backwoods drawl, one Pennsylvania supporter boomed: “Wallace is a new Messiah!”

Others see him as more of a Mephisto, who is intent on denying either major challenger a majority of the electoral vote. He could then swap his support for a “covenant”—as he calls it—with the candidate who agrees to advance his policies. Besides the predictable Southern vote, Wallace hopes to get a big chunk of the Goldwater Republican and dissident Democratic vote in the North. Historically, the odds are against his achieving the goal he seeks; only twice has an election been deadlocked and decided by the U.S. House of Representatives. The last: in 1824, when John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson only after Kentucky Senator Henry Clay threw his support to Adams in exchange for the Secretary of State’s job.

Nonetheless, Wallace will continue his campaign to get on 49 states’ presidential ballots (Ohio’s requirements are too tough). He intends to keep barnstorming until the election with his 21-member campaign entourage in a chartered DC-6, meanwhile governing Alabama via a sophisticated telephone hookup that keeps him in constant communication with the state. Only his wife’s illness could possibly slow him down. Last week when Lurleen Wallace underwent emergency cancer surgery for the third time in two years, George canceled all speaking engagements to join her.