Wallace's last message

Wallace's Last Message

GEORGE CORLEY WALLACE has announced his intention of retiring at the end of his gubernatorial term in January, but it's as if he had already retired long ago. He ceased being an important national force in 1972--not because he was shot and permanently crippled, but because he chose not to bolt the Democratic Party.

Wallace made his greatest impact in 1968, when he ran for President on his own party ticket, the ad hoc American Independent Party. With his fierce humor and a gift for the colorful phrase, he jeered that there wasn't "a dime's worth of difference" between the two major parties. And as Nixon and Humphrey pulled about 43 per cent each, Wallace grabbed an impressive 14 per cent of the popular vote. He sent them a message, and foreshadowed the coming national realignment.

But Wallace had no fundamental quarrel with the national Democratic Party. He proved that in the year of McGovern when, after a crippling bullet stopped his brilliant primary campaign, he more or less acquiesced in the party's radicalization. Many of his followers left the party without him; McGovern was trounced; and eventually Reagan made everyone forget Wallace.

Wallace briefly represented anti-liberal protest. Unlike Reagan, he wasn't serious about conservatism or about governing in any principled way. He was a shrewd and energetic maneuverer. But he missed his chance to hasten party realignment and to claim some lasting credit for it. He will finish his career in a thoroughly McGovernite Democratic Party, as if he never got his own message.

COPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning