George Less Risible

THIRD PARTY

George Corley Wallace's politics are about as new as "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!" yet even the Alabamian is helped by the electorate's prevailing en nui with familiar faces and conventional styles. He took his third-party candidacy on a six-day, 24-town swing through Massachusetts last week, drawing curious, generally friendly crowds of up to 3,000, despite ubiquitous hecklers. The latest Gallup poll showed that Wallace has steadily gained popularity not only in the Solid South but elsewhere in the country as well.

Simplistic to the point of demagoguery, his rhetoric is not so much overtly racist as atavistic. His speeches are a scattershot us-folks compendium of conservative complaints against the Federal Government, both major parties, bums, beatniks and Vietniks, rioters (meaning Negroes), intellectuals and Communists. With bantam-cock posture and frequent billingsgate phrases, he portentously appeals to patriotism, law and order, individual liberty, states' rights and the safety of the past. He is a pugnacious orator--a kind of ham-hock Goldwater--and one of the most effective stump speakers of the 1968 campaign.

If We Make It. And he is running hard. Not since 1884 had a presidential candidate visited Middleboro, Mass. When Wallace spoke there last week on a swing through the state, bringing his message of exasperation and estrangement, he won sympathetic audiences. Taking a leaf from McCarthy, George sent 100 polite, properly accoutered students into Massachusetts to help win the 61,238 signatures he needs to get on the ballot. "If we make it in Massachusetts, we'll make it in all the states," he said from behind the heart-high, bulletproof shield that protects him during speeches. Howling protesters tried their best. Once shouts of "Sieg Heil!" drove him off the platform.

His supporters are not all bigots, although all but three of his 14 sponsors in Massachusetts are John Birch Society members. Wallace sympathizers are full of frustration, nostalgia and fear, bypassed or assailed by currents sweeping the country: dissent, Black Power, "coddling" of suspected criminals, social-welfare legislation, higher taxes. Whether or not he can translate this into votes, there is no doubt that Wallace is waging a savvy and effectual campaign.

Tipping Scales. He is already on the ballot in 32 states. Petition drives are in progress in ten more. Louisiana Governor John McKeithen, a staunch Humphreyite, admits that Wallace is the present odds-on favorite in that state. The Alabamian should carry Mississippi as well as his home state, and elsewhere in the South he may draw off enough votes to wreck Nixon's chance of carrying Dixie. In any state, north or south, where the balance is close, George Wallace can tip the scales to the party that loses fewer supporters to his cause.

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