George Will: Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign spoke "for people furious about the '60s tumults"
In his column in the July 2 edition of Newsweek, George F. Will described former Alabama Gov. George Wallace as an independent candidate who "succeed[ed] in giving an aggrieved minority a voice." According to Will, the "aggrieved minority" Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign spoke for was made up of "people furious about the '60s tumults." In fact, Wallace openly campaigned against civil rights legislation, and, in the words of The Washington Post's obituary of Wallace, ran a presidential campaign "in which he vilified blacks."
Will wrote in his column:
The most consequential American third-party candidate was Ralph Nader in 2000. But for his 97,488 votes in Florida, which George W. Bush won by 537 votes, Al Gore probably would be finishing his second term. But even successful independent or third-party candidates have one thing in common: They lose.
A candidate can succeed in giving an aggrieved minority a voice -- e.g., George Wallace, speaking for people furious about the '60s tumults. A candidate can highlight an issue, as Ross Perot did with the deficit in 1992. A candidate can advertise an entire agenda that the two major parties are slow to consider, as Socialist candidate Norman Thomas did several times.
Wallace ran for the presidency in 1968 as part of the American Independent Party. The American Independent 1968 campaign platform is posted online at pbs.org as a primary source document for a documentary titled George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire. According to the platform:
[T]he Federal Government has adopted so-called "Civil Rights Acts," particularly the one adopted in 1964, which have set race against race and class against class, all of which we condemn. It shall be our purpose to take such steps and pursue such courses as may be necessary and required to restore to the states the powers and authority which rightfully belong to the state and local governments, so that each state shall govern and control its internal affairs without interference or domination of the Federal Government.
According to a transcript of the documentary, Tom Turnipseed, a 1968 Wallace campaign staffer, described the campaign as follows:
Race and being opposed to the civil rights movement and all it meant was the very heart and soul of the Wallace campaign. I mean, that's what it was all about. And I remember I was in a little town in south central Massachusetts called Webster. I went to the Polish-American Club And the manager says, "Well," says, "when Governor Wallace is elected president," he said, "he's going to line up all these niggers and shoot them, isn't he?" And I said, "Oh hell, no." You know, I was being honest with him. I said, "He's just worried about agitators and things like that." But this guy was dead serious.
According to Wallace's September 14, 1998, obituary in The Washington Post:
George C. Wallace, 79, the four-time governor of Alabama and four-time candidate for president of the United States who became known as the embodiment of resistance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, died last night in Montgomery, Ala. He had battled Parkinson's disease in recent years.
[...]
Wallace was elected governor the first time in 1962, with what was the largest popular vote in state history and with the declaration: "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
For the next 15 years he made a political career, usually on the national stage, as a man who opposed the advancement of rights for blacks, as well as the powers of the federal government. After notable clashes with Washington over school integration in Alabama, he took his campaign to the nation.
In 1964, Wallace was a candidate in several Democratic primaries, scoring what were then surprisingly large vote totals in such states as Maryland and Wisconsin. In 1968, he ran for president on his own American Independent Party ticket, winning nearly 10 million votes, about 13 percent of the total, in a campaign in which he vilified blacks, students and people who called for an end to the war in Vietnam. He carried five Southern states and won 46 electoral votes.
Was Will just being gracious here, or does he really believe it? Wallace appealed to the Southern Redneck Racists...period. These are the same people the Republicans have been courting ever since with their "Southern Strategy". And, interestingly, there is a huge overlap between the Wallace voters and the so-called "values" voters. Go figure.
Wallace actually had good showings outside of the South. He won the Michigan primary
As George Will continues to fight
to show harmless concern from the right,
With words he does dance
parsing endless nuance
when THIS issue is pure black and white.
Boy, I love how conservatives like Will can't seem to find the "ba**s" to tell the truth. There was no "people furious about the 60's tumults". There were white people in the South who loved their power over black people and did not want it to end. They held positions of power (police) and abused them at will (turning the dogs lose on innocent people). They lived so long with their belief that they were a superior race that they could not conceive that black people were to be treated equal. Unfortunately there is still a segment of society that believes the same things Wallace did in the 60's. Painting a "pretty" or using "pretty" words does not change the facts.
I have to admit I'm quite confused about what exactly is trying to be said by MM. After perusing the entire article, I think it is true that Wallace did speak for people who were furious about the 60's. They were the racists and KKK and all, but they were Wallace's base. I actually have to say it - why is this here? It seems more like a history lesson than it seems conservative misinformation.
Jeter, assuming tommy doesn't show up, you are free to clutch your heart and gasp in his place! ;)
I think WorrierKing addresses this point very well below. George Will is known for his precision of language. For him to depict Wallace supporters as an "aggrieved minority" tortures the language beyond mere misinformation.
I see. His point makes sense. I'm thinking it's not out of line now to assume the "aggreived minority"actually think they were aggreived. Boy, that's sad and dilusional if true!
why is this here? It seems more like a history lesson than it seems conservative misinformation.Jeter, assuming tommy doesn't show up, you are free to clutch your heart and gasp in his place! ;)
Well Snoop you may have to be the one who clutches his heart in this instance. Cause I think this should be here. Ha and we thought we knew each other so well ;-)
George Will seems to have avoided mentioning the reality behind Wallace's campaign, which was in fact his opposition to Civil Rights. Summarizing Wallace's campaign as having been about some "aggrieved minority furious about the '60s tumults." is disingenuous. The folks that backed Wallace were by & largely racists, "aggrieved" about Civil Rights.
George Will should have written that.
Yup, as I read more, I do have to admit I was wrong for saying it didn't belong here. It was a disengenious statement.
Now you can clutch your heart and gasp! ;)
Snoop maybe we should both clutch our chests like Fred Sanford & say:
"Oh, this is the big one! You hear that, Elizabeth? I'm comin' to join ya, honey!"
;-)
[A little Sanford & Son humor for the youngsters here that might not be familiar with that show]
You a fish-eyed fool.
;-)
Trust me on this - as a "long-haired-hippie" who was beaten by the cops at a Wallace rally and barely made it out alive, Will was right - as far as it went.
Yes, his (Wallace's)movement was all about opposition to civil rights, but he and his followers laid the blame for the successes of the civil rights movement on "N lovin hippies and outside agitators." If it is at all possible, we were hated more than blacks - as race traitors.
I vividly remember Wallace pointing over at us (there were maybe 20 long hairs, blacks and "outside agitators" cowering off to one side of the rally - surrounded by screaming, fist shaking rednecks) and saying "We need to round up all those commie bums, shave their heads and put em on a cattle boat to North Vietnam!"
Then things really got nasty. I've had better evenings.
So Will was employing one of his favorite tactics - the most effective way to lie is to tell half the truth, then shut up. Will is an expert at that.
Lord loves a lynching - George Wills
I wanna be just like Alabama Man!
George Wallace's campaign headquarters director, in St.Louis, was James Earl Ray's brother. Perhaps George Will was familiar with him...
Additionally, in later years Wallace repudiated many of the positions he held during the 1968 election. Too bad George Will can't do the same, but then he has a long history of hand-wringing against the scary, scary 1960s.
A candidate can succeed in giving an aggrieved minority a voice -- e.g., George Wallace, speaking for people furious about the '60s tumults.
Wallace's 1968 run for the White House was largely based on a pro-segregation platform, which means he was doing the opposite of what Will suggests and that he was trying to prevent a truly aggrieved minority from having a voice.
Very interesting! I guess I've generally been so successful at ignoring 99% of what George Will said, that I never noticed how his schtick was all about reactionary outbursts against the 'tumult' of the sixties! I guess that all I had to do is look at the guy's plaster cast hair to realize how he must hate 'tumult' - he'd likely get mussed and Lord!, it'd take him years to get it set again! I actually think I recall him discussing Al Gore's being 'wooden' at one time - imagine!
I guess that explains why the stiff mutha looks exactly like he must've looked when he matriculatd at first grade - in 1940, something. Poor bast**d's never been 'roughly, slept with' since! He just needs some shorts and argyle, knee sox - AND the bow ties back! He must fear that if he had a close brush with 'style', of any kind that it'd probably be mistaken for tumult, or even RE-volt!
How can a man with his obvious accomplishment - in some circles at least, be so damned pitiful - so whipped! He's earned my unabashed pity - for life!
I agree about Will and the sixties. George Will hated the sixties because nobody would invite him to the party. And there's a good reason: Will is the quintessential American Nerd, the poster boy for Nerdom. Would you invite that pompous supercillious ass to your party?
i do not really see the point of this article nor the quibble with what George Will said. He is just being diplomatic in his phrasing. there are often these kind of picking less than a nit even articles on this website. Of course Wallace was primarily about the antiblack backlash of the 60's but I dont see that Will should be criticized for the way he references this. I see a lot worse stuff daily.
"Furious about the 60s tumults" implies that Wallace supporters were primarily concerned about the rioting and protesting and social upheaval of that era. The problem with this interpretation is that EVERYBODY was concerned about those things. What set apart the Wallace voters was their love affair with the status quo in the pre-Civil Rights Act South. Namely, keeping blacks in their place.
Will is just sugar coating this...maybe because he knows that most Wallace voters became Republicans.
The point is that George will, a man of words, chose his words poorly, or meant exactly what he said.
The phrase he used was "succeed[ed] in giving an aggrieved minority a voice.".
The dictionary defines the word "aggrieved" as: wronged, offended, or injured or feeling resentment at having been unfairly treated.
The racist bastards that supported Wallace were not injured, or wronged and were not treated unfairly.
George will needs to offer an apology to the entire nation.
john henry actually agrees that wallace was about an "antiblack" backlash. the rest is just him contradicting himself.
One man's "diplomatic" is everyone else's "history revisionism". The more today's Republicans can try to paint Nixon's "Southern Strategy" constituents as NOT RACIST, but instead intellectually concerned about social unrest ... the better Republicans hope to fare in future elections.
Wallace attracted the votes of White Racists. Period. That was his constituency.
The "Tulmults"? Is that like the "troubles" in Ireland? Only with racial overtones instead of religious.
I was kinda thinking it would make a good Neo-Wave band name, like the Hives and the Killers....
Ok, so we go back to 68 and rumminate . I would, actually, like to know what Bush and Cheney are doing at this very moment for the benefit of this nation ?
Cheney's creating a new branch of government. That is something. Probably for the good of Cheney rather than the country though.
I find it somewhat alarming that ever since "The Southern Strategy" the GOP has been relying on the anger of people who still cannot get over their defeat and repudiation in the 1860's much less the 1960's.
Seriously...how often must we hear "patriotism" defined to us by the descendants of people who were arguably guilty of the most widespread acts of treason ever committed against the republic, or "morality" defined to us by people who could countenance the burning or bombing of churches? To proclaim that the people whom Wallace represented in those days were an "aggrieved minority" is to spit in the face of the people who were genuinely aggrieved by the circumstances of that era and to spit in the face of sense and anything resembling decency, but i guess that i should expect no less from Mr. Will.
Hey - haven't seen your handle lately, so WELCOME BACK! Your words are worth the wait.
(In case that failure is entirely my own, due to brain damage of some sort, blame it on the Repugnants. )
A hillbilly farmer named Hollis,
Used pigs and cows for his solace.
The children mooed and oinked,
And voted for Governor Wallace.
Harlequin, is it 20% off Limericks day? ;0)
I wonder if he'll get that he's off by one line? :)
Missing 3rd line:
While the livestock he boinked
What this story is and implied by Will is a veiled racist screed that appeals to the largely southern white racist base of the Republican Party.
Wallace, like Jerry Falwell's racist rants at the time ran on a anti-black platform. Falwell did not run for office then but had a unbridled hatred for Dr. King --- it was the typical racist crap that we hoped was stomped down but continues to rear up with the likes of conservative talk radio (Limbaugh etc...), and GOP TV with Fox News (John Gibson) and yes conservative print media pundits from that dastardly "libruul" media at Newsweek where Will writes...
The Republican Party and its courting of southern racists is what helped get the degenerates that we have now elected president and/or vice president... The GOP needs every white racist voter if they have any hope of winning in 08... hence the veiled racist references that we see more of from the conservative media... (example: does anyone not believe the white woman who provocatively tells Harold Ford to "call me" in the 2006 TN senate race and ad against him was not an accident? It was meant to infuriate white racist voters to turn out)...
The tumult of the 60s
The horror of "Women's Lib"
The "Gay Agenda" being forced on them
I'm thinking these are the same people getting the vapors over electricity and the wheel.No wonder it's much of the same group that doesn't get evolution.If everything would just stay the same, there would be so much less trouble.
Not just stay the same, but revert back to the bucolic times of yore, not that long ago, where minorities knew their place (or where put in their place), women were home cooking dinner, and gays were so far underground you couldn't find one if you wanted to.
In other words, a white male heterosexual utopia for those bigots.
Would they be able to lay aside their righteous anger. That which gives them such great pleasure.
Bets?
Back then "The Gay Agenda" was the scam that the young Republicans tried to pull when called up for their draft physicals.
Those who couldn't get a deferment for boils on their butts pretended to be gay.
The Crises OF Democracy. The actual name of a report written by the Trilateral commission in the 70's ABOUT the tumult in the 60's
Am I missing something but why was Will going back in history?
Certaintly Wallace was a bigot I don't think that is in dispute except in Will's mind. I think Will would have a point about the "Tumult of the 60's" in terms of America losing is consiousness if not for his unfortunate linkage to Wallace. Such a linking undoubtedly puts forth the appearance that Will is calling the civil rights movement tumultious in that it was bad for the country. That assertion is unfortunate because a good discussion could be built around how some things in the 60's were bad for America.
No doubt there were some things in the '60s that were bad for America: our kids dying in a war we didn't need, a bunch of crooks for a government, and The Man always uptight and in your face.
Kinda like now, isn't it?
Luckily the Real Americans revived some of the good stuff, Conley. :-O
Is Sean Hannity's Free-dumb concert the new Woodstock?
Nah - I doubt that today's youth are up for spending three days hitchin' in, and three days swimming in mud, even for decent music. I was personally quite happy that I had my fourth call-up that week, and didn't catch the rainstorm. (My murmur kept time quite reliably, even though it has never given me any problem). Eventually, I got married and had a kid, so they stopped drafting me every four months.
I would guess, though, that the admission to Free-dumb would more than cover the value of the music, so maybe I'll even be surprised at the endurance of today's kids despite their preference for video games over running from PO'd cops, or other righteous types.
Yeah, that is kinda of what it is like now. I was referring to promiscuity and drugs but then again I don't want to be too hypocritical because I kinda of liked both back then. Unfortunately, those things tended to grow until they became social blights.
I hear you Chris. I don't know where to get drugs anymore,except for the cheap, legal and delicious beer and whiskey, and I 've been having sex with the same woman for years.
So I'm against all this promiscuity and wild drug use too ! :0)
HBL,
Right on!!! (I couldn't resist using that 60's phrase). I to enjoy a good cocktail on occasion and I can find plenty of occasions. We have alot in common. I wouldn't know where to find a drug if forced to and my wife of 36 years (bless her heart) would kill me if I tried. I take a more libertarian view of drugs. I personally hate them, but each to his own as long as the person doing them isn't drivng around on the same roads that my family may be using.
True some of the things from the 60's came out bad but a whole lot made America a better place. The womens movement, Civil Rights, Free speech (actually until the 60's when the seditious libel law was finally repudiated by Supreme Court rulings free speech was still at the whim of government remember that Eugene Debs went to PRISON for six years for simply giving an anti war speech.) the antiwar movement. For the most part the hippies were right. I know you can make a case and give examples of b ad things that came from that time also, I do not dispute that but the fact people took to the streets and through participatory democracy DEMANDED a say in policy itself was a huge growth in the raising of the awareness of Americans as a people. Sure some bad things came from those movements but so did a whole lot of good things.
Solon,
I agree. I am one of those who think the good outweighs the bad. There is no doubt in my mind that without the participatory democracy seen in the late 60's we would still be in Vietnam and quite possibly a third world war could have erupted in Asia. Anyway, I think the most positive thing to come from the tumult WAS... government in fear of the people. Now of course it is different. We fear the government. *SOAPBOX ALERT* for example, the war on drugs brought on by Nixon and followed by all after him has led to the unilateral destruction of our fouth and fifth amendment rights. Now the "war on terror" as described by the "Einstein" in the White House only adds to Government controlling us rather than promoting our general welfare. Some of the tumult as seen in 68' is what we need. But our populace is quite frankly running around with glazed vision. Malls, SUV's, and missing pretty white women, pervade our thoughts. Does anyone know how many of our boys died yesterday in Iraq? I always thought that would be the perfect "gotcha" question for Bush during one of his scripted press conferences. Oh yeah, is the commission report you referred to on the web. If so, I would love to read that. Sadly, I have never heard of it.
Chomsky mentions it in Manufacturing Consent and Necessary Illusions. I just cant help but shake my head at the THOUGHT of a group so dedicated to elite rule they would write a paper with that name as if it wasnt itself an attack on the very concept OF democracy I havent read the whole thing but what I have read seems to be an argument that democracy ought to be a matter of elites making decisions and the rest of us shutting up and endorsing those decisions that PEOPLE entering into the political arena is itself a crisis or in their own words
The more democratic a system is, indeed, the more likely it is to be endangered by intrinsic threats. Intrinsic challenges are, in this sense, more serious than extrinsic ones. Democracies may be able to avoid, moderate, or learn to live with contextual challenges to their viability. There is deeper reason for pessimism if the threats to democracy arise ineluctably from the inherent workings of the democratic process itself. Yet, in recent years, the operations of the democratic process do indeed appear to have generated a breakdown of traditional means of social control, a delegitimation of political and other forms of authority, and an overload of demands on government, exceeding its capacity to respond.
So I dont know where you can read the whole thing but here is a taste from their website
http://www.trilateral.org/projwork/tfrsums/tfr08.htm
Oh I got distracted answering you and wanted to say I totally agree and think yours was an excellent post
Thanks, as was yours.
The late 60's were very tumultous times. Could Will have centered his thoughs about Wallace around the Civil Rights Movement? Probably. But, I think there was more to his movement than that (even though it was the defining moment). People were upset about the war, riots in various parts of the country, etc and didn't see much difference between the parties. Will's main point, as I read the article, is that while 3rd party candidates can seize on the voters' dissatisfation with the major parties on one or two points, that, at the outside the best they can hope to accomplish is to throw the election into the House of Representatives. All in all, it was a fairly interesting article, delving into the history of third parties and their impact on the national scene over the years. To take Will to task ove the few lines in the article that he devoted to Wallace is, IMO, a little petty.
"People were upset about the war, riots in various parts of the country, etc and didn't see much difference between the parties."
Some [mostly] white males were upset with the Feminist Movement, the Civil Right Movement and the protests during the Vietnam War. They thought we were a society in chaos and Nixon ran on a platform to "restore order".
“Will's main point, as I read the article, is that while 3rd party candidates can seize on the voters' dissatisfation with the major parties on one or two points, that, at the outside the best they can hope to accomplish is to throw the election into the House of Representatives.”
Wallace ran on a platform of segregation and he was hoping to take enough electoral votes away from Humphrey and Nixon to have influence federal policy. The candidate that promised to end federal efforts at desegregation would receive his electoral votes and therefore the presidency.
I was a young adult at the time of Wallace's campaign, and it was obviously all about racism. Of course, he railed also against yankees and hippies and anyone other than southern whities. Will knows that and doesn't want to be honest about it.
Will devoted little of his total column to Wallace and did spend time on other third party candidates. MMFA could have picked any one of those races to focus on, but for some reason (and I think we all know why) chose instead to hilite the Wallace race and Will's comments about troubled times. Perot, in all likelyhood, but Clinton in the White House, Nader kept Gore out, even though they did not collect electoral votes, The spector of Bloomberg in the race as an independent (although one to the left side of the political spectrum) could have a huge impact on the 2008 race. This is what you should take out of Will's article, rather than the minor bit about Wallace.
Yes we know why this portion of his article is recognized. Will misled his readers on the Wallace campaign. Wallace appealed to segregationist, anti-freedom, anti-equality status quo junkies, not some aggrieved minority.
Why defend Will? Let him take responsibility for his own cheap sleight of hand.
The point is, the reality and the conservative perfume about it -- one might almost call it "conservative political correctness" -- always try to put a noble light on what happened in the South. Ronald Reagan's first campaign event wasn't in Lincoln's Springfield, Ill., like Obama's, it was in Neshoba MS, where the civil rights workers were killed; but he didn't say anything hateful, just the polite part of what segregation defenders always said: it was about states' rights. They'd only go off into a Wallace-type lynching if you forced them. Will probably isn't a racist, but the conservative movment began the march to power by having Nixon take over the Wallace vote, especially in '72, after Wallace was shot and paralyzed. McGovern probably would have lost anyway, but Republicans had found their Solid South.
Wallace's politics were mean and ugly. While enough of us are still here to testify to that, people like Will cannot get away with revising what it was all about.
The chaos of the sixties was a tremendous opportunity to make progress and brought a major shift in thinking. People who went through this era without being altered in some way still carry a lot of ugly baggage.
Sounds like George Will is channeling some Trent Lott
I thought "conservatives" were over this by now....
George Will is the poster boy for closet racism and the conservative code words used to obscure thier real meaning. Will is not alone. The Republican Party, and the significant number of white Americans, insist upon preserving the rolet of racism in American culture and policy, smearing and demonizing people of color, particularly African Americans. It is very clear to the overwhelming majority of black people that people like George Will dream of a return to "the good ole days" when white supremacy was publicly celebrated in policy, culture, and common practice, and black people were dehumanized for the satisfaction and fantasies of racists.