Seated last week beneath the huge chandelier in his paneled office, Alabama's Governor George C. Wallace gulped Coke and denounced the lavish spending of his predecessor, John Patterson. Growled Wallace: "It's criminal, it's a shame, it's a sin."
Perhaps so. But wasting public money is something of a tradition with Alabama governors. During his first term in 1947-51, James E. ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom paid $140,000 in state funds for a seagoing 95-ft. yacht, which he named Jamelle after his wife. Folsom's successor Gordon Persons apparently felt that his wife Alice was entitled to have a yacht named...