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For all his shabby cynicism, Wallace set Nixon up like a good bantamweight working out a deadly series of combinations. For the past month he let rumors build that he was going to challenge federal integration requirements, and fed the rumors by pushing a $1,500,000 bill in the state legislature that would fund 200 additional state troopers for the coming school year.
Psyched Up. The President caught it from the other side. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, headed by the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, jumped on Nixon for demanding that busing be held to the legal minimum. "What the nation needed," said the commissioners, "was a call for the immediate elimination of the dual school system and for support of all those school officials who are forthrightly carrying out their legal obligations. Unfortunately, the President's statement almost certainly will have the opposite effect." One embittered HEW staffer conceded that the school officials "are more confused now," adding, "they feel the rug has been pulled from under them." Busing, as the President well knows, is widely unpopular both North and South; yet some communities are beginning to get used to it. Besides, critics feel that Nixon's stand will damage the cause of integration quite apart from the busing question. Complained James R. Johnson, a black Jackson, Miss., school board member: "People here were finally psyched up to accept busing and integration. But now the President has given fire to the conservatives."