CONSIDER his image. On the platform, his head barely rises above the bulletproof lectern he takes with him everywhere. On the TV screen, he comes over as a cross between Flem Snopes and Huey Long. An uninspired orator, with a set, almost unvarying speech, he seems intentionally to mangle his syntax and mispronounce words. Yet he is the only presidential candidate in the fall of 1968 who could be called charismatic.
Consider his campaign. It is perhaps the most amateurishly organized drive that any serious candidate has mounted in modern American history. In many cities, it is impossible to find his campaign headquarters. In others, like Louisville, there are as many as three, each competing for funds and attention. Not one member of his staff has had previous experience in national politics. By contrast, Eugene McCarthy's "children's crusade" was a model of efficiency and professionalism.
Consider George Corley Wallace himself, the dour little Alabama demagogue who has influenced the entire 1968 campaign, defied the two-party system and raised the specter that no one will be elected President on Nov. 5. Though the odds against him are very long indeed, he could conceivably become the 37th President of the U.S. "We could be elected," he says. "It is not an impossible dream."
Eight months ago, Hubert Humphrey could confidently say of Wallace: "I don't think he's going to rustle up many cattle." Now, surveying the depleted Democratic herd, Humphrey takes every opportunity to excoriate Wallace as "the apostle of fear and racism." Richard Nixon has been saying for weeks that Wallace had "peaked" and would soon go downhill. Recently, however, he has found cause to attack Wallace and the "third-party kick" directly. "Do you want to make a point, or do you want to make a change?" he asked a crowd in Flint, Mich., last week. "Do you want a moment's satisfaction, or do you want to get four years of action?"
If the polls are any indication, about one out of every five voters—something like 14 million Americans—will choose the moment's satisfaction and pick Wallace and General Curtis LeMay, his running mate, next month. Fervent Wallaceites may, of course, decide at the last minute that a vote for their man is a wasted ballot and switch to either Humphrey or Nixon, but there is no evidence that this will happen. Thousands echo the opinion of Charles Gutherie, a cement finisher from Los Angeles: "You take Nixon and Humphrey and shake 'em up in a bag and they come out the same—a couple of namby-pambys who are going to keep giving our money away to other countries while they let a bunch of punks run wild in this country." Says Noble Olson, a Cincinnati civil engineer: "Nixon maybe is the better of two evils. But I am through voting for the better of two evils."
Smoldering Distrust
As in 1964, when he made his first presidential bid but dropped out of the race after Barry Goldwater was nominated, support for Wallace's American Independent Party is concentrated in the South, where Gallup gives him 38% of the vote, more than he gives either Nixon or Humphrey. But strong Wallace sentiment is found in every other section as well. He is on the ballot in all 50 states. (The Supreme Court may knock him off in