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After the entertainment, out steps George. He is generally introduced by Aide Dick Smith, one of about 40 traveling Wallace staffers, all of whom (except for Tom Turnipseed of South Carolina) are from Alabama. A weekly-newspaper editor from York, Smith gives a brief, effective warm-up talk, while Wallace girls, dressed in dark skirts and white blouses, pass up the aisles with yellow contribution buckets. When Smith and the girls are finished, Wallace marches up to the lectern.
The talk rarely varies in content, but the format does. Wallace simply chooses from his compendium of evils as they come to mind. "Now I want to say something about Viet Nam," he will say by way of introduction, or "Let's talk about law 'n' order." While the crowd is cheering, he will often spit quickly and inconspicuously into a white handkerchief.
Much of Wallace's appeal lies in personal contact. After each talk, dozens of Wallaceites line up patiently to shake his hand and say "God bless you, Governor," or "You're the only hope for America." The candidate acknowledges each message with a hand squeeze and a nod, occasionally saying "Thank y'all for heppin' us."
Ivory-Tower Pointy Heads
For a long time, "Mr. 'Umphrey"—as Wallace refers to the Vice President — received more attention than "Mr. Nixon." Lately, because of Nixon's success at the polls, he has turned his fire on the Republican, who is credited with a variety of sins, from deceitfulness to being part of the Administration that sent troops to Little Rock in 1957. Last week there was a new charge in the catalogue. The reason Nixon is so far ahead in the polls, Wallace averred in Albany, N.Y., is simple: he controls the pollsters and manipulates public opinion with the help of the "Eastern money-interest crowd."
There are many reasons for Wallace's unique appeal, but his antipathy to "them"—anybody who is not "us"—is the chief one. While Wallace stoutly denies that he is a racist, "they" usually means the blacks. "They" also embraces Supreme Court Justices and bureaucrats in Washington, professors in colleges, and journalists almost anywhere. Wallace supporters feel that "they" have all taken too much control over their lives. In a curious way, the roots of the Wallace movement are entangled with those of the New Left. Both would welcome drastic change in institutions that seem aloof and unresponsive to their needs.
With a histrionic flair for the crude, sardonic image, Wallace lampoons all of "them," assuring his listeners that they themselves are just as smart as the people in positions of power. The bureaucrats who enforce school-desegregation guidelines "don't have enough sense to know how to get out of bed in the morning, so they have to write a guideline for us." Intellectuals are "overeducated, ivory-tower folk," or "pointy-headed professors who can't even park a bicycle straight." He says: "Any truck driver'd know right off what to do at the scene of an accident, but you take a college professor, he'd just stand around lookin' and gettin' sick."
Few in Wallace's audiences believe what