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In the 1976 Democratic primary, I carried Boston. I carried Beacon Hill. I don't think you'd say that was because they hated blacks. I didn't mention anything except busing up there.
Q. But wasn't busing a code word for race?
A. No. A lot of blacks were against busing right here in Alabama. In fact, if it was a code word, every one of them that ran in 1976 was against busing. I wasn't the only one against busing.
But the race question is over, and I don't see a need to keep talking about it, frankly.
Q. David Duke's message of race hatred has struck a raw nerve in this country, and that has prompted comparisons with your campaigns for the White House two decades ago. What do you think of his message?
A. People who belong to the Klan usually have hated blacks. I never did that. I grew up among them. They are some of my family's best friends. I wouldn't be for a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, especially a man who thought Hitler was a great man, because I was in World War II. I didn't run my campaign on hate. I ran on cussing the federal courts out about trying to run everything themselves instead of letting local states run their own democratic institutions.
Q. Is Duke a threat to this country?
A. I don't talk about him much. ((He crumples and tosses the written question aside.))
Q. From quotas to welfare to Willie Horton, race still plays a big role in presidential politics. What can be done to change that?
A. Well, I don't know what would change it. We ought not to have racial politics because all the citizens of this country are citizens, and there ought not to be any race involved in the presidential election, frankly.
Q. Let me ask you one last question on race. Do you regret the pain you have caused black people?
A. I haven't caused any pain to black people. What pain have I caused them? I brought them into state government.
Q. Some of them still regard you as a menace.
A. Blacks in other states don't know me like the blacks in Alabama do.
Q. What is your analysis of the presidential race so far?
A. I haven't thought much about it because I have to concentrate on this job here. ((Wallace is a fund raiser for Troy State University in Montgomery.)) And I'm in a lot of pain all the time. I wasn't in much pain when I was Governor, because I was younger and stronger. I'm older and weaker now. I just got over a bad kidney infection.
And I finally got rid of it. That's what we die with, kidney failure. So if another big bug hits me again like that, it may be the last of me.
Q. If you were running for President today, what message would you send the American people?
A. We are so enmeshed in deficits that I don't know what I would tell them. We've got to the point where we owe so much money, and we have lowered the taxes on the wealthy to 28%, but we haven't done anything for the middle class. It is hard to know what to tell them now, but I wish we could get a fine health-care system, especially for those who are uninsured. And we ought not let the Japanese treat us like they have treated us, because we helped build back their country.
Q. Do you think that your name will be rehabilitated?