A Jarring Message from George

As the executive jet's engines whined into life on the Orlando tarmac, the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom: "They just cleared us for taxiing calling us Air Force One." George Corley Wallace, 52, was headed back home to Alabama on the morrow of the greatest victory of his turbulent political life --winning a stunning 42% plurality in the eleven-candidate Florida Democratic primary. Lighting up a cigar, clearing his throat of the ever-present phlegm and spitting it into a handkerchief, Wallace was exuberant as he talked with his wife Cornelia and TIME Correspondent Joseph Kane. "They having trouble with all that baggage back there? I wish I could travel with just one suit like I used to."

He riffled the newspapers like Lyndon Johnson with his polls of old. "I carried every county in the state. See here. I even carried Dade County. Dade 10th: 13,500. Dade 11th: 22,000." As the plane soared into the azure sky, the candidate kept looking at the figures and talking. Now and again Cornelia would butt in for some comment on the press's treatment of George and how he is misunderstood. He would tell her to "hush now, I'm talking."

Cornelia sat across the cramped aisle from her shirtsleeved husband. Still unrecovered from the aftereffects of kidney medicines that triggered phlebitis, she propped up her shapely legs on the armrest of the seat in front, pulled a furry quilt round her, and sucked on a glass of ice water. As the craft neared Montgomery, she began to feel nauseated and asked a security guard to pass her a green plastic trash basket in case she needed it. "You feel all right, honey?" George asked. "Maybe this cigar is bothering you." He stubbed it out and lit one of her Virginia Slims, then held her hand.

Wallace looks good. His hair is mod-shaggy down to his collar, and he rubs in a little brown dye to cover up the graying streaks. He is fashionably dressed and sometimes downright dapper. With his new wife advising him, he has switched his wardrobe to double knits. "They are so easy to use when you are traveling," Cornelia says. "I am dressing better than I used to," admits Wallace. "Remember the last time I campaigned, my wife had just died. Governor Lurleen? And the trouble with campaigning by yourself is that clothes is a job. Now I use a better-matching tie combination because my wife sees to it. That's a woman's job."

There have been other changes in Wallace the campaigner. The man who once declared that he would "out-nigger" anybody on the stump, whose most durable public image was blocking the schoolhouse door to blacks, seldom lets a racist tinge color his rhetoric these days. The shift is partly a response to the more moderate temper of the times in the South, partly a reflection of the fact that he no longer needs to. George Wallace has become his own code word; his people know where he stands, and his country style permits infinite shadings of nuance and allusion. Today he could never give his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" speech of 1962. "That inaugural speech was given in the context of the times. The people of the South have adjusted to the law." His new rhetoric even permits of praise for his black opponent, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm: "I like people who stick to their guns, even if I don't agree with them."

Debate. The still feisty but less abrasive style turned out to be highly effective in Florida. So did his provocative anti-Establishment slogan, "Send them a message." Wallace's polls had given him some 32% of the vote; privately he hoped to do as well as 35%, about as much as any outside analyst conceded him. When an aide told him that he would carry Miami's Dade County, Wallace berated him for faulty research. As the returns rolled in, Wallace's elation mounted. "The people of Florida sent a message to the national political leaders," he crowed. "We beat the face cards of the Democratic deck. This has been the turning point in American politics. We have turned the Democratic Party around."

More accurately, Wallace turned the party inside out. The Democrat who ran closest to him was Hubert Humphrey, with a mere 18% of the vote. The supposed front runner, Edmund Muskie, did only half as well as Humphrey, finishing fourth after Scoop Jackson (13%). In a brooding, bitter election-night speech, Muskie said of Wallace: "I hate what he stands for. The man is a demagogue of the worst kind. This election result in Florida reveals to a greater extent than I had imagined some of the worst instincts of which human beings are capable."

The speech touched off instant debate. Some thought it was Muskie's finest hour of the 1972 campaign, producing the combative eloquence that his efforts have badly needed. Others argued that it was naive and possibly fatal to lump all Wallace's voters under a racist rubric. Primary votes are often protest votes, and there may be millions of Americans, including a good many Floridians, who share none of Wallace's residual racism but do keenly feel the sense of alienation from the system that his little-man populism plays to. That note was sounded by George McGovern: "No matter how we slice it, today was a setback for those who believe deeply in the cause of human rights. But I cannot accept the fact that the 40% of the vote that went to George Wallace was a racist vote. Many people voted for Wallace to register their protest against the way things are."

There was no denying that Wallace's victory had thrown the Democratic nomination wide open, and that he looms as a chaotic influence in the jumble of primaries that lie ahead. For each of the candidates who trailed in Wallace's dust in Florida, there were lessons to be learned, reappraisals to be made, strategies to be reconsidered.

MUSKIE. Clearly most stunned by the results was Edmund Muskie--and all of the professionals in press and politics who had seen him as almost a cinch for the nomination only two short weeks before. He had been the front runner, the sincere, often eloquent Abe Lincoln with the rockbound Maine integrity --who contrasted so sharply with the expedient, unlovable Richard Nixon. The image campaign urged everyone to "trust Muskie." But when he turned weepy and peevish and no one could figure precisely what to trust him on, that image turned as fuzzy as Lincoln's beard. By ignoring Wallace in Florida and downgrading busing as almost irrelevant, Muskie ascended to a plane somewhere above reality.

Belatedly, his aides became aware that the approach was not working. They decided that Muskie must get more specific and tough. Muskie thereupon stoutly backed Florida Governor Reubin Askew's stand against the antibusing forces, opposed the space shuttle--and lost votes heavily on both issues. He bluntly attacked Wallace, calling him "a worn-out demagogue," charging that a vote for Wallace was "a vote for fear." The "message" that Floridians must send out, he argued, ought not to be "that this is where the New South died; that the party of John F. Kennedy speaks with the voice of George C. Wallace." It was a courageous stand, but it proved to be highly unpopular in Florida.

After the election, the Muskie camp was in a state of crisis. Not even his closest aides were certain how Muskie would take his defeat, whether he would sulk or come out fighting. At week's end, Muskie seemed to erase their fears. He barged into Indiana and Illinois with unusual snap, apparently relishing his new underdog role. He attacked Wallace as a "preacher of prejudice," and Nixon as the servant of special interests.

Muskie realized that his struggle was desperately uphill now (see box, page 27). His money was spread thin, and his two initial primaries had discouraged some potential donors. He was doubly hurt in the Florida fuss over revealing financial support. When McGovern, Lindsay and Humphrey voluntarily agreed to open their books, Muskie was criticized for holding back. When he promised to reveal his sources, it looked as though he had been forced into it--and some Republican donors will likely be embarrassed. Business leaders who like to hedge their bets by giving to the leading contenders in both parties may hold back now.

Moreover Muskie headed this week into Illinois, where he was entered in another hazardous contest in which he had little to gain and much to lose. He faced only the enigmatic former Minnesota Senator, Eugene McCarthy, in a popularity contest, and mainly McGovern in a delegate selection race. Muskie had to win handily in Illinois. If he did not check his slippage, he could be set up for a knockout blow in Wisconsin. Yet there were still 21 primaries to go, each carrying a possibility of more surprises. Any conclusion that Muskie was doomed could prove just as premature as those earlier predictions that he had the nomination sewed up.

HUMPHREY. Although outpolled 2 to 1 by Wallace, Humphrey came in second by waging a personal, press-the-flesh blitz that left aides and newsmen gasping. He jetted by helicopter into tiny towns (Pahokee, Belle Glade, Wauchula), pinned HHH pins on buxom Jewish matrons in Miami, worked a Titusville shopping center three times. After 18 hours on the road, Humphrey flew to Miami one midnight and rushed off to a black sorority dance. He came back at 2 a.m., bubbling: "I danced with all those ladies."

Up at 5 one morning to handshake his way through a longshoremen's shape-up, Humphrey grumbled that reporters were not there. "Helluva way to cover the news." He clung to the roll bars of a swamp buggy in a race in Naples and drew applause for his courage. His doctor, Edgar Berman, joked that the Humphrey energy in a man just two months short of 61 is "a serious genetic defect." To fawning women who found Humphrey far more attractive in person than on TV, the candidate teasingly explained: "I keep vigorous by living clean and thinking dirty."

The onetime fiery civil rights champion tried to neutralize the Wallace antibusing advantage by waffling on it. He said that he was opposed to "massive compulsory busing that has as its sole objective racial balance based on a mathematical formula," although no court order actually requires that. He favored "integrated education," found it "fit, right and proper that you bus a child from an inferior school to a good school" but not the other way. He praised Askew's probusing stand and called busing a phony issue. "The real issue is quality education. What we need is more and better schools, not more buses." Humphrey, in short, was on both sides. With cheerful shamelessness, he offered something for everyone: kosher lunches for Jewish schoolchildren, plenty of jets for Israel, orange-juice stockpiling for worried farmers, a 25% increase in Social Security for oldsters. Arriving at a trailer camp, he burbled: "You know, I'm no Johnny-come-late-ly to mobile homes!"

But it all paid off. The Humphrey camp happily agreed with their leader that "it's a whole new ball game." Hubert was campaigning briskly in the Midwest within hours after the Florida results were known. Fearing the Wallace appeal to labor, Humphrey pleaded for support with union leaders in Detroit, where busing is a big issue. Recalling his years of help to labor, he argued: "You'd better get yourself a President that will speak up for you before it's too late. You don't need a new face; you need somebody that's been tested." As for the likes of Wallace: "Be careful about these cuties. I don't mind if you flirt around a little bit, but you better just come home."

Although Humphrey was back in business, the scars of his loss to Nixon still show in doubts about his vote-getting power. Yet his aides assert that they are getting calls from former Muskie supporters. Humphrey hopes to stop Wallace either by beating him outright in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or West Virginia (where only Humphrey and Wallace are on the ballot) or by running so close to him everywhere that some other candidates will throw their support to Humphrey as the only way of knocking Wallace out. The money is sure to come a little more easily now. Humphrey called Beverly Hills Attorney Gene Wyman after the Florida vote and asked him to raise $50,000. Wyman did it in a day, and said it was the easiest $50,000 he had ever raised.

JACKSON. To achieve his third-place ranking in Florida, Washington's Scoop Jackson also muddied his strong civil rights record, which dates back some three decades, staking out an antibusing position just a shade short of Wallace's. The main difference was that he did not plead for a halt to busing by presidential decree or legislation; instead, he sought the slower route of a constitutional amendment. Jackson's amendment is under consideration in the Congress and it includes "freedom of choice" and the "neighborhood school," proposals long espoused by anti-integrationists. He also called for federal aid to inferior schools.

Trying to draw a clear distinction between himself and Wallace, Jackson's ads declared: "Jackson is the one candidate--who can be nominated and elected--who is doing something now about compulsory busing." Explained a Jackson aide, Elmer Rounds: "It was our hope to reach the middleaged, middle-class suburbanite who didn't like the bus ride his kid was taking but who couldn't vote for Wallace on other principles." Jackson picked up other support by endorsing the $5.5 billion space-shuttle project, dear to the state's aerospace workers, standing as tall as anyone for U.S. support of Israel and urging a strong national defense program. If the combined Jackson and Wallace votes are a barometer of the state's conservatives, they are a majority.

With the race wide open and the depth of public unease indicated by the Wallace and Jackson votes, the Jackson strategists see a chance for their man to slip in as a kind of Wallace-in-spats. "The U.S. political center is angry," argues Jackson Manager Ben Wattenberg. "It's sullen. The question now is: Can any candidate deal with the frustrations constructively? Wallace has proved he can deal with them negatively. That's not what people want. Jackson can get the Wallace vote--no one else can."

Jackson's advisers theorize that in the end Wallace cannot get the nomination. They foresee that the convention may well be faced with choosing between Humphrey and McGovern --one too shopworn, one too liberal for the party's mood--and thus may decide on Jackson. Yet Jackson has huge handicaps that make the scenario unlikely: he is a colorless speaker and is still not well known nationally.

LINDSAY AND McGOVERN. No one spent more money (an aide said it was more than $300,000, others estimated it at $500,000) in Florida than New York's Mayor John Lindsay. No one made his position clearer. Lindsay sailed into Wallace, calling him "the phoniest populist since time began" and claiming that "he is no man of the people when he travels with 25 muscular state troopers with bulges under their coats." Lindsay argued that the only alternative to busing was "perpetual racial segregation" and that the nation could not afford such alienation. He criticized his senatorial rivals for compromising on the issue in Congress. His was a bold stand, but Lindsay was trounced in Florida. The only consolation in his 7% vote was that it was one point better than that of his liberal rival, McGovern.

Wisconsin may be the make-or-break primary for Lindsay. He is low on funds and cannot continue his spending pace. In Wisconsin he can make the valid claim that he was the one candidate who fought Wallace all-out in Florida, despite the risks involved. That stance could prove helpful in Wisconsin's metropolitan areas and on campuses. But Lindsay's image as an alluring TV attraction was badly besmirched in Florida, where an expensive television drive failed to muster even a strong female following.

George McGovern chose to concentrate on New Hampshire, where he scored well, and on Wisconsin, which has a more liberal hue; he wisely played Florida low key. He spent only $90,000 there, visited the state only briefly, and thus was not severely hurt by his low total. McGovern has the handicap of a lackluster speaking style, but his organizational talents showed up well in New Hampshire, and he has been working hard against Muskie for delegates in Illinois. His willingness to face all issues squarely is winning him admirers, but it is also alienating some. He could be a tough man to eliminate, even if he rarely wins. Should Lindsay and Chisholm fade, as seems likely, McGovern could be a power at the convention.

Above all, the lesson most of the candidates learned in Florida was that they cannot dismiss the new Wallace as a redneck rabble-rouser (see box). Employing unorthodox, old-style techniques, his campaigning nevertheless has contemporary punch. At its heart is "the rally"--a unique carnival theater mixing jingoism, evangelism, populism and hucksterism in a fashion that has otherwise passed from American political life. It is vintage revivalist-tent corn --and devastatingly effective with his "country soul brothers," as his rivals in Florida discovered to their sorrow.

The routine that voters in future primaries can expect is always the same. An hour before rally time, local volunteers move into the lobby, open up five wooden trays of campaign trinkets and merchandise for the faithful to buy. There are nine varieties of bumper stickers, George Wallace watches selling for $16.50, a passel of buttons (100 each), straw hats at $2, red toy footballs, a paperback biography of the great man. If a customer buys more than a dollar's worth, he gets a free autographed picture of Wallace.

As the crowd drifts in, Guitarist Billy Grammer and his trio hum up their instruments. Warmup Shill George Mangum, a burly Baptist minister, explains that this is a people's campaign and the candidate needs money to buy TV time. Leggy volunteers with plastic buckets pass through the audience taking up collections.

This process provides time for local entertainers to do their thing for Wallace. In Orlando, a gospel group sang several songs after explaining: "We are not ashamed to be for George Wallace because we are Christian people living Christian lives." In Miami, Grandpa Jones of the Hee Haw show came on with some picking, and reliable coon-dog jokes and risque tales about the three bears. The money collection reached a zenith of sorts in Orlando, where Mangum put a bucket on the stage and folks walked down the aisle to deposit their money, which included at least one paycheck, as they made their decisions for Wallace.

Once the money is in hand, Mangum roars: "Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the U.S." And out comes the banty George, saying "Hi folks, hi folks" and saluting the crowd. When the din dies away, Wallace begins his speech. He has given it so many times that he has no text, only a piece of paper listing the topics he wants to talk about: foreign aid, the welfare scandal, the tax structure, bureaucrats, the courts, national defense, liberals and busing. There is no order, except that he always saves busing for last.

"If you go out of this hall tonight and get knocked on the head, the person who knocked you on the head will be out of jail on a $50 bond before you get to the hospital . . . The tax structure threatens to destroy the middle class. There are billions of dollars in tax-free foundations, and there is no reason why the Carnegies and the Rockefellers and the Fords should go scot-free when you have to pay through the nose ... I know of one nation [India] that has received $10 billion of your hard-earned tax dollars and they stood up on the United Nations and spit in our faces and said I hope you lose that war in Viet Nam . . . Liberals are those folk who are overeducated for their brains and can't park their bicycles straight . . . Liberalism has brought us disaffected youth, violence in the streets. It brings permissiveness that allows people to chomp up and down the streets calling for a Communist victory in Viet Nam . . . you all have more brains in your little fingers than the editor of the New York Times has in his whole head."

Social Whim. Then comes his big pitch on busing. "This busin' business is the most callous, asinine thing I ever heard of, the whim of some social schemer in Washington who messed up the schools there and then moved out to Virginia or Maryland. I didn't bring this issue up, the people did. If the President can take over the economy by executive order, he can stop busing little schoolchildren. I'll bet him and Mao Tse-tung spent half their time talking about busing. I heard Mao told him, 'When we take a notion to bus, we just bus.' Nixon could have said, 'We do the same thing over here.' "

Across the state, the Wallace message was amplified by a staff of experienced organizers, many of whom have been working his campaigns since he first ran for Governor in 1958. Some wear sports shirts and raging red sports coats. They shun flow charts and modern political consulting firms; his staff artist is a Montgomery boy who works at home on his dining-room table. But they know their constituents, the strengths of their candidate and how to get out the vote. In Florida they produced smooth "newspapers" to reach special readers, including labor, the elderly, youth and even a Wallace Hoy in Spanish for Cubans (which will be adapted for Poles and other ethnic minorities elsewhere). They supplied volunteers with a 118-page organizational "manual for victory," with suggested approaches to all voters, from truck drivers to policemen. Sample advice: Don't junk up your displays. A junky display suggests a junky candidate.

Script. Why is Wallace running so hard? TIME's Wallace watcher, Joseph Kane, believes that he really wants the nomination. Wallace does not expect to be able to defeat Nixon, but he would love to reshape the Democratic Party to his way of thinking. If he fails to get the nomination, he wants to stamp his policy on the party platform--especially regarding ways to limit the power of federal judges. Yet Nixon has pre-empted that position with his antibusing proposals, giving Wallace the chance to boast that Nixon is stealing his script.

Wallace remains coy about telling what he will do if he cannot get the nomination. He prefers to ask what such liberals as McGovern and Lindsay will do if he--Wallace--is nominated. Will they start third parties? Actually, a liberal walkout would not be unlikely. Kane is convinced that Wallace will run again on his American Party ticket if the convention shuns him--even if that would hurt Nixon enough to elect a Democrat. Says Kane: "Wallace doesn't care where the dust would settle if he ran as a third-party candidate. He is not interested in party fealty. He champions conservatism wherever it comes from. And these campaign forays are more than ego trips. There must be a tidy profit in all of those buttons, hats, cuff links and clutter he sells."

As the race opens up, it revives the possibility that the party will turn to Senator Edward Kennedy. Contends New York's Russell Hemenway, national director of the Committee for an Effective Congress and now a Muskie supporter: "If Ed Muskie can't win on the second ballot and if Teddy's own polls show him within a couple of percentage points of Nixon, he'll go." There would be tremendous pressure from many Democrats for Kennedy to enter the race. Already some New York politicians are calling on Kennedy Operative Steve Smith to apply such pressure.

Assessing the primaries to date, Kennedy agrees that "the situation is clearly far more wide open than it was." He believes that only Muskie and Humphrey have a chance to get the nomination. He told TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey that he wants another Democrat to win and serve, while he gains experience through eight more years in the Senate. Even if the polls showed the Democratic nominee certain to lose, Kennedy would stay out, as races can turn about quickly. Humphrey, he recalled, trailed Nixon by 15 points in the polls in 1968 but finished so strongly that he nearly won.

Yet if all the current Democratic contenders were to fail miserably and Wallace were to have a good chance at the nomination, Kennedy said, he would do everything possible to stop him. Laughingly, he declared that he had closed the door on the nomination, locked it and thrown away the key. But he knows where the key is--and it is not far away.

Taxes. The results in Florida cannot readily be dismissed as a regional aberration. Wallace ran well in the liberal areas in and near Miami. Suburbanites and voters of all income classes gave him good support. One possible explanation is that the nation's Democratic voters feel frustrated by their inability to influence events. They see taxes rising, crime proliferating, cities decaying and the cost of living outrunning their paychecks. Alienated from the Government, they elect to vote no. Certainly, even before the primaries, the residents of New Hampshire and Florida were found to be dissatisfied and hostile toward most candidates. The Wallace brand of populism offers a convenient outlet for all kinds of protest, whether its motives be worthy or base. On top of that, the sentiment against busing, fanned by the President, was enough to give many an urge to vote for Wallace. And, on a certain level, Wallace has a country-boy charm.

Many politicians in other states are deeply concerned about the Wallace threat. U.A.W. President Leonard Woodcock, a Muskie supporter, said that Wallace might well win in the Michigan primary on May 16. "It's very depressing, and I'm usually an optimist," he admitted. In Wisconsin, where labor leaders launched a campaign that held Wallace to 7.6% of the presidential vote in 1968, they were getting ready to go at him again. "We are running scared about the Wallace thing," conceded COPE's Ken Germanson. In Indiana, Democratic State Chairman Gordon St. Angelo is so fearful that Wallace may win that he asked the other Democratic candidates to throw their support to one of their number in order to stop Wallace. Lindsay, Jackson and McGovern expressed interest, but neither Muskie nor Humphrey was ready to withdraw in favor of the other.

Democratic leaders in Maryland see Humphrey and Wallace as current favorites there--and award Wallace a solid chance to win the primary on May 16. Busing is a hot issue in parts of Massachusetts, giving Wallace a chance to grab votes, probably from Muskie, in the Boston area on April 25. Wallace, of course, will be strong all through the South. Both his home state of Alabama and North Carolina have upcoming primaries. In Border state Tennessee, where Wallace got 34% of the 1968 presidential vote, he is a strong favorite to win the May 4 primary.

As Richard Nixon surveys the divisions in the Democratic Party and observes his likely Democratic opponents getting chewed up, the President is probably pleased. Yet he has to worry about the potential third-party threat as Wallace shows strength. Besides, Wallace's victory has other ominous meanings. The two primaries have demonstrated the high cost and frequent irrelevance of the cumbersome process by which the U.S. selects its candidates for President. The Wallace victory reveals that a man possessing few qualifications for the high office--and virtually no chance for his party's nomination--can seriously harm and endanger candidates with a solid potential for national leadership.

The Wallace performance in Florida, coupled with President Nixon's own near-demagogy on busing, presents the depressing possibility that the presidential politics of 1972 may be conducted at a dismally low level of discourse. That is the level on which the simplistic Wallace functions best. The lesson offered by Wallace is clear enough: When voters are distressed, either the more orthodox candidates must find convincing ways to attack the causes, or George Corley Wallace will continue to win votes and clobber politicians who "can't park their bicycles straight."

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