Nation: WALLACE'S ARMY: THE COALITION OF FRUSTRATION

• Share

(10 of 10)

will eventually end, and either Nixon or Humphrey may be able to regain some of the trust lost by Lyndon Johnson. Historian Harry Jaffa, one of Goldwater's advisers, argues that, as a conservative President, Nixon might "defuse" the potential of the right in the '60s, just as F.D.R. defused the far-out left in the '30s. Another charismatic leader—Edward Kennedy could be one —might also lure many of Wallace's disaffected followers back into the political mainstream.

Still, the centrifugal forces disrupting the U.S. are stronger than at any time since the Civil War. Wallace has succeeded in doing what no one else has ever managed: he has brought together into a single party large segments of both the lower middle class and the far right. Members of the John Birch Society and a score of other groups of the radical right, who until now have clashed in intramural squabbling, have found common cause and respectability in Wallace's camp.

Indeed, many of the people who have flocked to Wallace are so disenchanted with normal politics that they may never be brought back. In a weird doppelgänger effect, they mirror the radicals of the left—who may, in time, find their own party and their own George Wallace. The genius of the American political system has been that, unlike those of Europe, it has kept right and left from polarizing into separate, warring parties. This may no longer be true. "We might well end up with a multiparty system," warns Barry Goldwater, a Nixon supporter, in the current National Review. "Given our present Constitution, this could mean disaster for America."

The possible paths the movement—and the political system—might take within the next few years are almost limitless. Wallace probably has no clear-cut program for the future. "Naw, we don't stop and figger," he told Author Frady. "We don't think about history or theories or none of that. We just go ahead. Hell, history can take care of itself." There are few, however, who doubt that Wallace, whatever his fate in 1968, will be trying for the presidency again in 1972. A few weeks ago, after staring out at the Rocky Mountains from his campaign plane, George Wallace turned to a reporter and remarked: "Just think, some day I'm going to be President of all that."