Was prez. candidate George Wallace as nasty as prez. candidate Trump?

[jpak]

I think so...

I thought we were beyond that kind of shit.

ugh

[pnwmom]

1. He wasn't as much of a narcissist. Unfortunately, that's a YUGE part of Trump's appeal.

His followers love thinking that he's the biggest, the best, the richest, and the best looking. And that all they have to do is turn the country over to him and he's so smart, he'll fix everything.

[jpak]

2. But Wallace could ride a bicycle backwards

If Trump does that , I'm moving to Canada...

[PufPuf23]

3. I attended a George Wallace for President rally in 1968

at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

Not long before he came to San Francisco he had said to the effect that he would run over a long hair should they block his vehicle.

There were more anti-Wallace people than Wallace people at the rally and lots of SF Tact Squad but I did not see any violence that day.

The entire section where I sat was on their feet going "Seig Heil, Seig Heil" and drowning out Wallace's speech. He got off on it.

Here is a snippet I just found from a simple search:

GEORGE WALLACE: We’ve got some professors in this part of the country who are today calling for communist victory. And they say that’s free speech. But they mean free speech only if you let them speak. They don’t want anybody else to speak. And I tell you--

TURNIPSEED: Governor Wallace used to just love to use the long-haired hippie agitators, the, the folks who were out in the front lines of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.

GEORGE WALLACE: I love you, too. I sure do. [laughter] Oh, I thought you were a she, you’re a he. Oh my goodness.

TURNIPSEED: The folks that he felt like his constituency uh, uh, just really disliked the most, you know.

GEORGE WALLACE: And when he was in California, a group of anarchists lay down in front of his automobile, and threatened his personal safety, the president of the United States! Well, I want to tell you that if you elect me the president and I go to California or I come to Arkansas and some of them lie down in front of my automobile, it will be the last one they’ll ever want to lie down in front of.

Demonstrators chant: Wallace is a pig! Wallace is a pig!

Black & white demonstrators: Wallace is a pig, ooh-ah! Wallace is a pig, ooh-ah!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/filmmore/transcript/transcript1.html

Edit to add: Turnipseed was the Executive Director of Wallace's 1968 campaign.

[jpak]

4. Good on you!

[SCantiGOP]

11. PufPuf: I remember what you say in your 1st paragraph

Concerning the "anarchists" lying in front of his car.

By the way, Tom Turnipseed, who is quoted in your post, is a leading progressive leader in SC. Almost won a race as state Attorney General about 25 years ago. He is a life-time NAACP member, something he said he did to atone for his early, racist activities. He saw the light right after the 68 campaign and became a liberal activist.

[PufPuf23]

14. I did not know about Turnipseed. Cool name.

His name came up on the search for Wallace regards the "anarchists".

Good narrative for Mr. Turnipseed.

[SCantiGOP]

16. Turnipseeds

He and his wife are both in their 70s and both very active in progressive causes.

[LiberalArkie]

5. George Wallace definitely more of a gentleman than Trump. I would not really call him

as much a racist as a product of his time. I don't think Wallace would have ever been one of those who would kill someone like a KKK member might. But Trump scares me I really think it would not bother him at all to kill someone who he did not agree with. Huckabee and most of the others are just grifters to me. I imagine they plan on taking the campaign money and donate it to a charity with them as one of the paid directors.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Wallace would rationalize that segregation

benefitted African-Americans as much as Whites. He had a Southen rednecks' gentility but never outright insulted others like Trump.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Wallace actually started out as a liberal populist. There was a PBS program ...

American Experience, that did a biopic on Wallace. Wish I'd known about it earlier, I'm reading the transcript now. I grew up in AL, so Wallace was my governor when I was too young to know much about politics. I was eight years old in 1968, and like most of the kids I knew I thought my parents would vote for Wallace because he was our guy. How little we understood politics at that age.

NARR: In 1952 Wallace won election as a circuit judge in Clayton, Alabama. The populism he practiced from the bench impressed even those who one day would be his fiercest opponents.

CHESTNUT: Wallace was for the underdog. I was representing some poor black farmers at-- they had, uh, been stripped of their cotton by a major cotton oil processor in Birmingham, and they sent down these high-priced lawyers and all that. And Walla-- Wallace was sitting there looking at ‘em, and I was sitting over at another table with my little clients in overalls and all of that. And these people looked down on us, these lawyers did. They wouldn’t even, wouldn’t even refer to us as plaintiffs. They just said, "those people," with a good deal of scorn. And you could see Wallace getting tense over that and, and giving them the eye. And finally he said to them, said, "When you address Mr. Chestnut from now on, you will address him as Mr. Chestnut. You will refer to his clients as the plaintiffs. Do you understand?" And they understood. And Wallace ruled against them and ruled for me in every case. If I was asking for 100 dollars, I got 150 dollars. He was sitting without a jury. So Wallace was quite different from the rest of the judges in Alabama.

NARR: At age 14, George Wallace had vowed to someday become governor. In 1958, at age 39, he made his move. But he now faced a new political force, one that would pit his compassion for the poor against his hunger for power. The arrest three years earlier of Rosa Parks in Montgomery for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, had grown into a Negro boycott of the city’s segregated buses, and had given rise to a mass movement for civil rights, led by a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. The protest left white Alabamians feeling under siege. In his campaign, Wallace tried to find some middle ground. Though he supported segregation, his moderate position gained the endorsement of the civil rights organization, the N.A.A.C.P.

CARTER: Even when Wallace adopts a segregationist position as he does very strongly in the mid-1950s, he still somehow feels that he can be a moderate segregationist. He tries to run as a responsible segregationist. He speaks against the Klan for example, and he tries to continue the same themes that have carried Folsom to victory.
***
CHESTNUT: George Wallace with his keen political antenna, understood immediately why he had lost. And I think he decided at that point that he would exploit race to the extent it took necessary that we -- that he considered necessary to win.

JENKINS: And in doing that, he made a Faustian bargain. He uh-- the one time progressive decided to sell his soul for the governorship. And, uh, he could never turn back on that fully.
***
more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/filmmore/transcript/

[LiberalArkie]

13. And when you do a search of Oval Faubus of Arkansas (of the 101st Airborne fame)

started out going to college at Commonwealth College a Socialist College in Arkansas. Notable alumni include: Gordon McIntire and Reuben Cole, two of the leaders of the Louisiana Farmers' Union Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Lee Hays, founders with Pete Seeger of the Almanac Singers and The Weavers in New York City (Cunningham also later founded and helped edit Broadside Magazine); Kenneth Patchen, a well-known poet and artist; and Orval E. Faubus, six-term governor of Arkansas.

Between the both of them I felt that thee racism was more or less a con to control the KKK and the nature of the beast. However Lester Mattocks in Mississippi did not ever rise to the level of Faubus or Wallace. As both of them made real progress in bringing Alabama and Arkansas into the 20th Century. I believe that because of Mattocks, Mississippi has not.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. Lester Maddox was governor of Georgia, immortalized in Randy Newman's song "Rednecks"

Ross Barnett was the famously racist governor of Mississippi who was known for trying to block James Meredith's admission to Ole Miss in 1962

[LiberalArkie]

17. Absolutely correct! I can't think of anything bad about Barnett of that time in Mississippi.

But MS seemed to have the most killings during the time. Yea Barnett was about the most evil governor of the era I believe. I thought it was Maddox with the ax handle or baseball bat or something that the person carried. Now I am confused.

A TV station I worked at in El Dorado had a mobile van that used to go to the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama integration events for NBC. None of the state TV stations would cover the events for the national networks. That was too young for me, but I was told about it when I worked for them during the summer.

Now if I could remember who had the axe handle or what ever it was.

[Art_from_Ark]

18. It was Lester Maddox who had the (pick)axe handles

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/us/lester-maddox-whites-only-restaurateur-and-georgia-governor-dies-at-87.html?pagewanted=all

[LiberalArkie]

19. Ok, had him right just the wrong state. The gov of Mississippi did over look all the students that

were run out and killed during that era. That was the only placed that scared me and a friend driving from El Dorado to Alabama in 1965.

[trof]

20. Yes, Wallace was a populist in the beginning. Then he lost to John Patterson.

The 1958 governor's race in Alabama.
Wallace was a 'moderate segregationist'.
John Patterson was a full blown KKK backed staunch segregationist.

Here's why Wallace lost:
"John Patterson," he said, "outniggered me, and I'm never going to be outniggered again."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/filmmore/reference/interview/carter04.html

Sorry to admit that as a 17 year old I worked for Patterson's campaign.
All I can say in my defense is that I've come a long, LONG way since 1958.

[eppur_se_muova]

23. Yeah, that was just a few paragraphs after the ones I posted.

Ambition and principle collided, principle lost, bigtime. Rather reminds me of LBJ -- another politician who showed extreme political ambition from a very early age, and managed to do both really good and really awful things for/to his constituency.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Wallace saw the light before he died

I doubt if Trump ever will.

[msongs]

8. went to a wallace rally in '68. whatta show it was for all.,..

in a high school gym surrounded by riot cops, helicopters overhead, search lights like those at a movie premier. big mobs of pro and anti wallace people shouting at each other. and that was just outside. inside he was the total demogogue and he was really loving it all, never saw a politician smile and bait the crowd so much! great theater. he lost tho lol

difference tween him and trump is that wallace actually believed what he was promoting

[struggle4progress]

9. Wallace started out as a liberal, lost an election, and then sold his soul

to win at the ballot box

It's one of the tragic stories of that era

There was a very peculiar period, after he'd been shot, when he went around apologizing to the black folk he'd thrown under the bus, saying he hoped they understood why. Part of his thinking may have been that if he loudly demagogued himself into office, he could quietly do some progressive stuff without much notice

If that analysis is right, it reminds me a bit of Johnson escalating the Vietnam war to protect himself against a political attack from the right, so that he'd have a better chance with his Great Society program

There's at least one moral in these stories

[elias49]

10. I agree with both your comments.

I remember well the liberal Wallace. In general, I don't think you can compare/contrast Wallace and Trump except in the way that both have been Dems AND Repubs. Of course Wallace was a more serious politician, while Trump is an egomaniac with no real desire, IMO, to try to run this country.

[Blue_In_AK]

21. No, I don't think he was as bad.

[jberryhill]

22. No, not at all

George Wallace was a perfectly genial and polite racist.