Debates of today, historical perspective

Remember George Wallace?

 

Politicians govern with policies and not with debating skills. It's scary that many people are evaluating "performance" as if this will be the key criterion on which they vote.

It's the morning after the second presidential debate (10/17). Media observers are scurrying to analyze performance. They decided that Mitt Romney won the first debate. They decided our president had to come out swinging for the second. To an extent, Barack Obama seemed to do that.

But doesn't it all take on the aura of a hyped boxing match? Of course we don't have such phenomena anymore. It probably waned when Mike Tyson bit off part of his opponent's ear. So, no more "Shaker in Jamaica" which was how the Jim Brown character in "Mars Attacks" reflected on a mega match of his career. Yes, the rhyme isn't close enough. It was a nice parody.

Remember the great Johnson-Goldwater debates? You don't, they didn't happen. It's ironic because four years earlier we saw the celebrated Kennedy-Nixon debates when TV was still young. The 1960 debates are still quite famous. They're a chapter in TV's rapid strides forward as our household medium.

But there was no push in '64 for a repeat. It's surprising because we had a candidate who was so rigidly ideological: Barry Goldwater. Adherents to ideology are the prime debaters. Lyndon Johnson was the lumbering candidate of inevitability, clearly riding the coattails of the late assassinated president. I don't recall any suspense over the outcome.

Today the media would have none of that. A cynic might easily suspect that the media delicately guide the presidential campaign so it clearly is contested once the big day comes. That's scary because clearly there are times in America when the public mood pushes one way or the other. It should find its course like a stream.

In 1964 Johnson didn't even need debates to bury Goldwater.

There's a consensus today that we needed Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan was a man of broad principles who probably would have struggled with the kind of minutiae that today's debating seems to demand.

We elect a president on the basis of broad principles. Or at least we should. A president needn't supervise the White House tennis courts as Jimmy Carter did (unless that's just myth, but remember it wasn't myth that Carter was once threatened by a swimming rabbit in a swamp).

Remember the great Nixon-Humphrey debates? You don't because they didn't happen. I do remember "infomercials" (long before the term was coined) that had Bud Wilkinson chatting with Richard Nixon. Wilkinson, lest you have forgotten, was an old famous football coach.

Hubert Humphrey had been Lyndon Johnson's caddy. Had Humphrey been more forceful about the U.S. leaving Viet Nam, well, we can only speculate.

There was a candidate in 1968 who said something about Viet Nam that I applauded. Actually I found this candidate easy to applaud on many occasions. It was neither Johnson nor Humphrey. Remember? The theme was "Stand up for America."

He was a human being with human flaws as we all are. Heavens, Ross Perot demonstrated that years later.

In 1968 we had a man of the Deep South coming forward to enliven the debate. It wasn't surprising he had baggage with regard to racial questions. But on Viet Nam he said the following: "If it's not winnable within 90 days of my taking office, I'll call for immediate withdrawal."

Really, boomers like me didn't even care if we "won." We wanted out. At least Wallace suggested he was receptive to something drastic (i.e. with the word "immediate"), so there was no need to penetrate fog with regard to his stance.

Wallace probably captivated me because of his populist rhetoric and the fact he could be an entertaining campaigner. I was an unusual child in that I enjoyed digesting the evening news and looking at nuances of what was going on.

The two major parties seemed staid like vehicles stuck in mud. And there was Governor Wallace making blunt, populist-like pronouncements and supplying some entertainment in the process. The "new left" adherents of the time might deride him as "fascist." He retorted: "I was killing fascists when you punks were in diapers."

It's true. Wallace flew B-29 combat missions over Japan in 1945. I don't know if he had a Confederate decal on his plane. Some of the Deep South fighters were known to project that kind of imagery. It's harmless when you consider that the Confederacy was beaten, burned and kicked aside.

Of course, a lot of bad stuff festered in the Deep South well into the 20th Century. Wallace was a native of southeast Alabama and served as a page in the Alabama Senate in 1935. What sort of ideas do you suppose got impressed on him, coming from that kind of background?

He entered the field of law which even in the Deep South was tough to spin in the direction of pure racism. He studied law in Alabama. He was considered a moderate on racial issues when elected to the Alabama House in 1946. Let's not pretend that's effusive praise. But what was he up against? As a judge he was known to grant probation to some blacks, and this is seen as hindering him in the 1958 governor's race.

His foe? A man endorsed by the KKK.

Wallace seemed a born politician. An ex-wife once said with a tinge of bitterness that Wallace "didn't want a family, he wanted an audience." As a journalist I'm tempted to applaud a little, for Mr. Wallace that is. I understand the instinct.

Not wanting to be a loser, Wallace made what some have described as a "Faustian bargain" in the wake of his 1958 loss. Appearing to sell his soul, he began spouting segregationist rhetoric. He would later try to renounce as much of this as he could. He would proclaim from his wheelchair, perhaps having been humbled some by handicap, that he "did not wish to meet his maker with unforgiven sin."

I truly had a fascination with the Alabama governor in 1968. I was in junior high, not fully well-versed on all the relevant background, and I found his directness appealing. I represented Wallace in an eighth grade classroom debate. I wouldn't have had the time of day for any of the other southern politicians who appeared to have racial issue baggage, people like Strom Thurmond and Lester Maddox.

Somehow Wallace struck me as a little transcendent. I saw the populist Wallace and not the Wallace who talked about segregation and who "stood in the schoolhouse door."

Maybe my intuition suggested Wallace wasn't really the ugly racist some of his actions of a particular time clearly suggest. He was once circuit judge of the Third Judicial Court in Alabama. An African-American lawyer would later say of Judge Wallace that "he was the first judge in Alabama to call me 'mister' in a courtroom."

It may have been that Faustian bargain that did in Wallace, in a way that shoved him in the minds of many into that same dark hole as Thurmond and Maddox.

He served four nonconsecutive terms as Alabama governor. His life changed dramatically when he was shot and paralyzed in 1972.
We learn that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and eventually even the senior George Bush adopted toned-down versions of Wallace's anti-busing (for desegregation) and anti-Federal government platform. Those Republicans learned they could pry away low and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition.

In 1972, when seeking the Democratic nomination and no longer an independent, Wallace no longer supported segregation. But he was anti-busing and had Nixon as an ally in this.

He became a born-again Christian in the late 1970s. Continuing his evolution, clues of which had been evident way back when he was a judge, he apologized to black civil rights leaders for his past positions.

In 1972 he was battling George McGovern who at present appears to be on his deathbed in a hospice. Let's say a prayer. Boomers will express tremendous warmth toward McGovern when the statesman leaves this world. McGovern was the dove on Viet Nam. History will be very kind to him.

Boomers might forget that McGovern was a lightning rod for anti-progressive views, marginalized even in the year (1972) he ran for president following an absolutely tumultuous Democratic national convention.

Everything is calmed down now. We can view the influential political voices of the 1960s with far more restraint than we did then.
George Romney (Mitt's father) said he was "brainwashed" about Viet Nam. So it could be a very scary time.

Wallace's background was undoubtedly scary. Was I right speaking on his behalf? Probably not. Second-guessing what we did in the 1960s is a very easy pastime. That was then, this is now. And now we're weighing Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney.

Those of you who might be inclined to vote for Romney based on "debating skills," caution: You should only vote for him if you want Republican Party policies enacted. Period. Be Careful.
And "stand up for America."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com