Governor Lonelyhearts

WHEN GEORGE WALLACE ran against Albert Brewer for governor of Alabama in 1970, no one expected he'd have to use a meat cleaver to win. But there is no Marquis of Queensbury in Southern politics, Brewer got a little too close for comfort, and pretty soon Alabama voters were being handed pamphlets with doctored photographs of Brewer in between Elijah Muhammad and Muhammad Ali. Pretty soon word went around that Albert Brewer's two daughters were pregnant with black babies. Pretty soon Albert Brewer was back practicing law in Montogomery.

Southern politics is tough stuff. The only surprises come from men who turn out to be less evil than you expected. Down in Florida, where even now in the fading calendar days of winter it is so hot it will turn your mind to mush, political reporters are tramping through the condos, seaquariums, alligator farms, flamingo parks, houseboat harbors, trailer parks and drive-in churches looking for clues to George's appeal in the South. Who understands it best?

John L. Rawbon of Panama City, Florida, has one answer. A longtime admirer of Governor Wallace, he wrote the governor last month:

"The sickness that grips the northern United States has destroyed the image and ideals of our founding fathers. Regrettably the country is being directed by money mad introverts...

"The media and religious groups are controlled by a rich minority that forces their biased views on the majority who are the back bone of this country.

"Fortunately the real Americans still live and exist south of the Mason-Dixon line...

"...the Confederacy still lives. I do not advocate Civil War but legal separatism so the South can survive the International Rot that corrupts the world and especially the Northern states.

"Carter has betrayed you and acts like Benedict Arnold. With friends like Carter the South has no need of enemies. He gives every indication of supporting the religious minority moral values that will ultimately tear this country apart similar to Lebanon.

"It is my honest opinion that George Wallace can and will be the Saviour of these United States. We can, with your leadership, stem the flow of rot that is beginning to seep into the South from the North. It has already reached Nashville and is oozing like cancer through the Southern States.

"I nominate George Wallace, Governor of Alabama as first President of the Southern United States

"Yours sincerely..."

WHENEVER WALLACE wants to send another Albert Brewer to the showers, he wheels himself out and goes straight to the John Rawbons, spread over the dark inner continent of Florida. Some people who venture into that dark interior which begins at the Everglades and runs up the center of the Thumb past Tallahassee and Chatahoochee find the Rawbons. These are the Wallace people, who would vote for Wallace even if he were dead because of what he represented to the spreading rot of the North. Last week Wallace said that he would consider a black man for vice president: It doesn't matter. It is as if there has been a secret pact in the Wallace campaign between the candidate and his electorate. No matter what he says to the national media about winning scads of black votes in Alabama or accepting the law of the land, the implied message is in Wallace's wink--there is nothing to fear from the fighting judge, the Snopesian Benito Cereno who would take over the ship by crafty obeisance.

Benito Cereno Wallace. The wiliest slave on the slaveship gets a letter from a fellow passenger. It is signed:

"Sincerely--J.H. Bigham (A cripple like yourself)"

It reads:

"Dear Governor--I am enclosing a personal check in the amount of $10. This is all I can afford at this time. I am supporting you to the best of my financial ability with my sincere hopes and prayers that you win the coming nomination on any ticket that you may prefer and also that you win the election. Should this happen I firmly believe that you will be able to get the DAM loafers, deadbeats and chilizers off our backs. I for one am dam tired of going to the stores and supermarkets and seeing these reciependents fill their baskets with the best cuts of meats etc, load them in Cadilacs and expensive cars and I and other peninsors having to shop around for pork neck bones, chicken necks, hog maws etc while they these Government reciependents load their baskets with the best cuts of meat and the like. CRIME--is another thing that needs immediately attention--it is absolutely unsafe to walk down some of the streets here (Gainesville, Florida) in broad Daylight."

Wallace's campaign is just as Joe Azbell, his chief strategist says, "a revolution. We're telling people that it's a revolution. It's a revolution to do for the whites what has already been done for the blacks."

But here is Benito's problem: There is a fellow conspirator on board the San Dominick. It was all right in 1972 to lead insurgencies against Hubert, Ed, Scoop and the entire army of crooked-bicycle-parkers that campaigned in Florida. But Jimmy Carter, the Cheshire cat media mirage says he has only been to Washington to get on the tour bus and wants to wipe out the bureaucrats as badly as Wallace.

Wallace just can't deal with Carter the same way he bludgeoned poor Albert Brewer. Not only does he have to speak the sanitized language of the presidential campaign, he must as well watch Carter take a tip from Max Weber and take advantage of the routinization of his charisma, the routinization of his demagoguery.

In the South, there has never been any secret as to what Wallace does when he campaigns, channeling bitterness into votes by transforming any land he steps on into an instant Confederacy, an instant defeated territory. He opens the wounds in all who listen to him and promises retribution for slights that are hardly imagined. As his admirer John Rawbon wrote, where Wallace goes, "the Confederacy still lives."

But Florida, which will decide today whether or not George Wallace survives, is hardly the South at all in many places. It is the vacuum at the end of the struggle, the Muzak and Foster Grants at the end of the assembly line. Jimmy Carter has perfectly simulated the essence of that Florida by treaclizing Wallace's deep fury, conducting a grinning rebellion.

In the absolute center of Florida is the Magic Kingdom of Disney World. In this well-designed universe, built for Carter's new crusade, incongruity is eliminated. Photographers there find it hard to catch anything off-guard, because it is so well-planned. Even J.H. Bigham ("a cripple like yourself") wouldn't have any trouble getting around or getting "the best cuts of meat, etc." In the center of Mouseville is the hall of the American presidents where 38 life-sized electronic dummies nod and fold and unfold arms while the Battle Hymn of the Republic plays on the sound system. Ike and Harding and Lincoln and Uncle Baines stand there as dream images to be lit up every hour on the hour for a group that has waited in line for two hours to be able to sit inside for an electronically induced inspiration. Jimmy Carter belongs on that row of battery-powered presidents. George Wallace, half steel and wires already but pumping up his human hatred and vengeance four times daily, doesn't.

Wallace will probably put together enough of his natural core to finish first tonight, but his percentages will be considerably lower than they were in 1972. His issues are colder and the penny ante demon is on the wane. He's been usurped and outmoded. It's always dangerous to write political obituaries, but if Wallace isn't through for good in July, it will only be because one way or another he's linked up with that other charming anachronism, Ronald Reagan.

Word is in Alabama that he'll seize ancient Senator John Sparkman's seat in 1978, lacking the strength to foist his wife Cornelia on the slate the way he could Governor Lurleen. "He'll go to the Senate," said one party power recently. "Folks'll want to send him where he'll be happy. What the hell else would he do? He'll speak for us, like he always did. That's one thing about George. He may never get to be President. But he can always say what's on folks' minds. Shee-it yes. Y'all can say all you want about him, but he sure sent our message clear. Shee-it yes."