Реферат: George Wallace Essay Research Paper Former Gov

presidential primaries. He rattled the party’s establishment with a

second-place finish in Wisconsin and a rapid ascent in the polls. He also

won primaries in Maryland and Michigan on May 16, but got the news in a

hospital bed, having been shot and paralyzed on the day before the

balloting.

The injury from Bremer’s bullet became a “thorn in my flesh,” Wallace

later said, and the truncated campaign became a thorn in his psyche. He

died believing that had he not been shot, popular appeal would have forced

the Democratic Party to put him on the ticket in 1972 to keep Nixon from

sweeping the Sun Belt and blue-collar enclaves in the Middle West and

Northeast.

Wallace ran again in 1976. From the start, aides noticed that the applause

dwindled once crowds saw his shiny wheelchair. Wallace noticed it, too,

and in private he disputed friends who reminded him that Franklin

Roosevelt had won despite crutches and wheelchair.

“Yeah,” Wallace told his confidant Oscar Adams, “they elected Roosevelt,

but they didn’t watch him on television every night getting hauled on a

plane like he was half-dead.”

The death of Wallace’s presidential dream came just before the Illinois

primary, when he dropped out and endorsed a more modern Southerner with no

segregationist baggage, Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

Wallace wanted to be remembered for his shining moment in 1972 and the

Main Street themes he brought to prominence. Dan Carter, a professor of

history at Emory University and author of the most detailed Wallace

biography, “The Politics of Rage,” supports the claim.

“It is difficult to conceive of what American politics of the 1960s, 70s

and 80s would be like without George Wallace,” Carter said in a 1994

interview. “I don’t think there’s a single issue that Nixon and Reagan

talk of in terms of social issues that he doesn’t get to first.”