On the Right

Birmingham, Sept. 16—I don’t believe it, but I feel bound to report that in Birmingham people in apparent possession of their faculties actually believe that Ford will beat Carter in Alabama. Moreover, this intelligence was gathered on the very day that Jimmy Carter, trolling the city for votes, a) appeared under the personal auspices of Governor Wallace, and b) talked about the glories of small business, the problems of small business, and the ineptitude of Republicans in taking into account the problems of businessmen. He talked the way Senator Robert Kennedy talked in the primary contest in Indiana in 1968, when he delivered lines that could as well have been spoken by Senator Goldwater. It is quite astonishing that in an age of satellite communication, a political candidate can tell voters in one corner of the swimming pool something he would really just as soon the voters at the other end of the swimming pool didn’t hear.

But even though in middle-class Alabama there is considerable resistance to Carter, there is also skepticism on the question whether there are any “true differences” between the parties. They have had, after all, a generation of Governor Wallace, one of whose most famous generalities was that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major political parties. It is difficult to know what Governor Wallace might have done to American politics if he had not been struck down. In 1972, with McGovern and Nixon the candidates, the two parties were as widely separated as they can be within the framework of consensus this side of revolutionary resistance. Wallace’s great opportunity came when McGovern was nominated. If he had then joined the Republican Party, he’d have brought a huge constituency over with him. Failing to do so, and nominally backing McGovern, Wallace chose to remain a Democrat. Four years later, Carter skillfully co-opted much, though we have yet to know exactly how much, of Wallace’s following. He left the general impression with many voters, particularly in the South, that the difference between the two parties is not significant.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

Birmingham, Sept. 16—I don’t believe it, but I feel bound to report that in Birmingham people in apparent possession of their faculties actually believe that Ford will beat Carter in Alabama. Moreover, this intelligence was gathered on the very day that Jimmy Carter, trolling the city for votes, a) appeared under the personal auspices of Governor Wallace, and b) talked about the glories of small business, the problems of small business, and the ineptitude of Republicans in taking into account the problems of businessmen. He talked the way Senator Robert Kennedy talked in the primary contest in Indiana in 1968, when he delivered lines that could as well have been spoken by Senator Goldwater. It is quite astonishing that in an age of satellite communication, a political candidate can tell voters in one corner of the swimming pool something he would really just as soon the voters at the other end of the swimming pool didn’t hear.

But even though in middle-class Alabama there is considerable resistance to Carter, there is also skepticism on the question whether there are any “true differences” between the parties. They have had, after all, a generation of Governor Wallace, one of whose most famous generalities was that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major political parties. It is difficult to know what Governor Wallace might have done to American politics if he had not been struck down. In 1972, with McGovern and Nixon the candidates, the two parties were as widely separated as they can be within the framework of consensus this side of revolutionary resistance. Wallace’s great opportunity came when McGovern was nominated. If he had then joined the Republican Party, he’d have brought a huge constituency over with him. Failing to do so, and nominally backing McGovern, Wallace chose to remain a Democrat. Four years later, Carter skillfully co-opted much, though we have yet to know exactly how much, of Wallace’s following. He left the general impression with many voters, particularly in the South, that the difference between the two parties is not significant.