Will McCain Play the Race Card?

They wheeled George Wallace in backward and then lifted him onto a seat behind his bulletproof lectern. Confetti, thrown by little girls in straw hats, caught in his swept-back hair. Wallace waved to the crowd.

We were in Southie — South Boston — in February 1976, and Wallace was running for president. Five hundred people were packed into a small hall, and 300 more waited outside in the cold.

Wallace had been shot and paralyzed in Laurel, Md., during the presidential primary in 1972. A lot of people remember that. But not everyone remembers that he also won the Maryland primary that year, just like he won primaries in Michigan, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina.

People also forget just how popular his segregationist message was. In 1964, when he had been governor of Alabama for less than a year, Wallace ran for president against Lyndon Johnson, a sitting president, and Wallace almost defeated him in Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Indiana and Maryland.

Wallace's appeal became known as "white backlash." In 1968, Wallace ran for president as a third-party candidate and not only got 10 million votes, but won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Now, he was in Southie, where a few nights before, police and anti-busing protesters had clashed once again. Forty police officers and 20 protesters went to the hospital. Wallace was not cowed. He spoke for an hour in a strong, resonant voice.

"You will be the kings and queens of American politics!" he promised the crowd. "You! The working men and women will be the kings and queens instead of the ultra-liberal left that has been getting everything all the time!"

(I am not depending on my memory here. I still have the yellowed newsprint copy of my column from that night. It was one of the first columns I ever wrote.)

Wallace spoke out against busing, about media "propaganda" and ended with an ominous joke. I think it was a joke anyway.

"There were two men in a bar," Wallace said. "Big guy and a little guy. The big guy hits the little guy with one big hand and says, 'That's karate. I got it from Korea.'

"Then the big guy picks up the little guy and throws him all around. He says to the little guy, 'That's judo. I got it from Japan.'

"So the little guy leaves the bar. He comes back 10 minutes later and — the big guy is on the floor out cold.

"The little guy turns to the bartender. 'That was a tire iron,' he says. 'I got it from Sears, Roebuck.'"

The crowd roared.

After his speech, Wallace took some questions from reporters.

"My strategy?" Wallace said.

The name of George Wallace, who died in 1998, was invoked a few days ago by Rep. John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil rights leader. Lewis likened the rhetoric of Wallace to the rhetoric of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

"Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse," Lewis said. "George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Ala. As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all."

It was a shocking statement. (And it was meant to shock.) McCain was stunned. In August, at a public forum, McCain had named Lewis as one of the "wisest" people he knew and a person he would "rely on heavily" during his administration.

McCain issued a very tough statement in reply to Lewis' remarks, saying the comments were "beyond the pale" and that Lewis had made a "brazen and baseless attack" on McCain's character and the character of his supporters. McCain then called on Barack Obama to "repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments," even though Obama had not made them.

Obama obliged. In part. Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama, said: "Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies. But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.'"

That latter reference was to '60s radical William Ayers, a line of attack the McCain campaign has been pursuing with vigor recently. What McCain has not been pursuing, to the consternation of some of his supporters, is an attack on Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

On the face of it, attacking Obama on Wright makes more sense than attacking him on Ayers. Obama was much closer to Wright and Wright's statements are much more recent than Ayers' actions.

But McCain is resisting. So far. He wants to get out of this presidential race without being accused of racism.

And that was the point of John Lewis' very strong statement. Lewis was issuing a warning to McCain.

He was saying: Don't go there. Don't even think about going there. Don't lay down the hay where the goats can get it.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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