1968 Law and Order issue

MaGZ said:
Who first stated discussing the "law and order" issue in 1968, Nixon or Wallace?
This article indicates it was first Wallace and later the issue was stolen by Tricky Dick.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...,4234559&dq=law-and-order+nixon+wallace&hl=en
Click to expand...

I thought I recalled something about this from 'The Making of the President: 1968,' and I found a partial copy online. On page 219 he starts a chapter on the issue, it's interesting to read just how much it shocked people at the time, especially White. Unfortunately pages 223-224 are missing, but from 225 one gets the impression that it was Wallace who originally raised the issue, but also that it was a concern and an applause line for every candidate outside Gene McCarthy. The striking statistics he details of how crime rates had skyrocketed in just four years explain just why that was.
 
It wasn’t just ordinary crime but race riots that concern the White population. Remember the King riots in April 1968? Wallace first raised the issue and Nixon stole it, winning him the election.
 
It predates both of them. Goldwater's acceptance speech in '64 has several minutes on the topic and Reagan picked it up in his run for the California Governorship a couple of years later.

Sorry to burst your bubble, MaGZ. I'm sure you want to get extra credit points for Wallace, but he didn't originate anything - he was a follower. It's common knowledge in the not-so-old South, e.g. people of my generation who grew up with him and Maddox and their ilk, that Wallace was a relative moderate prior to losing a local election to a real bigot, after which Wallace commented that he'd "no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out-Nword me, again", and George turned racist from one day to the next.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom