The fire next time?
he American presidential election cant- Igu has so far been a singularly lack- tre affair. With two principal candidates ea, whatever they do to the electors, leave e commentators cold, it has been crying t for a good scare to set it alight. This It is worth recalling Mr Wallace's own l'lective, as he has never made any secret 11 It is not to be President. It is to modify 5toundly the policies of whoever does ,4Py the White House on 20 January 1969.
11) achieve this purpose he has had two tentative but parallel strategies. The first to hold, or at least to look like holding, balance of power in the Electoral Col- , and thereby to threaten to deadlock election unless one or other of his oppo- tits is prepared to bargain for his support. e second is to scare his opponents into i)Pting 'the principles and philosophy of "! [third] party.' Superficially, at least, this second strategy 4 This is because Mr Wallace's other strategy, potentially a nightmare in the mind of many thinking Americans this year, has, through no fault of his own, misfired. To dominate the election campaign, and then to deadlock the Electoral College, Mr Wal- lace has always needed a close fight between his two major opponents. During the unpre- dictable twists and turns of the preliminaries for this year's campaign there were many occasions when this seemed all too likely to happen. But with each fresh disaster that strikes the Democratic camp the danger recedes. There are still six weeks to go to polling day. But at this stage it seems that Mr Nixon will not need Mr Wallace's good- will to secure his victory. that has engulfed America today, instinc- tively wanting to meet black power with white power, alarmed that their traditional political leaders seem not to feel as they do (or else are powerless to do anything about it), anxious and insecure.
This is the enduring importance of the Wallace campaign. It is not enough to casti- gate his open and secret supporters with epithets of abuse. It is evident that millions of Americans have come to feel that their government has fallen down on what is. after" all, the primary responsibility of a nation state—the duty to protect the citizen on his lawful occasions—and that neither of the two major contenders for the presidency can be relied upon to put this right.
