Customer Reviews

The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics

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Every year I teach this book for about 125 undergraduates in a course called "Race and American Politics from the New Deal to the New Right." Though it is a course that welcomes controversy, one thing that virtually all of my students agree upon is that this is a GREAT book. Carter, the dean of Southern historians, is a masterful storyteller with a matchless eye for detail and a balanced political judgment. He shows how Wallace, far from being just another Southern demogogue, opens the way to the transformation of American politics and the rise of a new conservatism whose wellsprings are the rage and fear of white Americans in the face of the civil rights revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. It's a brilliant, absorbing book and every year when I read it again I am struck by the rich craft of Carter's prose and the deep thoughtfulness of his assessments.

This is an excellent study on the political career of George Wallace, the former Alabama Governor famed for his stand against integration in the early 1960's and his subsequent runs for the Presidency. Carter portrays Wallace as a complex individual, who seems to have been motivated from the start more by ambition than principle. The book gives an extremely well researched and readable account of Wallace's early life, his family, friendships and formative experiences. Carter attempts to show that Wallace early on became politically ambitious for the Alabama Governor's office and that he originally adopted the stance of a moderate (for the time) southern populist, going so far as to refuse to break away from the Democratic party in 1948 and supporting Truman over Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat party.

In the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election Wallace was defeated by a more blatantly racist, segregationist opponent and vowed in a famed statement of racial epithet never to be the racial moderate in any future elections. True to his word he ran a 1962 campaign on the stance of continued defiance to federal government attempts to integrate Alabama schools and extend voting rights to the state's black population. Successfully elected, he made a national name for himself by his confrontations with the federal courts (including initially trying to defy or evade the court orders of man who had once been a good friend - Federal Judge Frank Johnson) and the Kennedy Justice Department. The book doesn't shy away from the resulting violence of some of Wallace's followers and the more extreme racist comments and actions of many of those who supported him in the 1960's. I think Carter makes a good case that by his disregard for federal law enforcement agencies and civil rights protesters that Wallace in some degree bore some of the responsibility for the actions of the more extreme and violent of those opposed to integration and expanded civil rights for black citizens.

Carter also provides great detail into minds of the inner circle of those men who managed Wallace's candidacy in his state and later national campaigns for President, including talented speechwriter but also violent racist Klansman Asa Carter (no relation to the author), who would later become famous as the author of the historical novel that inspired the Clint Eastwood movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales". Biographer Carter's premise is that by Wallace's strong showings in the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972 (before he was derailed by an assassination attempt) that Wallace succeeded in moving the national political debate to the right, especially in the area of social policies and politics. Carter has gone on record in other books and speeches as trying to link the Republican policies of welfare reform, re-examination of affirmative action policies and anti-crime legislation as being directly descended from Wallace's bigoted early campaigns. While I think he stretches the point I do think that some of Wallace's populist appeal did pave the way for successful Presidential campaigns of other southerners, such as Georgia's Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Arkansas' Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Carter sees Republican Ronald Reagan as more of a direct descendant of Wallace, but this reviewer sees it as a fact that most successful Presidential races since 1968 whether Republican or Democrat have taken Wallace's anti-Washington bureaucrat populist rhetoric and support for a stronger defense and lower taxes as being more important than his racial stances.

Of course Wallace himself moderated his racial stances through the succeeding years, until he was running as a populist with appeal to both blacks and whites in the 1980's and appealing for forgiveness to many of those he had wronged. Carter dutifully reports this later conversion, although he seems to question some of the sincerity behind the public conversion.

The book doesn't represent itself as a conventional biography as much as an examination of Wallace's life and the effects of his political campaigns on national and regional politics, and for that reason I can forgive what I see as a failure of the book to give as much detail and scrutiny to Wallace's life after 1972 as Carter gave the previous years. The book does a powerful job of conveying the reality of Lurleen Wallace's life and trials as George's wife as well as her fights with the cancer that finally killed her. Her stint as a successful stand in candidate for Governor in 1966 and her short term in office before her death is given a good overview. However I would have liked to have seen as much detail and information on Wallace's later family and personal life, including his other marriages and relationships with his children. I also would have been interested in finding out more about the Alabama political scene of the 1980's and 1990's and Wallace's lasting effect on those politics, but I can't argue with the fact that Carter has written a masterful portrait on both the man and his era and the waves he caused by his political campaigns. A definite 5 stars for this award winning (justly so, I might add) political biography.

this book served as the springboard for investigating southern politics since 1965 for a graduate southern history seminar. one can only sit and marvel at the job carter does in discussing this very topic. it is not just the story of southern politics, but the tale of the "southernization of america." carter enters this academic debate, southernization vs. americanization, feet first and holds wallace up as the forbearer of reaganism and gingrichism. this will remain the authoritative account on this matter for some years. it is extremely hard, due to the solid scholarship, to argue with carter. some may want to say what about goldwater, but that is a difficult case to make. goldwater claimed the republican party no longer spoke his language once wallaceism entered the rhetoric. carter has refered to wallace as a "redneck poltergeist" and virginia durr believed wallace held so much promise, but was dismayed by wallace continuing his "politics of rage." a tellling read of this character that was geo. wallace. wallace is placed beside huey long as the most compelling political figure of the 20th century. and rightly so. a thorough study of southern, or american, history is incomplete without having read this book. this book stands with carter's scottsboro in terms of importance.

In this book, Dan Carter provides a wonderfully insightful examination of a man who perhaps more than any other has defined the course of contemporary American politics. An ambitious man from the start, Carter shows how Wallace tapped the growing uneasiness of many voters towards the profound changes taking place in American society after World War II, using it to win the governorship of Alabama as a defender of segregation. Though Wallace ultimately failed in his subsequent quest for the presidency on a similar platform, his campaigns introduced themes and tactics that would become staples of postwar American politics. In this passionate yet objective account, Carter succeeds in helping the reader understand both the man and what his candidacies represented, as well as their lasting effects on the nation.

After reading this book, you truly will see the impact Wallace has had on politics and the right. Goldwater and Nixon obviously took their cues from this man. Carter has presented an excellent portrait of Wallace and the lengths he went to in order to be elected. My only regret in this book is a very small portrait of his terms as the chief executive of Alabama, but this is a minor quibble. A very enjoyable read.

George Wallace was not an evil man, just an opportunist. He was a liberal on racial issues until he lost his first race for the Alabama governorship because of race baiting. Carter relates these surprising facts and documents how Wallace's brand of conservatism became adopted by mainstream candidates such as Ronald Reagan and also how an assassain's bullet pushed him toward that path of asking for redemption from the very people he had previously villified. Carter is an excellent biographer, and "The Politics of Rage," is well worthy of its subject.

Other reviewers have commented on the lack of detail in this book about Wallace's early and post-shooting life. This is valid but, as the title makes clear, not really the point. Carter's work is quite specifically examining the active part of Wallace's political life, and in this regard he does a stellar job of charting the rise of conservatism and Wallace's defining role in that rise, a subject all the more relevant as fundamentalism and "righteous anger" have made a comback in the start of the new century. For those with an interest in poli sci and/or the flipside of the cultural revolution of the 60's and 70's, this is an enlightening read.

Since I read, on 7 Dec 1969, Professor Carter's masterful Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South I have since this book was published in 1995 wanted to read it. It tells well the story of George Wallace, four-times governor of Alabama, and his time, and is well footnoted with a good bibliography. It is disturbing that as recently as 1972 a blatantly racist message could resonate so powerfully not only in Alabama but in other states as well. A few years ago the ban on miscegenation which was in the Alabama Constitution was repealed by the people of Alabama (tho it had been inoperative by reason of a US Supreme Court ruling long before)and I found that encouraging, but one has to fear that many of the people who so raucously supported the bigoted and corrupt regime of Wallace as recently as 1972 may not have repented. Reading this book is as sobering as thinking about the fact that millions in Germany as recently as 1939 supported Nazidom.

All the cliched phrases that can be trotted out to describe this book are true: well-written, exhaustively noted, probing, keen analysis etc.
For years many in the south (esp African Americans) have been resistent to embracing conservatism. Black Americans are the one true reliable voting bloc for Democrats regionally and in the nation overall. Far too many in the media were ready to lump Wallace into the same pen as the GOP more Libertarian/small govt wing best represented by Reagan and Goldwater.
Wallace was except in matters of race a thorough-going liberal from the FDR big-spender mold. This book explains quite clearly how Wallace saw race-baiting and proSegregation advocacy as the "next big thing" and not only hopped aboard but sought to commandeer the ship as well. He was able to mask his racism behind the rhetoric of the otherwise respectable conservatism which was even then taking form in the USA. The half-hearted, undeclared, no-win war in Viet Nam and the ballooning, budget-busting nondefense spending of the mid to late 60s left many otherwise liberal folks soured on activist govt. The Kennedy and LBJ administrations--comprised as they were of the so-called "best and brightest"-- ignored the impact their policies had on the newly "economically emancipated" lower working class whites who had heretofore been front and center fans of the old FDR coalition and its domestic agenda.
Wallace recognized how these folks were not being heard by the two dominant parties. Though he was beset by novice incompetent staffers and an incoherent grab bag of policies (all of which suffered from an overlay of heavy racism) Wallace stepped in to fill the gap ignored by the D and R pols of that era.
I think Carter is wrong to impute that Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and their ilk are somehow legatees of Wallace's mistrust of "elitist" Washington bureaucratic control. Its always amazing to hear politicians who've built their careers on denunciations of "Washington meddling" who've nonetheless spent their careers in DC politics.
All told it was a great book. You sense the frustration of the Northern folks who were waylaid by the practical effects of LBJ's domestic reforms. The book invites all sorts of speculation. What if Wallace had denounced the Viet Nam war along with the War on Poverty as both being "unwinnable"? At one point in an off the cuff remark, Wallace's Veep nominee spoke out in FAVOR of abortion rights (thus alienating blue collar ethnic Catholics in the NE USA). What might have happened had Wallace forcibly spoken out against abortion? The 68 campaign predated the 1973 Roe v Wade holding. Perhaps Wallace could have made abortion/proLife Supreme Court nominees a secret weapon? Had he done so how might evangelical Christian conservatives reacted?
What Dan Carter derides as Christian conservatives in the 60s were actually closer in spirit to the various neoNazi "Christian Identity" groups now based in Idaho and other largely white enclaves.
To that extent Carter is akin to the many observers today who readily equate Christian "values voters" or proLifers to KKK fringe. The failed Wallace campaign was at best flypaper to isolate various fringe kooks. George Wallace saw that those could be used to advance him but he didnt want to be seen as their "spokesman" and the tensions this created within his campaign are evident throughout this superb book

Carter's scholarship is superb but his writing dense. Though he correctly gauges Wallace's political import, as did other biographers before him, he wrongly equates Wallace's racism with his other political stances. Millions supported Wallace because he articulated their concerns over issues like crime, high taxes, and federal intrusion that other politicians of the time were ignoring.