George Wallace Rhetoric

Politics and rhetoric of George Wallace influenced later conservative leaders such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton and George Bush. All in which modified his political toolbox, knowns as the Southern Strategy, for example creating wedge issue in polarization, accommodating the public’s emotion and most importantly using technology to their advantage in communicating to the public. Though the utilization of the silent majority, new technology, and the southern strategy were effective, they were not appropriate. I will describe the powerful tactics taken from Wallace’s toolbox and how the presidents effected the use of political campaign to their discretion.

The views of television all started when George Wallace stood as a “traffic

Richard Nixon used technology in his campaign which put him way ahead of the lead by doing polls in which helped identify what and why the citizens of America were mad and what they would like to happen in regards of change. These polls were carried out by Princeton’s Opinion Research Corporation. “Nixon’s men know the tools of their trade. Television would allow minimum uncontrolled exposure of the candidate and an opportunity for maximum manipulation of the electorate” (page 25). One of Nixon’s media advisors told him before his nomination “Voters are basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort to understand what we’re talking about… Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration… The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable… It’s the aura that surrounds the charismatic figure more than it is the figure itself that draws followers. Our task is to build that aura” (page 25). Nixon used this information to fight for and gain information about what emotional unstable the public so that through his campaign could accommodate their feelings. He wanted to make his audience feel like he was one of them and in turn, would represent them and their values when elected. Television

The technology and his acting career helped him present himself as the character his campaign wanted him to be perceived as the white republican leader. “He had learned to ‘sell himself’ effortlessly as a man for all times… He is the ideal past, the successful present, the hopeful future all in one. He is conceiving because he has ‘been there’ – been almost everywhere in our modern American culture – yet he ‘has no past’… He had made pretending the easiest thing we do” (page 68). Television was used and always made Ronald Raegan look so much more appealing than anyone he was against. Therefore, using this to his advantage he flipped the table whenever he talked about his ideas on how great the people of America could be. What they, the public, could do and what he mostly likely wanted them to do to gain more support. He repealed the Rumford Act which “Prohibited an owner from offering property for sale or rent and then withdrawing it for religious reasons” (page 55). By doing this he created a wedge between the whites who believed that their freedom of property rights were being taken away. Then later taking a straight quote from Wallace’s campaign speech and saying “You