Friday, September 9, 2016

the last book I ever read (Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, excerpt six)

from Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein:

Sunday morning the snarlingest dog of them all showed up on Meet the Press and proved he could look as winsome as a puppy when occasion demanded. “I will stand in the schoolhouse door,” George Wallace responded confidently when asked what he would do on June 11, registration day for new students at the University of Alabama. He proceeded to make it sound like the most reasonable thing in the world. He pulled out a card from his pocket and began reading: The Supreme Court had “improperly set itself up as a third house of Congress, a superlegislature.” FDR said that in 1937, Wallace explained with a grin. “I concur in it.” Editorial pages around the country on Monday morning rang with praise for the governor’s position. Declared the Winona (Kansas) Leader, “The very people who have the greatest stake in preserving the constitution”—Negroes—“are doing the most to destroy it” with their intemperate protests. Such editorials only made the Kennedys more determined in their belief that if they could only give the protesters what they were demanding, they could stop the George Wallaces of the world in their tracks.



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