Wallace first captured the national spotlight at the University of Alabama, personally obstructing a federal segregation order. As the governor used his resultant notoriety to argue for "getting the government off the backs of the people," to berate the Washington establishment and the hypocrisy of the "limousine liberals," and to voice the frustrations of the middle class in the face of academic and governmental elites, his critique was obscured by the racist taint, and what would become his true political legacy was overshadowed. For unbeknownst to his more urbane critics, George Wallace was setting the national political agenda for the remainder of this century. In electing Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and even Clinton, Lesher argues, the American people have voted for Wallace's ideas in gentrified form in every election since 1968. For good or ill, Wallace has not only become mainstream, it was he who diverted the nation's course. As such, in Lesher's view, he emerges as the most important loser in the history of presidential politics. In telling the Wallace story, Lesher brings to life what C. Vann Woodward calls the "burden of Southern history," placing Wallace and the sentiments he exploited in the context of Reconstruction and the long struggle, not just of black Americans, but of the white Southern poor as well. By tracing Wallace's rise from the rural poverty of Depression-era Alabama, Lesher allows us to see the whole, complex picture of a small-town politician who had always stood up for "ordinary folks" regardless of color, bu
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Background Information
George Wallace built a lasting career as a segregationist politician in Alabama by defying federal orders to desegregate the University of Alabama.