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Clinton-Wallace Mix 'n' MatchMatch the quotation with the angry white male!

By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, May 5, 2008, at 6:27 PM ET
Bill Clinton. Click image to expand.

One of the following quotations is from former President Bill Clinton in 2008—last week, in fact—and one is from the late Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1968. Can you tell which is which?

Quotation 1: "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules. In [southern state] and [southern state] we know that when we see it."

Quotation 2: "They've looked down their noses at the average man on the street too long. They've looked at the bus driver, the truck driver, the beautician, the fireman, the policeman, and the steelworker, the plumber, and the communication worker, and the oil worker and the little businessman. … [t]he average man on the street in [southern state] and [southern state]. …"

Harder than you expected, isn't it? Welcome to the final weeks of the Democratic primary campaign.

You'll find Quotation 1 here and Quotation 2 here.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Photograph of Bill Clinton by by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
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Comments from the Fray

In the South in the Thirties there was no contradiction between being a Liberal Democrat and being an inveterate racist. FDR was hugely popular among southern whites, something I have even heard mentioned in modern C&W songs. I can't think of a more emblematic New Deal project than the dams and rural electrification of the TVA.

Heck even the Klan was often a big supporter of the New Deal, and this is not a criticism of the New Deal, though it may be of FDR. The populist drive that drove the whole project just wasn't all that concerned about race. The south was full of good loyal democrats and guess who administered all the New Deal programs there.

…It is an easy argument: you take someone who is branded "EVIL" and then you look and find out what was so objectionable. Say Hitler liked nature and was a (sort of) vegetarian, then you note how Bill Clinton founded so many Parks, see they are just the same. Same goes with Obama, and McCain is almost a magic target for this sort of thing. Anyone with any sweeping vaguely progressive agenda is going to turn up rhetorical similarities to political pariahs…

--mohe

(To reply, click here and here)

Or we could compare Obama to Hitler… You could find Hitler quotes that sound like things Obama's said.* Although that would show you something, namely that Obama's rhetoric is so vague and meaningless that even a Nazi could agree with it.

* For example: With profound distress millions of the best German men and women from all walks of life have seen the unity of the nation vanishing away, dissolving in a confusion of political and personal opinions, economic interests, and ideological differences. [Take out the word German and this is basically the core theme of Obama's stump speech.]

--traydeuce

(To reply, click here)

Wallace was first and last an opportunist. Like many professional politicians, a stand on either side of the desegregation issues was purely a matter of cynical electoral calculation, not actual principle for or against.As late as 1958 Wallace had the endorsement of the NAACP. And by 1982, he was again winning the majority of the black vote in Alabama… When you seek office, in addition to kissing babies you must kiss certain rings as well. And depending on whether you are in 60s Alabama, or 90s Chicago, those rings might well sit on the fingers of angry whites or angry blacks.

--moodyguppy

(To reply, click here)

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