For Want of a Primary
George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was the 37th and 40th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1973 and from 1977 to 1981. Along with Grover Cleveland, he is one of two presidents in American history to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office. He had previously served as the 44th governor of Alabama for two terms.
Born in Clio, Alabama, Wallace attended the University of Alabama School of Law and served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, he won election to the Alabama House of Representatives and served as a state judge. Wallace was elected Governor of Alabama in 1958. Wallace left office after one term due to term limits, but his wife, Lurleen Wallace, won the next election and succeeded him, though he was the
de facto governor. Wallace won another term as Governor of Alabama in 1966.
After being considered as a possible running mate for President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Wallace announced a campaign for President in 1968. After Johnson withdrew from the race, Wallace became one of the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination, alongside Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Eschewing the hardline segregationism of many other Southern Democrats, Wallace's populist campign appealed to working-class voters in both the North and South. After Kennedy's assassination, many of his supporters flocked to Wallace, and he won the nomination for President at the Democratic National Convention. Wallace went on to be elected President over Republican Richard Nixon, in part due to Nixon being accused of sabotaging peace talks in the Vietnam War.
Wallace ended the military draft in 1970 and ended American involvement in Vietnam in 1971. Wallace's visit to China in 1972 eventually led to diplomatic relations between the two nations, and he gained the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year. In domestic affairs, Wallace signed the National Healthcare Act of 1970, greatly expanding government-provided healthcare in the United States. He also established the Environmental Protection Agency, presided over the Apollo 11 moon landing, and began the War on Cancer. However, he was criticized on the left for his crackdowns against domestic extremists and drug users, which some saw as violations of civil liberties.
On June 5, 1972, Wallace was shot multiple times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Santa Barbara, California. While he survived, he was paralyzed from the waist down, and doctors advised him to end his reelection campaign. Wallace arranged for delegates to vote for his wife Lurleen as the Democratic nominee, to the anger of Vice President Richard J. Hughes. Lurleen Wallace won the Democratic nomination over Hughes and Wallace's primary opponent Mike Gravel, but lost the general election to Republican Spiro Agnew.
With Agnew's resignation shortly into his term and the middling popularity of President Nelson Rockefeller, Wallace ran for a second, nonconsecutive term as President in 1976. He won the Democratic nomination with relative ease and defeated Ronald Reagan, who had defeated President Rockefeller in the Republican primary, for a second term. Wallace's second term was less successful than his first, as he faced crises such as stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the 1980 Olympic boycott. Wallace left office due to term limits in 1981, and his Vice President, Frank Church, lost in a landslide to Republican John Connally. After his presidency, Wallace largely retreated from the public eye, although he gave a well-known speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in support of Democratic nominee and future president Joe Biden. Wallace died of septic shock in September of 1998 at the age of 79. Wallace is typically ranked near the middle of US presidents, praised for his role in crating national heathcare but criticized for his civil liberties record and his second term.
*ignore where it says 49th, that's a typo. I lifted some of the description from Wallace and Nixon's wikipedia pages