In his heart, Reverend James McKendree Wall still knows that George McGovern was right. So do a lot of his liberal Democratic friends. After McGovern’s 1972 landslide defeat, most of them went on to back Democratic presidential contenders in the same mold: Morris Udall (1976), Teddy Kennedy (1980), Jesse Jackson (1984, 1988), Paul Simon (1988), and Tom Harkin (1992).
He also learned that those who insist on perfection are often themselves less than perfect. “The McGovern campaign was a real eye-opener to me. It helped me see that liberal ideologues can be just as arrogant, stubborn, and self-righteous as those on the right.”
Sometimes the discipline was there. George Wallace’s conservative forces at the 1972 convention introduced a strong abortion-on-demand resolution, a trick “clearly designed to hurt McGovern,” says Wall. “He was already being pilloried as the candidate of ‘acid, amnesty, and abortion.’” McGovern strategist Gary Hart passed the word to vote down the resolution; it was Wall’s job to make sure his people did so. He talked to a feminist state legislator who said, “I don’t see what’s the matter. I agree with this.” Wall replied, “I know how difficult it is for you, but you have to trust me. You’re voting for McGovern’s best interests, not on the resolution.” She did vote against it, eliciting Wall’s admiration: “She knew that politics is the art of compromise.”
Having renounced the customary leftist rituals of purification, Wall has devoted his political time to honing his skills in the game of politics. He managed Paul Simon’s 1984 primary campaign for U.S. Senate and hired Forrest Claypool, now Illinois’ deputy treasurer, to work in it. In that hotly contested four-way race, Claypool says, “Jim handled the money brilliantly, so that the resources were there at the end. He understands campaign structure and organization, how to set the tone and then delegate, and the need to husband resources early so that you can put your foot to the accelerator later. He’s a good negotiator, too: he got me to take a 50 percent pay cut from my previous job.”
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This year Claypool served as Clinton’s authorized representative in Illinois during the primary season. “From the very beginning,” he says, “Jim was intimately involved in networking around the state with activists he knew, bringing in information we needed for delegate selection. Plus he’s a master of the party rules. I’ve seen him embarrass more than one election lawyer by having a greater command of the law than they did.”
Wall loves politics–as a competition, as a set of skills bringing him into contact with all kinds of people, as a way to move the country in the right direction, and not least as an exercise in dealing with the essential ambiguity of the human condition. But despite his experience and expertise in politics, Wall remains an amateur, not a professional. He has another life to go back to after the conventions. He’s a film critic, an ordained United Methodist minister, and the editor of the mainline Protestant journal Christian Century.
This instinct persists even in the comparatively sophisticated venue of public television. On the New York-based show Open Mind in November 1990, interviewer Richard Heffner virtually cross-examined Wall on the ethics of a minor episode in Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Illinois primary campaign. Wall had briefed Carter on each area of the state, saying that he thought Carter would win about 40 delegates, but that Carter should downplay expectations and predict ten.
