"IF I were President Johnson and I wanted to be re-elected," Barry Goldwater has said, "I would put George Wallace on my payroll." Other Republicans, alarmed by polls that consistently show Wallace drawing twice as many votes away from a Republican ticket as from the President, share Goldwater's suspicion that the White House has been giving Wallace at least tacit support for his third-party movement.

Wallace's candidacy pleases Democratic strategists because it will cripple the Republican nominee in the South, where most voters are bitterly opposed to the Administration. Wallace can deny Southern electoral votes to Republicans by carrying the states himself or by splitting the anti-Johnson vote so that the President can win a plurality in the state.

In an effort to counter Wallace's appeal, Republican leaders in the South have unleashed a two-sided attack on him. They have tried to show that voting for Wallace will allow Johnson to carry the state, but conservatives concerned about their principles will refuse to back any Republican who seems as liberal as they think Johnson is. Even Richard Nixon, who campaigned extensively in the South in 1960, runs behind the President and Wallace in a three-way poll.

Party spokesmen have also tried to neutralize Wallace's appeal by attacking his record of "socialist welfare measures" in Alabama. When Wallace told an audience that he considers himself "a populist," the Republican state chairman in Georgia said that just means he is "a socialistic racist."

Voters have not been impressed by these attempts to prove that Wallace is not a true conservative. They know that he has taken the acceptable position on states' rights, foreign policy, and crime in the streets. More important than these issues, however, is the South's overwhelming bitterness toward the federal guidelines for school desegregation. And everyone knows what Wallace thinks about that.

NELSON Rockefeller has said several times that the Wallace threat in the South confirms his belief that a conservative Republican cannot be elected in November. Disturbed by Rockefeller's comments, Richard Nixon started telling interviewers that he was not concerned about the South because "I'm not conceding any of these states to Wallace." As a matter of fact, Nixon says, "Wallace will so disrupt the already shattered Democratic machines in the great cities that it will be easier for the Republicans to come through in the big states."

Wallace agrees. Jumping at the chance to hurt Democrats in the North, Wallace has attempted in the last year to convince Northerners that he is not just a crude racist--"My wife received 40 per cent of the nigger vote. These niggers know I want them to get educated." Instead of blatant racism, Wallace offers Northerners "sound Constitutional principles" because "I'm not running on segregation, I'm running on states' rights." That distinction makes him seem more respectable, so Northern whites find it easier to support him openly.

Wallace has also increased his respectability by his frequent appearances at luncheons for business and professional men. His speeches are usually interrupted by table-thumping applause, and his attacks on the "bearded intellectual morons" who commit treason when they denounce the war in Vietnam often bring the cheering community leaders to their feet.

His success in several Democratic primaries in 1964 proves that blue-collar workers will vote for him. Naturally, explosive riots this summer would reinforce racial antagonisms and create instant converts to the Wallace banner. But he also received substantial support from Republican suburbs in his 1964 primary races, and Nixon's calculations ignore the possibility that middle-class suburbanites might desert the Republican nominee for Wallace almost as readily as blue-collar workers dump Johnson.

EVEN if the Republicans hold the suburbs, they will find it difficult to benefit from Wallace's strength outside the South. Polls show that his support is insignificant in the East and is only slightly important in the Middle and Far West. Since hostility to the Administration is widespread among farmers, Republicans would do well in the Mid-west even if Wallace did not siphon off Democratic votes.

With Johnson taking the South and California, the Republican candidate would be left fighting for the populous Northern states which normally give their large blocs of electoral votes to the Democratic ticket. Nixon would be even less popular in these states than the President is. A liberal Republican like Rockefeller, as the polls have indicated since last spring, would be a much stronger candidate. He might even carry one or two moderate states in the South if he could win the solid Negro support Johnson expects to get.

Wallace's hopes of obtaining enough electoral votes to blackmail a major candidate into a "coalition government" will probably prove fruitless. If Nixon is the Republican nominee, Wallace's candidacy is most likely to result in Johnson's re-election. His racist campaign in the fall will only heighten tensions already intensified by a summer of unprecedented violence in the cities.

But Wallace is satisfied with his "spoiler" role this year. He thinks his campaign will have enough impact on the nation to enable him to mount a formidable challenge to the major parties in 1972. Dreaming about a confrontation with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in four years, Wallace likes to watch the countryside pass beneath his plane as he flies off on his campaign tours--"Just think, someday I'll be President of all that."