Colonel John Warnock of Arkansas rises to address the convention on the subject of 'America in Jeopardy.' Chief Justice Earl Warren was "the worst thing that ever happened" to the United States. "When he lay in state in the Supreme Court building" Warnock thundered, "over one million Negroes were in walking distance but only 300 showed up to pay their respects." He goes on to bemoan the fact that there are "500,000 people in Chicago who don't even speak English" and lament that "the more mixed blood in hospitals, the more hepatitis there will be."

At the end of the session, a short period is allowed for delegates to sound off. (AIP-members pride themselves on being democratic, although many will not use the word because "the Founding Fathers did not.") Michael Jacobs, a delegate from Vermont, objects to the racial overtones of Colonel Warnock's remarks and notes that such overtones will harm the party's efforts to broaden its base. "How many niggers you got in Vermont?" a man shouts out. I peer over at the only black face in the room--that of a young security guard. He remains impassive. A burly, slightly drunk Ohioan goes to the microphone to make his contribution. "The Panama Canal is as much ours as Alaska or the Louisiana Purchase... We should make it the 51st state."

Outside the convention hall, former Louisiana Congressman John Rarick holds an impromptu press conference. Leaning on one leg and looking very cocky in his white shoes and gray, dry-look pompadour, Rarick, who gained a reputation as one of the most anti-Semitic men in Congress, discusses his hopes to run as an AIP candidate for president and Congress simultaneously in November. A reporter from the Boston Globe raises the possibility that such a move might be illegal. Rarick looks puzzled and says he hasn't considered that. Another question. Busing. Ah yes! A smile. If Catholics and Protestants were to be successfully bused in Northern Ireland, Arabs and Israelis in the Mid-East, and Turks and Greeks on Cyprus--then Rarick might consider accepting busing in this country.

Friday is the big day. Maddox struts into a press conference, proclaims "I am a segregationist," calls Carter "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and argues with a black reporter about white rule in South Africa.

Over a drink up in the one-typewriter, one-telephone press room, Ned Young, Maddox's campaign director ("'manager' sounds too offensive") tells me the real story behind the pickhandle legend. "The Governor used to own a place called the Pickrick Restaurant and the handles were sold as souvenirs--4000 in two days one time--like those rocks they sell." I begin comparing the little innocuous pet rocks I know with the famed pickhandles and what I had heard about them when Young interrupted my thoughts to remind me once again that there was nothing symbolic about the pickhandle. "He never actually wielded a pickhandle, now did he?" Young asks. "You ever seen a picture of that?" I had to confess that I hadn't, although I did remember a photo of Maddox wielding a gun when chasing blacks away from his restaurant.

Young goes on to discuss Jimmy Carter's attitude toward Maddox when the latter served under Carter as lieutenant governor. "Carter sent word for Maddox to come see him after the inauguration. He said, 'I need no assistance from you whatsoever. If you oppose the governor's office, we will destroy you.'"

I head upstairs to where Maddox is scheduled to address several midwestern delegations. The elevator fills up and an elderly man shoots me a quick "Hello young fella." I bait him. "Mr. Maddox, what would you have done if this was 1968 and there were demonstrators downstairs?" "I think Mayor Daley did the right thing," Lester Maddox says, emerging from the elevator to tell the crowd "regardless of where everyone else stands today, I'll still be Lester Maddox tomorrow."

Maddox delegate Louis Kuynyo shifts from one foot to another as a boyish Fatty Arbuckle at his side snaps Maddox's picture. "I just cross my fingers we don't have another Wallace on our hands," Kuynyo' whispers.

Downstairs, one of the natty Reaganite interlopers, Howard Phillips '62, beckons me over to talk. Phillips, a bright and articulate man who helped found the Young Americans for Freedom shortly after leaving Harvard, is a former director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. He claims to have convinced Nixon to dismantle OEO but became disenchanted upon discovering that the Administration was not as committed as he to ending such federal programs. Phillips believes that federal funds are presently being used for welfare rights organizations, gay liberation, rent strikes and so forth. Most Americans are "common sense, non-ideological conservatives," he says, "They are patriotic, concerned about national defense, worried about inflation and a balanced budget." But most conservatives, according to Phillips, are Democrats; thus the movement can't work through the Republican Party. "They have to know you're not Watergate and Herbert Hoover," he explains. Hence the new party attempt at the AIP convention.

Phillips admits failure for the time being. Now is just not the time for this clan. The AIP isn't ready for an assault from the outside. Party Chairman William Shearer likens the AIP to a girl "targeted for a rape that didn't come off." By morning all of them--Phillips, Rusher, Viguerie, Morris--have packed their Brooks Brothers suits and disappeared.

Inside the hall, I cruise past the two-man "state caucuses," past the gentleman who hopes to be elected President by convincing representatives of the electoral college to vote for him (as they are constitutionally able to do), past a stars and stripes costume on the body of an elderly woman. She carries flags of the United States and of Texas. Her name is Margaret Mathews and she claims to be the great-granddaughter of Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy. We discuss the Civil War at some length. She has two 40-foot flag poles which stand outside her home in Cut-N-Shoot, Texas. On one flies Old Glory; on the other the Confederate flag flying over the emblem of the Lone Start State.

The prospective nominees begin their final pitches forvotes Morris babbles incoherently; Rarick divided the nation into two kinds of people: "Americans and one-world internationalists"; Maddox dismisses those who don't like his image. "The radicals don't, the anarchists don't, the dope-pushers don't, the Communist Russians don't, the agitators don't."

Balloting begins without Alabama--no one from that state has shown up. "Madame Secretary, Nebraska...which commends New Hampshire and its governor Meldrim