William Safire, “On Language: Bird-Dog Minute” (New York Times, Feb. 24, 2008)
The word [firewall] burned through the thin, dry-timbered wall of political neology in 1984, as Senator John Glenn’s campaign manager in South Carolina, John Lawson, told the A.P. that Glenn’s campaign “considered six Deep South states to be the crucial states for Glenn — the fire wall, if you will, between Mondale and the nomination.” Fritz Mondale won a majority of those states in Democratic races on his way to ultimate defeat in the general election by Ronald Reagan. “So much for the fire wall,” observes Ben Zimmer of Oxford University Press. “It worked about as well for Glenn in ’84 as Florida did this year for Giuliani and California for Romney.”
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