George Wallace as VP

[Agonized-Statism]

You're basically proposing a continuation of the standard New Dealer ticket balancing formula, which had become an impossibility by 1968 with the progression of civil rights. No one would be happy with the contradictions in the ticket and someone still would have walked away from the party. In the case that Wallace joined the Nixon ticket, the Republicans would risk overplaying their hand with the intentionally gradual Southern Strategy and losing ground elsewhere, although Nixon/Wallace might still barely win.

[Agonized-Statism]

It’s not like Agnew was a great pick.

He wasn't the segregation candidate like Wallace was (actually a proponent of moderate, non-violent desegregation, which fit the zeitgeist). Wallace was to the issue what Rick Santorum was to gay marriage in the 2000s, or I guess what Marjorie Taylor-Greene is to the conservative position literally every current event now: too much of a symbol for extremism. Agnew was broadly acceptable.