PEOPLE POWER
The Curious Fate of Populism: How Politics Turned Into Pose
By GEOFFREY NUNBERG
New York Times
Published: August 15, 2004
SHOP like a populist," wrote a columnist in The St. Petersburg Times earlier in the month, recommending a local store that specializes in quirky collectibles like old soap boxes and bowling pins.
That's what the "pop" of "populist" has come to, a century after the disappearance of the Populists, or People's Party, who were a powerful political force in the 1890's. They advocated restrictions on corporate power, the direct election of United States senators, an eight-hour day, and a graduated income tax - proposals that led critics to call them "wild-eyed, rattle-brained fanatics."
Today, though, populism can be as much a matter of style as substance. In Boston Magazine, Jon Keller speaks of John Kerry's difficulty in "convincing southern Nascar dads and Wal-Mart moms of the populist empathy of a windsurfing New England multimillionaire." National Review's Jay Nordlinger writes that "President Bush is engaged in a little populist campaigning himself today - he's going to Indiana and Michigan, for a bus tour."
After the demise of the Populist movement, the term itself was chiefly used to disparage demagogues like Louisiana's governor Huey P. Long. It was only in the 1960's that a new generation of politicians began to reclaim the label, often shorn of its inconvenient connotations of class struggle.
They gave the term a second life. Over the past two decades, use of the term "populism" has been 15 times as common in the press as it was during the Eisenhower years. But now it can refer not just to those who speak for the downtrodden, but to anyone or anything whose appeal seems down home, down to earth or down market.
In recent articles the word has been applied to Michael Moore, John Edwards, Garth Brooks, Steven Spielberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fox News, Burger King, Donald Trump, Muktada al-Sadr, the Google initial public stock offering and Oscar de la Renta's new mid-price fashion line.
In the course of things, "populism" has lost not just its capital letter, but its connection to the sense of "the people" that the name was derived from. That's "the people," not as the populace or the citizenry, but as what William Jennings Bryan described as the "unnumbered throng" who were oppressed by the corporations, the money interests and the trusts, "aggregated wealth and capital, imperious, arrogant, compassionless."
Those antagonisms sound creaky now, like "the people" itself. The "money interest" has yielded to "the elite," as populism has become a matter of "values," rather than class.
"What divides America is authenticity, not something hard or ugly like economics," as Thomas Frank suggests in "What's the Matter With Kansas?," a look at how the new populism has captured the imagination of the state that gave birth to the old one.
True, "the people" still exerts a nostalgic hold on some. Last week, two New Yorkers began distributing a "People's Guide to the Republican Convention," a title that made it clear that the guide was compiled for the benefit of protesters, not delegates. And Vice President Al Gore used the phrase in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention of 2000: "They're for the powerful. We're for the people."
But "the people" were absent from the speeches at last month's Democratic convention, and it would be surprising if they were allowed to appear at the Republican convention - unless accompanied by minders like "ordinary," "hard-working" or "good."
Nowadays, "power to the people" is a slogan used by both Microsoft and I.B.M. And "man of the people" usually has a sarcastic inflection.
The Boston Herald styles the Democratic presidential candidate as "Man of the People Kerry." On CNN's "Capital Gang," Mark Shields wonders how "that populist man of the people, George W. Bush," will deal with the New York firefighters who have been waiting for a raise since September 11, 2001.
The sarcasm usually reflects skepticism about the candidates' authenticity, rather than about their policies. ("He is not a man of the people, this French-speaking windsurfer," says Richard Reeves of Senator Kerry - transportation again.) Populism used to be a matter of speaking for the people; now it's a matter of speaking like them - dropping your g's, strategically mispronouncing "nuclear" and throwing in references to motor sports.
Old-style populists made few concessions to popular style. The "cross of gold" speech that secured Bryan the presidential nomination at the Democratic convention of 1896 and a place at the head of the Populist ticket as well, is remembered today for its stirring peroration: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." But it also included a thousand-word, redoubtably formal, disquisition on bimetallism and monetary policy: "Let me remind you that there is no intention of affecting those contracts which, according to present laws, are made payable in gold."
The average sentence-length in Bryan's speech was 104 words; the average sentence-length in George W. Bush's 2000 acceptance speech was less than 15 words.
Rhetoric changes with the times, of course. But even if you simplified Bryan's diction and syntax and pruned some of his more florid turns of phrase, the speech wouldn't come off now as "populist," but as artificial, aloof and a little wonky.
At the time, though, no one seemed to mind. What seems most remote about that bygone age is the image of thousands of farmers and small-town mechanics flocking to railroad depots to hear their champion repeat the "cross of gold" speech as he campaigned across the West in the summer of 1896.
They may not have understood all of the arguments, or the allusions to Napoleon, Jefferson, Peter the Hermit, Cicero and Catiline, but they were drawn to a champion who could make their case sound so exalted.
---
Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist, is heard on NPR's ''Fresh Air'' and is author of ''Going Nucular'' (PublicAffairs, 2004).
Closing the 'Religion Gap'
At last month's Democratic convention, few words were uttered more frequently than the one that seems to roll most easily off the tongue of George W. Bush: faith. "Let me say it plainly," announced John Kerry in his acceptance speech. "In this campaign, we welcome people of faith." John Edwards thanked his parents, Wallace and Bobbie, for instilling in him an appreciation of "faith" from an early age. Barack Obama declared that Kerry "understands the ideals of community, faith and service," and added, to those who think only Republicans turn to religion for inspiration, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states."
[..] Democrats are determined to narrow this so-called "religion gap," if not to close it, in the coming election. Yet they are well aware that the challenge they face is at once daunting and complex. When several hundred religious leaders, scholars and advocates gathered in a chandelier-lit ballroom in the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC, in early June, the consensus was that the Democrats have an image problem. "Today, there is a growing misperception, fostered by right-wing political and religious leaders, that those who espouse progressive views are inherently antireligious," said John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank that organized the event. "The purpose of our effort is to remind Americans that there are historic ties between the religious community and progressives."
Part of the reason for the image problem, however, is that Democrats have generally opposed efforts by social conservatives to impose their religious beliefs on other Americans, a stance that often leaves them open to attack as "antireligious," [..] if the emphasis on separating faith and politics alienates religious progressives and dampens their social activism [however], the left stands to lose a lot--both at the ballot box and in terms of social progress. For as the historian Taylor Branch pointed out in a speech following Rabbi Saperstein's, many progressive social movements--most conspicuously, the civil rights movement--have had a spiritual foundation. In his recent book A Stone of Hope, the historian David Chappell convincingly likens the civil rights movement to a religious revival, showing how black Southerners inspired by the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament spearheaded the drive to abolish "the sin of segregation." "Don't talk to me about atheism," Mississippi activist Fannie Lou Hamer told the students who came down South to participate in the movement. "Our religion is very important to us."
Forty years later, many secular liberals remain as uncomfortable with such talk as Northern liberals often were in the 1950s and '60s, viewing religion as at best a barrier to enlightenment and progress, at worst a wellspring for bigotry and intolerance. Such attitudes are partly a reflection of the strand of anti-clericalism that has long pervaded liberal thought. They are also a product of the success that figures like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have had in presenting themselves as the public face of religion in this country--despite the fact that they speak for a minority of religious Americans. A recent survey by Religion & Ethics Newsweekly found that evangelical Christians on the whole gave Falwell a marginally unfavorable rating. [..] Secular liberals may shudder when informed that roughly 40 percent of Americans are born-again Christians; few are aware that, of this total, roughly one-third are "freestyle evangelicals" whose political views are eclectic, and that another 15-20 percent are members of minority groups that tend to vote Democratic. In addition to these groups are millions of mainline Protestants and centrist Catholics whose faith takes more moderate forms. For many in the latter camp, religion serves not only as a source of spiritual fulfillment but as a spur to social action on a range of issues--the death penalty, homelessness, violence against women, global inequality--close to the hearts of secular progressives.
Can such people become vocal and organized enough to counterbalance the religious right? [..] A few weeks before the Center for American Progress conference, I attended "Pentecost 2004," a three-day Christian mobilization designed to rally a broad coalition of religious leaders against poverty. The event was organized by Call to Renewal, a progressive faith-based organization that publishes the magazine Sojourners. The speakers' list was bipartisan--featuring both Rosa DeLauro, a Democratic Congresswoman from Connecticut, and Alphonso Jackson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Bush Administration--but the mood was decidedly not. After DeLauro delivered her speech, an impassioned broadside against the Bush Administration's tax and budget policies, she received a standing ovation. But when Jackson told the audience that being poor was merely "a state of mind" and that the best thing government could do was stay out of the way, the reaction was chilly. As his speech drew to a close, few clapped. One man stood up and, shouting across the room before Jackson could reach the exit, asked what the Bush Administration was doing for people like the woman he'd met by chance that morning on the street, a mother who worked as a prostitute at night because she didn't earn enough to support her family from her daytime job. "Well, I would say to you that you should ask a different question," Jackson replied. "What are you going to do for her?" Here was "compassionate conservatism" distilled to its essence. The audience responded with a cascade of hisses and boos.
By refocusing the debate about values away from what happens in the bedroom and toward issues like homelessness and poverty, strategists like Perriello believe progressives can reclaim the moral high ground in American politics while mobilizing religious activists to advance concerns they share. At the Call to Renewal conference, Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners, echoed this line, arguing that unlike inherently divisive issues such as gay marriage and abortion, a campaign against poverty could unify Christians "across political and denominational lines."
[..] Between panel discussions one day, I spoke with Ron Sider, a born-again Christian who heads the group Evangelicals for Social Action. Like most evangelicals, Sider opposes gay marriage and is passionately antiabortion. But he also opposes Bush's tax cuts and is passionate about fighting poverty, arguing that the Bible compels Christians to care about "both the family and the poor." During a panel discussion suffused with references to biblical passages--Luke 1, Amos 5, Isaiah 58--Sider called for expanding the earned-income tax credit, more generous food stamps, a living wage and "an end to the scandal of 42 million Americans without healthcare." Said Sider in explaining the basis for his beliefs, "I don't think God is a Marxist, but frequently the Bible suggests that people get rich by oppression or are rich and don't share what they have--and in both cases, God is furious."
[..] secular leftists (and progressive politicians) ought to do everything in their power to make people like Christa Mazzone feel welcome in their ranks. A bright, attractive 24-year-old Washingtonian, Mazzone works as field organizer for Call to Renewal. She is progressive in just about every sense of the term--opposed to the war in Iraq, deeply concerned about homelessness and poverty, accepting of gay marriage, prochoice (although she personally does not like the idea of abortion). Mazzone also happens to have attended an evangelical college and, though no longer traditionalist in her faith, considers religion extremely important in her life. As a result, she told me, she often feels like a "freak" among her politically like-minded friends. It's a sentiment I heard frequently from audience members at both the Call to Renewal and Center for American Progress events, including from people who told me they were regular readers of this magazine. "The tradition of the political left seems to be to only listen to people of faith if they are African-American" and to dismiss everyone else, complained Brenda Peterson, who was recently named director of religious outreach for the Democratic Party, a newly created post. A similar view was expressed by Amy Sullivan, a former aide to Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, in the Democratic Leadership Council's magazine Blueprint. Talking about faith and values only in front of minorities is "not only a condescending strategy, but a foolish one," she wrote. [..]
[..] while we wait for Noam to get back from Red Sage, I thought I'd write a final post on something that's been bothering me for about a decade now: the continued inability of Democrats to appeal to the white working class.
Seriously. The must-read summer political book is Tom Frank's What the Matter With Kansas?, an entertaining 200-page tour of Frank flipping the bird to his home state.
Frank tries to explain how Kansas shed its progressive tradition in favor of right-wing cultural politics, and why Republicans continue to win elections in a state suffering mightily from untrammeled, free-market conservative doctrine.
His thesis is not terribly original: Republicans have succeeded by whipping the white working class into a fury over abortion, prayer in schools, and gay rights, stealing votes from Democrats as economic issues fall to the wayside. Tom Edsall's Chain Reaction and E.J. Dionne's Why Americans Hate Politics offer better histories of this realignment.
Where Frank earns his pay is in documenting just how conservatives engineer their cultural appeal--the political cues found in TV ads, direct mail campaigns, Fox News reports, and George W. Bush speeches that so effectively turn heartland voters away from liberalism.
In Frank's estimation, what characterizes the conservative appeal is a sense of victimization, the idea that steady, church-going Americans suffer under an all-powerful, coastal liberal conspiracy. Members of said conspiracy include Hollywood, The New York Times, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and probably the John Kerry campaign. In an amazing inversion of class politics, it is these "elites"--not corporate interests cozy with Republicans--who set the national agenda and must be opposed.
Amid all this, as Frank points out, Kansas is suffering. Whole towns have gone empty as jobs disappear. Family farms have given way to corporate conglomerates. Families can't afford health insurance. Only the service-sector is hiring. Republican politicians, though, don't talk much about this, focusing on the red-blooded cultural issues that send them to Washington, where they promptly and happily focus their energies on undoing the New Deal and Great Society programs that keep their constituents' heads above water. In office, cultural politics instantly gives way to fealty to big business.
At the same time, Republicans never win any victories in the social wars. Abortion is still legal. The FMA failed. But that's precisely the point. Failure reinforces the right-wing sense of victimization. Failure proves the liberals are powerful. Failure gives the Republicans something to run on.
Interesting stuff. But I have a problem with some of this. Frank overstates the economic woes of Kansas. He also simplifies the white working class's material aspirations, writing as if all Kansans aspire to nothing more than protectionism and a government hand-out. And Frank's arrogance about what kind of politics the white working class "should" follow grows irritating.
But the biggest flaw of Frank's book is a question he barely addresses: How do these white, working-class Kansans process the economic implications of their vote? Do they think they'd be more likely to have affordable health care and a good job under Democratic policies? And if so, do they care? In my humble opinion, answering these questions is a prerequisite to rebuilding the Democrats' appeal to such voters. Frank doesn't have much of an opinion, though. He simply takes it for granted that these voters are stupidly working against their own material interests. I think it's more complicated. Here's four possible white-working-class perspectives on the Democrats and economics.
1: The cultural and economic appeal of the Republicans is one-and-the-same. The same religious ideas that sanctify unborn life also sanctify individualism, hard work, and personal responsibility, the tenets of Republican economic thinking. Society works best when communities and neighbors look after one another--not the federal government. Be disciplined and pious, and God will provide. In this worldview, the Democrats have got just about everything wrong.
2: The economic appeal of the Democrats doesn't matter. The Democrats might be right about health care and tax cuts, but these issues are ultimately irrelevant in the face of cultural imperatives. Politics is about sacrifice. If you buy this perspective, many Kansans actively subordinate their chance for a more materially rewarding life under Democratic policies in order to lead a more spiritually rewarding one under Republicans.
3: Democrats have no economic appeal (part one). Both parties have become so captive to corporate interests that heartland voters decide they might as well vote on cultural issues. This seems to be Frank's position. He hates the DLC and the drift of the party rightward under Clinton. He suspects that Kansans really do prioritize economic issues, but since the Democrats have completely jettisoned economic populism, they have nothing to offer white working class voters.
4: Democrats have no economic appeal (part two). The Democrats have gone too far to the left. They're really just tax-and-spend liberals who will cause more economic harm than good. The party might have made some progress if it continued the move to the center as Clinton charted, but with Kerry vowing to raise taxes, the party is hopeless once again.
This is where I cop out and say that elements of all of the above are at work in the Democrats' inability to woo working-class whites. More interesting, though, is how different Democratic politicians have decided to address the problem.
For Bill Clinton in 1992, the decision was to wrap moderate economic populism in a cloak of rhetoric of personal responsibility. In talking easily of faith, in vowing to end welfare dependence, in proving he was tough on deviance, Clinton spoke the language of conservative values about as well as any national Democrat could.
Kerry, by contrast, has opted for a more classically populist appeal wrapped not in conservative rhetoric, but in conservative images: Kerry shooting pheasants; Kerry throwing the football on the tarmac; Kerry in uniform; Kerry with veterans. It's perhaps the only choice open to someone whose blue-blood background prevents him from even pretending to speak the language of faith.
Whether any of this works remains to be seen. No Democrat--not even Bill Clinton, who only won a plurality of the white working class--has figured out the solution to the party's malaise. The Democrat who does will have rebuilt an enduring Democratic majority.
--Josh Benson
posted 10:51 a.m.
"I smell the same New England genius that I smelled in the Dukakis campaign in 1988," Mr. Austin added. "Kerry wants to run as a man of the people, and where do they put him for photo opportunities? Snowboarding in Sun Valley, shooting skeet in the Ohio valley, and windsurfing off that great working-class vacation paradise, Nantucket. Democrats - at least Ohio Democrats - play softball and touch football."
Latest Harris poll was done on the net instead of by phone, but the results are very similar to their phone-based poll a week and a half ago:
Bush 48% (+1)
Kerry 46% (-2)
Nader 3% (+1)
The interesting parts are the details in the breakdown:
nimh wrote:One is that the traditional gender gap -- with men leaning more toward Republican candidates and women toward the Democratic candidates -- is only a very modest feature of this election, at the moment.
Another, even more surprising, finding emerges from an analysis by education. Normally Democratic candidates win substantial majorities among those with the least education -- people who never went to college. Now President Bush does better among this group than he does among those with more education.
Indeed, President Bush leads Senator Kerry by nine points among those with no college education and by six points among those with some college education but no bachelor's degree. Kerry, on the other hand, leads by five percent among those with a college degree and by fully 21 percent among those with post-graduate education.
