rssThe Great Populist Divide
Friday, September 05, 2008 at 8:28 pm
- 58 Comments
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (Flickr: Tom LeGro, NewsHour)
The populist hero was born on a small farm not far from the Canadian border. As a boy, he scraped together money by raising chickens and managing a grocery store. He then worked his way through an unprestigious law school, and enlisted in the Marines to fight for his country.
My doctrine, the young Republican senator liked to say, “is Americanism with its sleeves rolled up.” Given his background, he said he identified with “real people” from rural areas and small towns “who are the heart and soul and soil of America.” He vowed to defend them against “the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouth” who were “selling this nation out.”
The senator regularly presented himself as a man of strong faith. “Today,” he declared in 1950, “we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic atheism and Christianity…the chips are down – they are truly down.” His name was Joseph R. McCarthy.
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
Populism in America is nearly as old as the republic itself. Since President Andrew Jackson’s epic battle to shut down the “money power” symbolized by the Second Bank of the United States in 1833, politicians and citizen-activists have voiced their outrage about the “elites” who ignored, corrupted or betrayed the common people.
Right-wing populists typically drum up resentments based on differences of religion and cultural style. Their progressive counterparts focus on economic grievances. But the common language is promiscuous — useful to anyone who asserts that virtue resides in ordinary people and has the skills and platform to bring their would-be superiors down to earth
During the half-century since McCarthy’s remarkable rise and ignominious fall, his fellow conservatives have rarely stopped singing from the same populist hymnal.
“I had the privilege of living most of my life in my small town,” beamed Sarah Palin in her bravura speech to accept the GOP vice presidential nomination Wednesday night. It was, she explained, the kind of place inhabited by the people “who do some of the hardest work in America…who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.” She defiantly contrasted her plain-folks view of the world to that of “the permanent political establishment” and “the Washington elite.”
Joseph McCarthy (Library of Congress)
It may be the same old song, but cultural populism has helped Republicans win many an election and has consistently put their opponents on the defensive. Richard M. Nixon championed the values of “Middle America;” Ronald Reagan damned a tax policy that took “from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned,” and George W. Bush mocked “liberal elites” for being soft on terrorism and warm towards gay marriage.
Conservatism would never have become a large and influential movement without such language; and liberals have yet to find a way to counter it. Why?
The answer has much to do with the anxieties of a racially divided consumer culture and the absence of a social movement grounded in the workplace. After World War II, most Americans, for the first time in U.S. history, considered themselves “middle class.”
But that homogeneous identity obscured big differences between a minority of “cosmopolitan” Americans — who could afford a four-year college, who lived in cities with large non-white populations, who had a professional job — and those who were not. The bitter conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s added in resentments over sexuality, religious faith and affirmative action.
President Andrew Jackson
Meanwhile, the labor movement that had done so much to build support for liberal Democrats, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson, gradually lost both its numbers and its aggressive, populist spirit. Blue-collar workers had once flocked to unions and voted for politicians who bashed their opponents as “economic royalists.”
But by the 1970s, a rigorous labor movement that had helped lift incomes and gain job security for millions of wage-earners seemed to be resting on its laurels. Fast-growing unions of government workers were the exception — but as unruly public “servants,” they were unable to brighten the image of labor. With the stagflation of the Ford and Carter years, corporations were able to brand unions a fetter on productivity and growth. New movements that focused on race and gender gained the headlines and the attention of prominent liberals.
As a result, no one on the left seemed able to speak to ordinary white men and women who earned a decent income. but resented their diminished status in society.
Contrary to nostalgic mythology, Americans have never been a united people free of rancorous divisions. As Kevin Phillips once wrote, accurately if cynically, “knowing who hates who” and acting accordingly has usually been the key to electoral success.
With a dynamic labor movement behind them, liberals had been able to exploit antipathy against wealthy employers and the Republicans they bankrolled. But when conservatives began attacking liberals as an elite that was unpatriotic, condescending, ungodly and licentious, they had no rebuttal to offer.
This election will, in part, be a test of whether right-wing populism still works. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, will try to use the rise in foreclosures and joblessness to stir up anger at Republican policies, from which Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee and the owner of multiple luxury dwellings, may not be able to separate himself.
McCain clearly hopes to refresh the conservative mantra of tax-eating bureaucrats and effete liberals — a charge that Palin’s small-town origins and tough demeanor may help drive home.
Conservatives have dominated the battle over populist rhetoric so long that even Americans who mistrust it bring up “elitism” and the “common-sense values” of “ordinary people” — as if they were objective realities instead of partisan talking points.
If liberals hope to win the White House again, they could think about engaging with gusto in the battle to define these terms. For better or worse, populism lives too deeply in America’s fears and expectations to be trivialized or replaced. Without it, both sides in the nation’s long-running political conflict are lost.
Michael Kazin is an American history professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of “The Populist Persuasion: An American History” and, most recently, of “A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan.”
58 Comments
Comment posted September 5, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
Interesting overview. Urban populations are rising now, rural ones steadily declining. Perhaps an urban populism will emerge and look very different from Wasilla wahooism..
Comment posted September 6, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
Great article, thank you. The comparisons to the McCarthy era struck home hard.
Comment posted September 6, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
populism — when republicans do it, they talk about good christians and their pregnant teenagers
populism — when democrats do it, it's called class warfare
Comment posted September 6, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Mr. Kazin,
Great article, thanks. The most effective thing that Democrats could do is work to destroy the myth of the Republican “conservative.” They are almost non-existent, and were put on the endangered species list about the time that Reagan and Lee Atwater kicked off the righwing jihad that still defines our political culture. Liberals could get along just fine with honest, old-fashioned American conservatives, and share many of their values. I think the best thing that could happen in this nation is the re-emergence of decent conservatism, and the dire condition of the Republican party at the moment opens the door for some fresh leadership that could re-capture the institution that is presently controlled by mad imperialists and economic predators.
It was a real hoot watching McCain and Mitt Romney at the GOP Convention. Two white guys with a combined net worth of something like $3 billion calling Obama an “elitist.” Oy….
Comment posted September 6, 2008 @ 9:08 pm
Unfortunately people who think are, by the Republican definition, not ordinary people. Colbert had that nailed from the start.
Comment posted September 6, 2008 @ 9:35 pm
Mr Kazin seems to have forgotten the crooked last two election cycles. I'm beginning to think there've been almost nothing but crooked elections…no better than a “3rd world” country at which we point our fingers as bad news boyz. A runny pox on ALL criminal politicians!!!
Comment posted September 7, 2008 @ 12:15 pm
The solution isn't for a particular party to win the battle to assume the “populist” label. Populism means pandering not to the best in people, but to the worst. It is pandering to fear and insecurity, not courage and optimism.
The solution isn't for Obama and the Left to loudly play Robin Hood, any more than it is for McCain and the Right to worship anti-intellectualism.
The solution is to work to establish a culture where neither material nor intellectual achievement is resented, but aspired to and celebrated. A single election will not effect this change. A pro-reason cultural movement will.
Comment posted September 7, 2008 @ 5:55 pm
There are many things that Palin is doing and has done that truly bother me as a Christian, yet so many Christians seem to think that it is okay. As a Christian, I've witnessed many great Christians, and they are kind and wouldn't hurt anyone, they set out to set good examples…good stewards of God and of their church. Good Christians are there for their children and set good examples for all to follow. But most of all, the Christians that I believe to be a wonderful examples of what God truly wants, are non judgmental, extend their hands out to help anyone in need and if they can't help them, they will find someone who will.
This is very very different in what I see of Ms. Palin. She comes across as being a very cut throat type of leader…get in her way and she becomes vindictive. She has five children, 4 at home, one of which has down syndrome and is about 4 mo old. I see her putting her political career ahead of her children, even if it hurts them, like when she acknowledging that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant to the whole world, not caring what it did to her daughter, or the baby she carries.
I watch her showing off her special needs baby to the crowds, as if it were a symbol of pro-life, to me it looked like a political prop to bring in the votes. I listen to her speeches and hear the vicious, hateful and snide speeches that she gives. I quit counting after I head 10 lies which easily spewed through her lips. She calls herself a “barricuda ” a “pit dog wearing lipstick”….she looks that way, hateful, dangerous, and never giving up, a person that is more concerned with her agendas and what she wants, than she is with what she can do for her community, her family, her church, or her country.
I had listened to Obama and I listened to McCain, then I listed to Biden and then to Palin. Palin's unchristian behavior worried me, so I paid more attention. Part of me wanted to vote for her because she says she is a Christian, but part of me felt that she wasn't acting like a Christian. I ended up thinking that if I behaved the way she was, what would God think of me? It was at this point that I knew I couldn't vote for her, she doesn't have my values.
Comment posted September 8, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
kd oklahoma: Here's a Joe Biden Quote. This sizes his Christian Faith up.
(SOURCE)
Biden’s Embellishments Could Provide Easy Fodder for GOP
by FOXNews.com
Saturday, August 23, 2008
By Bill Sammon
Biden also used unusually strong language to ridicule those who believe in creationism or intelligent design.
“I refuse to believe the majority of people believe this malarkey!” the senior senator from Delaware exclaimed.
Comment posted September 8, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
abacus101
Not supporting intelligent design and creationism does not equate to not being a Christian. Especially when you take it out of context like you did.
Neither intelligent design nor creationism should be taught in schools alongside science, because it is not science. It is Biblical studies.
Comment posted September 8, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
aerdrie: Whether intelligent design should be taught in school was not a question. It is much easier however to question where Mr Biden's Catholic Faith resides. I've heard it applied to be on his sleeve since he has been chosen. I also believe for a fact that the teachings of his faith only teach that the world was created by a creator. Do you know different? Wherever you've dug up your doctrine of Christianity and his faith as well as this being out of context, I'd like to hear more.
Comment posted September 9, 2008 @ 2:49 am
The problem is Democrats are afraid to say boo! The boo in this campaign is that McCain obviously wants to play Commander and Chief. Democrats have got to ask him about such things as military drafts in order to replenish a weakened force and tax hikes in order to rebuild the military's hardware. If McCain's answer to all of the military situations is to kick butt then the Democratic response must be “tell us how you are going to do that” and then offer obvious ways if McCain isn't being specific. The Pentagon and the old industrial base would do anything to get this guy into Washington including having a puppet from Alaska as VP
Comment posted September 9, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
NO politician ever gives that full of a answer.
Comment posted September 11, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
The Democrats have been surprised by several Republican attacks on their most cherished positions. The Republicans have suggested that: 1) They are true agents of change; 2) Women’s issues are not under the complete domain of the Democratic party; 3) Obama is not the only super star in the political arena; 4) In spite of all evidence to the contrary it is the GOP that best exemplifies the aspirations of Americans. Contrariwise, the Republicans are all but silent on their role in our national malaise. In fact they even go so far as to suggest that it is not the economy it’s patriotism stupid. How the Democrats respond remains to be seen.
Comment posted September 12, 2008 @ 9:03 pm
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Comment posted September 12, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
What would a liberal, Democratic platform look like that would appeal to ordinary, working-class Americans of a red-state complexion? Well, here are ten things that might be on it: BornAgainDemocrats.com
Comment posted September 13, 2008 @ 2:03 am
What would a liberal, Democratic platform look like that would appeal to ordinary, working-class Americans of a red-state complexion? Well, here are ten things that might be on it: BornAgainDemocrats.com
Comment posted September 13, 2008 @ 2:06 am
What would a liberal, Democratic platform look like that would appeal to ordinary, working-class Americans of a red-state complexion? Well, here are ten things that might be on it: BornAgainDemocrats.com
Comment posted August 3, 2010 @ 12:33 am
Not supporting intelligent design and creationism does not equate to not being a Christian. Especially when you take it out of context like you did.
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