Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Wikimedia)

Republicans have unveiled their closing argument. Desperate to prevent a huge Democratic landslide, Republicans warn that one-party government under Democrats would surely mean liberal extremism.

Raising the specter of an “Obama, Pelosi and Reid” government, Sen. John McCain refers to the combination of Sen. Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as a “dangerous threesome.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) warns, “Liberals are bent on handing Barack Obama a filibuster-proof Senate majority to rubber-stamp his radical agenda.”

The argument is based on a misreading of American history. For, during periods of one-party government, when Democrats controlled both the White House and the Congress, history demonstrates that they have not shifted radically toward a leftward agenda.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Few observers, other than those on the far right, characterized the New Deal as liberal extremism in action. Most perceived President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an experimenter who tried to please everyone. FDR and his Democratic counterparts did everything in their power to save capitalism from the threat of totalitarianism and communism during the Great Depression.

The period between 1933 and 1938 witnessed a dramatic expansion of government. But with each and every policy, Democrats were careful to constrain the ability of government officials to control capitalist institutions and to protect the power of state and local government.

The economic regulations passed in the 1930s allowed private economic institutions to maintain power and profit. Wall Street regulations primarily curbed dangerous and unethical transactions, while the Securities Exchange Commission was set up to monitor wrong-doing. This left the basic decisions to investors.

The major effort to manage pricing and production was the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. In the worst economic moment of the nation’s history, the legislation essentially asked businesses to voluntarily adhere to codes that would be enforced through voluntary compliance combined with public pressure. The program collapsed by the end of 1934, before the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional, because so many business leaders were not living up to their promises.

The farm programs, created in 1933, subsidized agribusiness as opposed to taking it over. The New Deal offered the agriculture industry financial incentives to make decisions that benefited the larger economy. The government paid for crops. The Communist Party leader, Earl Browder, lamented that Roosevelt was “carrying out more thoroughly and brutally than even Hoover the capitalist attack against the masses.”

Social Security, passed in 1935, only covered a limited portion of the workforce — excluding farmers, domestic workers, professionals and others — while relying on a regressive, self-financed tax to pay for benefits.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (Wikimedia)

Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democratic Congress in 1964 and 1965 were also quite timid. The War on Poverty received meager funding. Democrats had given priority to passing an across-the-board tax reduction to stimulate the economy, rather than spending on the poor.

Congress allocated $500 million for the Community Action program, a figure that paled in comparison to what Washington spent on Social Security, agricultural benefits or defense. The War on Poverty focused on developing self-sufficiency among the poor, a far cry from socialism, and the programs relied on civic organizations and local government rather than centralized control in Washington.

The civil-rights bill that Democrats passed in 1964 emphasized the protection of individual rather than group rights. The more aggressive program of affirmative action would not emerge until a Republican was in the White House, in 1969, and then there was divided government.

When Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, in 1964, they insisted on civil-rights legislation that focused on the more moderate goal of eliminating racial discrimination against individuals. This, they said, respected American principles. The government remained reactive under their plan, responding when individual rights were violated, rather than proactively combating institutional racism.

When it came to health care, the Medicare bill of 1965 was a watered-down version of the far bolder health-care proposals that Democrats floated in the 1940s — unsuccessfully. To avoid another defeat, Democrats decided to narrow their ambitions with a limited program to provide hospital insurance coverage just to the elderly. Medicare was created within Social Security to bolster political support, using its regressive self-financed tax system. The government refrained from regulating the prices hospitals could charge. Blue Cross and Blue Shield handled the insurance.

Even when Southern Democrats lost their power in Congress, united government did not result in a dramatic swing to the left. President Jimmy Carter struggled with the various factions within the Democratic Party over energy independence, welfare reform, defense spending and more. United government did not help the president overcome horrible relations with legislators in his own party. Carter’s concern with inflation trumped his worries about unemployment.

Conservative grass-roots activists took advantage of these problems by allying with the GOP congressional minority in the Congress to stifle measures like SALT II.

Bill Clinton (Flickr: World Economic Forum)

President Bill Clinton did not fare much better. Democrats controlled Washington, but Clinton decided to start his term with deficit reduction and free trade. When he proposed health-care reform, it was a far cry from the single-player, national health insurance models that had been championed by Democrats like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. And even that legislation did not make it through Congress.

The best case for Republicans to show how one-party government produces extremism comes from the period of GOP rule between 2002 and 2006. One-party government allowed Republicans to pass a massive tax reduction in 2001 that severely cut into the coffers of government and provided significant tax relief to wealthier Americans. After 9/11, the Bush administration authorized a huge expansion of the national security state.

Yet much of what George W. President Bush actually accomplished still relied on executive power and secrecy. Signing statements, covert national-security programs, executive orders and misleading information were all instrumental to how Bush achieved his goals. Bush has continued to rely on these tactics under divided government as well.

The historical record is clear. One-party government does not lead to political extremism — and a look at the past contradicts GOP claims that Democratic control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue would produce a dramatic shift to the left. Democrats will face all sorts of pressures, from internal factions to budgetary restraints to the 2012 election, that will serve as a powerful check on what the party can accomplish.

Disappointment, not extremism, is a more realistic prediction of what the party could ultimately face.

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He is the author of “On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000″ and the editor of “The American Congress: The Building of Democracy.” He is finishing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II and another on the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Chairman of House Financial Services Committee (WDCpix)

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, looks like a giant these days. As the financial markets have plummeted and President George W. Bush is proposing sweeping legislation to bail out Wall Street, Frank is a key point man, attempting to strike a delicate balance between the concerns of his congressional colleagues and the administration. He is trying to play the role of the legislative broker — a role that seemed to have vanished in the modern Congress.

His partner in this effort, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is also emerging from this crisis looking like a strong leader. Dodd, who performed horribly in the Democratic primaries, offered up a concrete outline for how the administration can revise the legislation so that it can pass Congress.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Frank and Dodd are reminding Americans that Congress can exert tremendous amount of power. It has not always been seen as the “broken branch” of government, as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein now describe the current state of the institution.

Frank and Dodd are tapping into a legislative tradition that existed in the committee-era of Congress from the 1920s to 1970s, when senior committee leaders — mostly Southern Democrats and Midwestern Republicans — formed an alliance to shape public policy from the House and Senate.

This was a remarkable period in the history of Congress. Most of the legislative process took place behind closed doors. Bipartisanship was typical, and committee chairmen relied on orderly rules and norms that provided them with autonomy from the party leadership. Rank-and-file members were seen but had little influence.

The Senate had its share of warriors. One giant from the committee era was Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1947 to 1949. Vandenberg was a former isolationist who turned internationalist as a result of World War II.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee (WDCpix)

Much of the GOP remained firmly opposed to President Harry S. Truman’s multilateral, European-based strategy in the Cold War. They wanted to emphasize anti-communism at home and fighting Communist Asia abroad. But Vandenberg, who developed a close partnership with the Truman administration, was critical in rounding up votes for landmark measures like the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the establishment of NATO.

Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas was another baron of the Senate. As majority leader from 1954 to 1960, Johnson worked in an institution where majority leaders had traditionally been weak. He discovered and manipulated mechanisms like unanimous consent agreements — where individual members essentially agreed to relinquish their right to filibuster — to centralize authority in an institution that was notoriously individualistic.

Johnson used “The Treatment” — he confronted colleagues, hovered over them, and questioned them relentlessly in the hallway until they agreed to support him. Johnson displayed his skills in 1957, as Robert Caro has vividly recounted, when he brokered deals and formed odd voting coalitions to pass the first civil-rights bill since Reconstruction.

Senators have also been able to focus public attention on the failures of administration policy. During the 1960s, Arkansas Sen. William Fulbright, a liberal internationalist who had become disillusioned with Johnson, became a strong opponent of the war in Vietnam — after he pushed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on the Senate floor in 1964.

Fulbright chaired Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings in 1966 that stung the Johnson administration. He dragged administration officials before TV cameras and grilled them about the conduct of the war and the broader strategy of containment. Fulbright biographer Randall Bennett Woods explained “the February hearings, in short, opened a psychological door for the great American middle class . . . if the administration intended to wage the war in Vietnam from the political center in America, the 1966 hearings were indeed a blow to that effort.”

Former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (National Archives)

The House has had its barons as well. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas, who ran the House for most of the 1940s and 1950s, was a master at persuasion. He served as speaker in an era when committee chairs held enormous independent power, so he depended on negotiation and deliberation to get things done.

One of Rayburn’s central tactics was the “Board of Education,” a former committee room tucked away under the speaker’s lobby , where Rayburn met with his inner circle of Democrats to discuss the main issues of the day. Though he was physically small and unassuming, Rayburn commanded enormous respect by relying on informal relationships to influence decisions. While drinking bourbon and playing cards on the long leather couch and eight chairs that filled the room, Democrats debated the nation’s biggest issues.

Before his famous dip with a stripper in the Tidal Basin in 1974, Rep. Wilbur D. Mills of Arkansas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was one of the most influential figures in Washington. Mills commanded enormous power through his mastery of the tax code and Social Security system. He also made institutional changes, like blocking the creation of Ways and Means subcommittees, to retain his power.

In 1965, Mills seized the initiative from Johnson’s administration by taking the Medicare proposal, combining it with Republican and AMA-backed alternatives, and creating a program often called “the Mills bill.” When he combined the legislation, one committee member recalled that “it was fantastic. It was Wilbur Mills at his best. His maneuvering was beautiful, and I don’t mean maneuvering in a bad sense. He just said, ‘Why we don’t take it all?’”

Since the 1970s, becoming a baron became far difficult. Reforms to the legislative process made Congress unstable by weakening autonomous committee leaders, empowering the party leaders and simultaneously fragmenting power to subcommittee chairs and to the rank-and file. Ethics and sunshine rules, combined with the introduction of TV into the chambers, created an environment where it was far easier for members or even the media to bring down senior barons.

Polarization in Congress, which has steadily increased since the 1970s, combined with narrow majorities and divided government, has made it far more difficult for any individual legislator to achieve huge changes in policy.

But the barons have not entirely disappeared from Congress. This week, we have seen how some individuals have found ways to work within the more polarized and unstable process to achieve significant power.

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Russell (National Archives)

Frank, a Harvard-educated, openly gay, New Jersey-native who represents one of the most liberal districts in the nation, has relied on a number of new and old-fashioned methods to reach this point. This new-style baron has proven himself a master of the modern Congress by using TV to create a bully pulpit and relying on the power of subcommittees to shape the agenda, as well as investigation.

Usually, Frank has rejected the notion that “bipartisanship will work,” and instead insisted that Democrats, like Republicans, use partisan tools aggressively. This is what he has done to maintain party discipline and threaten opponents. Frank has also been skillful in using party fund-raising committees to win the support and loyalty of colleagues.

At other times in recent months, Frank has turned to old-fashioned deal-making, using his power as chairman of the financial services committee — with jurisdiction over the most important domestic issue in recent months — to form unexpected alliances with Republicans over bills involving home owners and financial markets.

During the next few weeks, we’ll see just how powerful the new barons of Congress are. It is unclear, given the environment they face, whether they can break through and achieve the same kind of landmark compromises as their committee-era predecessors — the Congress that brought America the New Deal and the Great Society.

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He is the author of “On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000″ and the editor of “The American Congress: The Building of Democracy.” He is finishing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II.

(Photos by U.S. Congress, Lauren Victoria Burke)

Democrats have been relishing every minute since Sen. John McCain announced that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be his vice presidential running mate. The attacks have been fast and furious. Palin lacks experience; she has ties to the far right; she has scandals lurking in her personal background. Palin, Democrats say, is McCain’s Dan Quayle.

This is among the most stinging comparisons in contemporary politics — bringing back memories of the running mate of Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988. One Republican at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week, surprised by the pick, predicted, “Democrats will have a field day typecasting her as Quayle in a pantsuit.”

The comparison has some merit. It is easy to look back at the media coverage of Quayle in August of 1988 and to find language that closely resembles today’s talk about Palin.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

But the Democrats are forgetting the important point: Quayle was on the winning ticket. The candidate with the far more seasoned running mate, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis with Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, was trounced that year.

When Bush picked Quayle, he wanted to shake up the race by bringing a charismatic conservative and younger face onto the ticket. Bush chose Quayle over more established finalists like Sens. Robert Dole, Pete Domenici, Alan Simpson or Rep. Jack Kemp and former Transportation Sec. Elizabeth Dole. Bush knew that conservative activists did not trust him, perceiving him to be part of the “white shoe” Northeastern Republican establishment, far more comfortable with compromise and bipartisanship than the younger renegades of the Reagan Revolution.

Quayle seemed the perfect antidote. He was part of the up-and-coming cohort of congressional Republicans who maintained close ties to the conservative movement. Quayle made a name for himself in 1988 by attacking President Ronald Reagan for holding arms negotiations with the Soviet Union and betraying the conservative cause.

“Perestroika is nothing more than refined Stalinism,” Quayle said, talking about the reforms then underway in the Soviet Union. Conservatives were initially excited about the choice. The right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly said that Quayle brought “youth, attractiveness, conservative image . . . all the elements of a great and winning ticket.”

But things quickly started to go wrong. One problem was the sharp contrast of the team’s age and appearance. Bush made Quayle look too young for the job. Democrats played on this, attacking Quayle’s inexperience. Dukakis, after all, had selected Bentsen, an experienced elder statesman.

There were also revelations about Quayle’s connections to Paula Parkinson, a stunning female lobbyist at the center of a 1980 scandal, who had revealed that she had used heavy-handed techniques to sway legislators. Parkinson, who later posed nude in Playboy, was the focus of a Justice Dept. investigation into whether politicians had traded favors for sex.

The investigation did not turn up evidence of wrongdoing. But it was discovered that Quayle was one of the representatives who attended a golf trip with Parkinson in Florida. Quayle insisted that he had done nothing wrong and had gone to “play golf.”

The senator looked ever more like a deer in the headlights as he faced questions about how he got a spot in the National Guard as a result of his privileged upbringing.

Republicans were frustrated at their convention, just days after the announcement, when all the media attention in New Orleans was on Quayle rather than the Republican message. GOP strategist Ed Rollins lamented that the carefully planned out convention “got stomped on” by the Quayle selection.

Quayle also made mistakes after the convention. The most infamous occurred at a photo-op at a school in Trenton, N.J., where Quayle mistakenly corrected a student who had spelled potato correctly. He said the young boy had left an “e” off the end.

During the vice presidential debate, Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy, responding to a question about whether his lack of experience mattered. Obviously prepared for this, Bentsen jumped on the comparison, and said “I served with Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Bentsen was widely regarded as the winner that night.

Democrats did not stop. One of their favorite sayings was “Quayle: Just a heartbeat away.”

But the Bush team came back. Even as Democrats attacked Quayle and his candidacy deteriorated, the GOP strategist Lee Atwater and his team kept their guns focused on Dukakis. They painted him as weak on defense, in favor of high taxes and out of touch with mainstream values as a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.”

In the end, this was what mattered most to voters. The strategy worked. The Republicans trounced the Democrats. Bush won 53.4 percent of the popular vote and a whopping 426 electoral votes—all with Quayle on the ticket.

There have been other races where controversial picks did not sidetrack a presidential candidacy. During the 1952 presidential campaign, for example, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s pick, Sen. Richard M. Nixon, came under fire from press revelations that he maintained a secret slush fund filled by California supporters. The story broke just days after Eisenhower had announced his selection.

Eisenhower was prepared to drop Nixon, but the senator went on television. Nixon made a speech, arguing that he and his wife, Pat, were common Americans without wealth, and he mocked the accusations against him. He said, most notably, that he would not return a cocker spaniel, Checkers, that a supporter had given his two little daughters. He spoke of his wife’s “respectable Republican cloth coat” and asked supporters to write directly to the Republican National Committee to show their backing. The polls were in Nixon’s favor — and the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket sailed to victory.

In the past few days, Democrats have been focusing on one aspect of the 1988 campaign — Quayle’s many problems — while forgetting the overall story: Bush and Quayle won.

Democrats could certainly point to the weaknesses and dangers in the Palin selection, but they should be cautious. If they allow Palin to distract them from their main target — McCain and his support for the unpopular economic and military policies of President George W. Bush — they might just find themselves like Dukakis and Bentsen in 1988, on the losing end.

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s” (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II.

Almost 29 years ago, on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered what is considered one of the worst speeches of his career. Americans were struggling with an enormous energy crisis. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had jacked up prices again. A majority of gas stations in America did not have sufficient fuel, and those that did were charging far higher prices than one year before. Carter’s energy plan, which took a long time to pass Congress, had not calmed the roiling issue.

After meeting with all kinds of experts at Camp David, Carter gave a speech to millions of Americans. He implored citizens to accept that they lived in an age of limits. He called for self-sacrifice and diminished consumption.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

While the speech might have touched on the real problems underlying the crisis, it was deemed a political failure. Critics complained that the president was lecturing the nation at a time he needed to be offering relief. Presidents should not give sermons but rather solutions. Newspapers were filled with op-ed pieces lambasting the president for blaming Americans for the problem.

Democratic proponents of new energy policies have been trapped in that July moment ever since. Even though these Democrats have continued to offer more accurate assessments of the energy challenges and focus on solutions more likely to end the crisis — like conservation, an increase in fuel efficiency and the development of alternative energies — oil friendly Republicans have regularly done a better job on the campaign trail at selling their ideas.

Since the 1970s, most members of the GOP have consistently offered two solutions to the energy problem: more drilling and more militarism. While these do little to offer immediate relief at the pump, they make sense to voters and seem to offer a clearer vision of what government can accomplishment.

Ever since the 1973 Arab embargo, many Republicans have pushed for more domestic drilling as one solution to the problem of insecure sources of high-priced oil. In his 1975 special message on energy and the economy, a year after the embargo had led to long gas lines and soaring prices, President Gerald R. Ford warned, “Americans are no longer in full control of their own national destiny, when that destiny depends on uncertain foreign fuel at high prices fixed by others.”

More than three decades later, in his 2007 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush echoed Ford. “For too long, our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments and raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.”

From Ford through Bush II, the Republican solution for energy independence has been to make it easier for the oil industry to drill in the U.S. by offering subsidies, tax breaks and an easing of environmental restrictions. Since Bush took office in 2001, Republicans have pushed for increased oil exploration — especially in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

Even if they fail in Congress, their calls for greater supply sound better on the campaign trail than Carter-era appeals to cut back. As Bush said in the midst of the California energy shortage “you cannot conserve your way to energy independence. We can do a better job in conservation, but we darn sure have to do a better job of finding more supply.” In a direct contrast to Carter and his cardigan-wearing pleas for conservation, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

In addition to increasing domestic supply, the other GOP solution to securing more oil has been an increased military presence in the Persian Gulf. This has been a policy posture that many Democrats also accepted.

The drive began in the 1970s and 1980s, when Carter and Ronald Reagan increased the U.S. commitment to having military forces in the Persian Gulf region to protect oil resources. Washington worked with allies, ranging from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, who helped stabilize the supplies.

Democrats, as well as moderate Republicans who support new energy policies, have not done a good job framing the two main goals they pursue: search for renewable sources of energy and try to substantially reduce energy consumption.

Democrats will have to offer more in the short term than populist attacks on Big Oil that don’t actually deliver cheaper prices at the pump. Energy-related issues have lagged behind other aspects of environmentalism, which have taken a deeper political hold since the 1970s — like recycling or water quality control.

But there is evidence that we are in a moment of change. In certain respects, public opinion has outpaced political rhetoric. Even though Carter’s speech was a flop, the environmental movement gradually influenced the way the public thought about issues like conservation of energy. With energy prices at extremely high levels, polls suggest that the public is more willing than ever to deal with environmental challenges.

Building on the work of the environmental movement, former Vice President Al Gore has helped to popularize the issue of global warming through his Oscar-winning film and advocacy. More Republican politicians have started to question the Bush approach to the energy crisis. National-security concerns have also broadened electoral interest in reducing energy dependence on the Middle East.

Even when the Republicans controlled Congress, the Bush team has not been able to get through a measure to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to drilling. Shifts in consumer attitudes and consumption have also helped citizens see practical steps toward reducing oil use. According to several recent reports, the high cost of fuel is persuading a large number of Americans to switch from Humvees and SUVs to smaller cars and even bicycles for daily commute. Mass transportation is experiencing stunning rider increases.

Yet environmentalists still have a long way to go. The alternative Republican solution still holds strong electoral appeal. The United States is a country defined by suburbanization, cars, big houses and the extravagant use of fuel. With all its progress, the environmental movement did not halt this trend.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, has, over the years, been more complex in his actual policy positions but he just recently embraced the traditional GOP response of calling for off-shore drilling. Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will have to work on this challenge.

As in the 1970s, Americans are again frustrated with the rising price of oil. But Democrats need to work on how they frame and sell their policies — or they could end up like Carter in 1979.

Meg Jacobs is an associate professor of history at MIT. She is writing a book on the energy crisis in the 1970s. Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gov. George C. Wallace, Sen. John Edwards, Gov. Mike Huckabee, William Jennings Bryan and Sen. Barack Obama (cc, WDCpix)

Democratic Populism is all the rage. As we enter the final phase of the caucuses and primaries, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are competing for anxious blue collar and middle-class voters in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Since John Edwards dropped out of the race, both candidates have promised to restore economic security.

The Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. argues that the campaigns are indebted to the legacy of the late Minnesota senator, Paul Wellstone, the “affable populist,” who Dionne says influenced their message. This, he says, is “salutary for Democrats.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

But recent efforts to develop a Democratic populism have usually fallen flat. Populism has become a default position for Democratic presidential candidates since the Reagan Revolution. Walter F. Mondale spoke the populist idiom in his 1984 presidential campaign, only to go down to Ronald Reagan’s claim that it was “Morning in America.” Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis adopted populism late in the 1988 campaign as his technocratic message fizzled. That didn’t play well either. When Vice President Al Gore tried to sound like William Jennings Bryan in his 2000 bid for the presidency, many voters saw this as another example of how Gore was willing to say anything to win. John Edwards encountered the same problem this year.

One major challenge is that the populist appeal takes on a different tone in different parts of the country. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, working- and middle-class Americans are largely concerned about the exodus of jobs overseas. High unemployment and the mortgage crisis rank high on their list of concerns. In Texas, however, immigration is a far greater concern to the same group of voters.

Another challenge is that a large part of the Democratic electorate is now middle class. Populism can no longer just focus on helping poor farmers or blue-collar workers. Many Democratic voters live in the suburbs, wrestling with economic anxieties like mortgage burdens, professional job insecurity and health care costs. Rather than ignore this demographic change, the Democratic candidates need to talk about how a new populism can help this part of the population.

In addition, Democrats need to square economic populism with the critiques that they have made about government intervention. Economic populism is based on an acceptance of government. But Democrats are now the party of Bill Clinton, who said, “The era of big government is over.” These candidates need to think how there can be a populism without a philosophy that comfortably embraces the virtues of government. It might be a different kind of government intervention than in the 1930s and 1960s — one that relies more on subsidies, targeted investment and incentives than direct regulation. But that needs to be spelled out.

At the recent debate in Texas, the Democratic candidates talked about how they would deal with these challenges. Hillary Clinton outlined a number of programs that offered help to citizens — in ways that didn’t appear to be increasing the size of the government. She made a pitch to have a moratorium on home foreclosures for a minimum of 90 days, as well as a freeze on adjustable rate loans. On his Web site, Obama has called for funding work-force training programs—as opposed to New Deal public works programs—that would help citizens find high-paying private-sector jobs.

The current efforts to define a Democratic populism have great potential because they tap into a powerful political tradition. Populism has had many faces. The highpoint for populism occurred in the 1890s, when a Populist Party formed and pushed for the interests of impoverished rural farmers. It championed inflationary monetary policies that would increase farmer income. It also pushed for radical monetary reforms to weaken Wall Street. “The People’s Party,” said Tom Watson in 1892, “is the protest of the plundered against the plunderers — of the victim against the robbers.”

After winning a million votes in 1892, however, the Populists foundered when the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, offered many Populist proposals during his 1896 run for the presidency. Populism would live on through progressive-era Republicans (Theodore Roosevelt) and New Deal Democrats (Franklin D. Roosevelt) who embraced many policies and themes from the Populist Party. Throughout the 20th century, many issues promoted by economic populism remained pivotal.

Populism also had a darker side. Some 19th-century Populists made racist appeals. Democrats like South Carolina Rep. Ben Tillman championed the cause of poor white farmers, not just through promises of economic policy but also by attacking African-Americans.

There was another burst of populism during the 1960s — though far different style. In response to the conflict over Civil Rights and Vietnam, the New Left promoted the empowerment of citizens as they railed against an unholy alliance among big business, big government and the military. The New Left made community activism and democratic participation hallmark claims. They called for “participatory democracy.” They were not as focused on economic issues as the Populist Party, and talked about the detrimental effect large bureaucratic institutions had on the health of the polity.

The racist aspects of Populism did not disappear by any means. George C. Wallace revived this in his 1968 run for the presidency, tapping into Southern Democratic votes by lashing out against Civil Rights. Wallace — who as governor of Alabama physically tried to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama in 1963 — combined promises of economic assistance with a staunch condemnation of Civil Rights. Wallace won five Southern states and 46 electoral votes. When he ran again, in 1972, he condemned “briefcase-carrying bureaucrats” who try to “run your lives.”

Yet, even as conservatives attacked the New Left, they embraced much of their populist appeal. In the 1970s and 1980s, conservative populism claimed to represent the interests of average citizens as they attacked the federal government and cultural institutions like Hollywood. According to the direct mail guru Richard Viguerie, “the liberals have had control not only of all three branches of government, but of the major universities, the three major networks, the biggest newspapers, the news weeklies, and Hollywood.” Through their populist rhetoric, conservatives made inroads into constituencies who had traditionally voted Democratic based on their economic interests. Reagan tapped into this kind of populism as he drew many former Democrats in the South to vote Republican.

Today’s populism is harder to characterize. Republican Mike Huckabee has offered a familiar version as he reaches into the tool-kit of the conservative movement. Huckabee, who often attacked the “Washington to Wall Street power axis,” promised to use the bully pulpit of the presidency–rather than regulations–to impose pressure on corrupt CEOs. He also says that a national sales tax would help average Americans. Restoring traditional cultural values, he says, will help strengthen economically torn communities.

But Obama and Clinton are trying to make a different appeal. Both are “new Democrats” who have been influenced by Bill Clinton and his style in their acceptance of the virtues of free markets and their belief in limited power of government. While they have criticized Bill Clinton’s agenda—calling for reforms on NAFTA and promoting new domestic programs—they have not radically departed from his basic framework of centrist liberalism.

Besides the challenges of translating populism for the modern political age, Democrats who want to reinvigorate a populist appeal need to grapple with an age-old problem. The policies that populists promote are often simplistic or vague. And populism easily serves as a vehicle for ambitious politicians who feed off the voters’ hurts and anxieties. Once in office, populist Democrats have often betrayed their egalitarian promises.

None of the challenges should dissuade Obama or Clinton’s efforts to tap into this tradition. Rather, it should serve as a reason for them to think seriously about what they are doing and the kinds of programs they will call for this fall. Democrats have an opportunity to regain control of both the White House and Congress, and perhaps restore some of the political power they have not had since the 1960s. To do so they will need to construct the same kind of governing philosophy that conservatives have offered since Reagan.

If Democrats just use the old language without thinking through the new political realities, the message will surely disappoint. However, if the Democratic nominee can construct a new version of economic populism that explains how the party can ease middle-class insecurity without requiring excessive government, they might find a powerful argument to convince voters that their party has a better chance to help average citizens than the GOP.