Populism redux.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION - Significance of populism in the American economic and political situation - Critical essay

POPULISM, ACCORDING TO a brief dictionary definition, is political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite. Populists, as historian Michael Kazin describes them, "conceive of the ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter." Populist rhetoric taps the anger and frustration of many about a world that appears beyond their control and comprehension. The privileged elite in this drama change with time. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Populist Party railed against the banks and trusts for squeezing the small farmer; in the 1930s, Louisiana Gov. Huey Long promised to share the wealth by stripping some of it from the rich; in the 1950s, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R.-Ill.) charged communist infiltration of the elitist State Department, claiming that "almost any one of the 150,000,000 normal Americans would do a better job than Dean Acheson [then Secretary of State]"; in the 1960s, Alabama Gov. George Wallace denounced the pointy headed bureaucrats in Washington who were forcing racial integration onto the local school districts; and in the 1990s, presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan attacked the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the globalized economy, and the sinister neoconservatives in Washington.

The kernel of truth in all these claims makes populism a tempting political faith. Indeed, the banks and the masts were taking full advantage of many small farmers in the 1880s and 1890s; during the 1930s, many suffered, as some speculators reaped benefits; the degree of communist penetration of the State Department in the 1940s and 1950s was far greater than most realized, not withstanding McCarthy's exaggerations; forced integration in the 1960s and 1970s did some damage to neighborhood schools, both black and white; and the globalized economy has resulted in a substantial loss of jobs in the automobile, steel, and electronic industries. Yet, the language of populism always is overheated, the opponents demonized, and the solutions simplistic.

John Edwards' now-defunct presidential campaign pushed all the populist themes and, whatever his ultimate political fate turns out to be, those themes may well resonate throughout this political season. In a December 2007 speech, Edwards gave a classic summary of 21st-century populism, "Because of corporate greed...