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Only 25 years ago, candidates boasted about how
liberal
they were; nowadays most office-seekers
would rather be accused of sodomy than liberalism. Nobody
was a populist
then, but now, Gov. Roy Romer says
he's probably the most populist governor in 50
years,
while John Andrews, his Republican challenger,
says his stands make him more of a populist than Romer.
So what's a populist,
besides this year's
political buzz-word?
About a century ago, the Populists were a potent third-party movement. They were not happy people. Consider this excerpt from the national Populist platform of 1892:
We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge
of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption
dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress,
and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are
demoralized . . . The newspapers are largely subsidized or
muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated,
homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the
land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists.... The
fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build
up colossal fortunes for a few...
Makes you proud to see how far America has come in the past 98 years, doesn't it?
The Populists did win elections in the Midwest and West.
In 1892, they got control of the Colorado senate, and the
state elected a Populist governor, Davis H. Bloody
Bridles
Waite.
His nickname came from a flaming speech where he
announced that it is better, infinitely better, that
blood should flow to the horses' bridles rather than our
national liberties should be destroyed.
In 1893, the miners of Cripple Creek went on strike for an eight-hour day. Waite did not do what most Colorado governors do -- call out the militia to shoot workers. Instead, he ordered the militia to keep the peace, and personally negotiated a settlement that favored the miners.
For those and similar reasons, Waite was widely perceived as a dangerous radical; there was great fear that no one would invest in Colorado as long as the state government was in threatening Populist hands.
But Roy Romer travels the world to get people to invest in Colorado, and he's busy with government-business partnerships when he's in town. John Andrews comes from a conservative think tank where they're still trying to discredit parts of the old Populist program, such as the eight-hour day and the graduated income tax. No politician this side of Czechoslovakia has the courage to stand on a platform that sounds anything like the old Populist platform.
Romer is a millionaire businessman, and Andrews a
professional right-wing apologist. If either is a
Populist,
then the word is meaningless. And the
campaign has just started.
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