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About 20 seconds after Sen. John Kerry announced last
week that Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina will be his
running mate, we started reading a lot about Edwards'
populist appeal
and populism is the politics of
resentment and Americans don't like it
and how Edwards
ran as an economic populist
in the primaries.
Edwards was an excellent choice because he's a warrior. Somebody on the Democratic ticket has to take the battle to the enemy, and that's not Kerry's style. Vice-presidential candidates are supposed to be savage gut-fighters, and Edwards can swing hard with charm and wit.
He is, after all, a successful trial lawyer, which means he's good at persuading juries. Juries are made up of regular people, just like most of us voters.
Which brings us back to populism. The last time the word got much use in Colorado was during the gubernatorial election of 1990. Democrat Roy Romer was seeking a second term, and he was challenged by Republican John Andrews, who was then head of the Independence Institute (a think tank in Golden whose apparent mission is to encourage Coloradans to consume more gasoline). Andrews was later appointed to the state senate.
In 1990, Romer said he was probably the most populist
governor in 50 years,
while Andrews claimed his stands
made him more of a populist than Romer. Neither claim
seemed to resonate, perhaps because the real Populists --
those who formed a powerful third party more than a century
ago -- were much more outspoken. Consider this from their
1892 platform:
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...
They didn't mince words then. Colorado elected a
Populist governor in 1892, Davis H. Bloody Bridles
Waite, who got his colorful nickname from a fiery speech in
which he declared, borrowing imagery from the biblical book
of Revelation, it is better, infinitely better, that
blood should flow to the horses' bridles rather than our
national liberties should be destroyed.
Although some Populist planks eventually became law -- the graduated income tax and the eight-hour day, to name two -- the party foundered in the early 20th century. Progressive Republicans and the Democratic party took over some Populist issues, and the steam went out of the revolt.
More recently, some commentators blamed the populist
the people vs. the powerful
theme for Al Gore's loss
in 2000. Populism, they say, just doesn't work in
America.
What they miss is that a different form of populism is
alive and well in American politics -- not economic
populism, but cultural populism,
which works by
presenting one candidate as more of a regular guy
than the opponent.
By that measure, George W. Bush is eminently successful at mining populist sentiment. Here's the son of a president and the grandson of a Connecticut senator, a graduate of a private prep school and two Ivy League universities. And yet he's able to come across as some good ol' boy you might see idling on the porch in a gimme hat at the local feed store, just spittin' and whittlin'.
Meanwhile the cultural populists portray their opponents as Volvo-driving wine-and-cheese elitists even if they're advocating things like universal health care, higher wages, cleaner air and water -- the stuff of economic populism.
Now we'll see whether John Edwards, the son of a mill-worker and a fellow who might well be able to beat George Bush in a tobacco-spitting contest and Dick Cheney in a cussing contest, can fuse modern cultural populism with traditional economic populism.
If he can, then maybe we'll see a campaign that addresses more than which candidate is the biggest NASCAR fan.
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