This wide-ranging discussion tossed around the P word freely, with some interesting comments but no agreement (though nobody seems to like Bob Shrum.)
Populism is like democracy was 150 years ago. It’s scary, embarrassing, has bad breath, dirt under its fingernails. Can there be a progressive populism? Can it succeed? Should it?
Scott Lehigh’s unusually entertaining column in today’s Globe swings at populism (and Jonathan Edwards), but does he connect?
Hmmmm. From Fred Harris to Dick Gephardt to Tom Harkin to Bob Kerrey, populists, of conviction or convenience, have actually fared poorly here.
So, who is, or was, a populist? Fred Harris? Sure. Dick Gephart? No way. Tom Harkin? I’ll concede the point. Bob Kerry? Um…no.
So just what are we talking about here?
Who would the characters in Oz be played by in 2008?
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JOURNAL OF THE GEORGIA ASSOCIATION OF HISTORIANS, vol. 15 (1994), pp. 49-63.
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz … we can read between L. Frank Baum’s lines and see various images of the United States at the turn of the century. That has been true since 1964, when American Quarterly published Henry M. Littlefield’s “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism.” Littlefield described all sorts of hidden meanings and allusions to Gilded Age society in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: the wicked Witch of the East represented eastern industrialists and bankers who controlled the people (the Munchkins); the Scarecrow was the wise but naive western farmer; the Tin Woodman stood for the dehumanized industrial worker; the Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryan, Populist presidential candidate in 1896; the Yellow Brick Road, with all its dangers, was the gold standard; Dorothy’s silver slippers (Judy Garland’s were ruby red, but Baum originally made them silver) represented the Populists’ solution to the nation’s economic woes (“the free and unlimited coinage of silver”); Emerald City was Washington, D.C.; the Wizard, “a little bumbling old man, hiding behind a facade of paper mache and noise, . . . able to be everything to everybody,” was any of the Gilded Age presidents.
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According to Littlefield, Baum, a reform-minded Democrat who supported William Jennings Bryan’s pro-silver candidacy, wrote the book as a parable of the Populists, an allegory of their failed efforts to reform the nation in 1896. “Baum never allowed the consistency of the allegory to take precedence over the theme of youthful entertainment,” Littlefield hedged at one point; “the allegory always remains in a minor key.” Still, he concluded that “the relationships and analogies outlined above . . . are far too consistent to be coincidental.”
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It was an interesting notion, one scholars could not leave alone, and they soon began to find additional correspondences between Populism and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Richard Jensen, in a 1971 study of Midwestern politics and culture, devoted two pages to Baum’s story. He implicitly qualified Littlefield by pointing out that not all pro-Bryan silverites were Populists. But Jensen then proceeded to add two new points to the standard Littlefield interpretation, finding analogies for Toto and Oz itself: Dorothy’s faithful dog represented the teetotaling Prohibitionists, an important part of the silverite coalition, and anyone familiar with the silverites’ slogan “16 to 1”–that is, the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold–would have instantly recognized “Oz” as the abbreviation for “ounce.”
Populism as defined by the granddaddy of dictionaries, The Old Oxford Dictionary*:
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[*This link will only be good for the next 72 hours or through October 5th.]
It is government by the sensible man in the street – John and Mary, the couple who work and who are both flummoxed and bored by regulation and intrigue, but who have stong, every-kettle-on-its-own-bottom principles. John and Mary vote to roll back the income tax, but they also volunteer at the food pantry.
I’m not sure that is exactly right, Peter, though I suspect the populist impulse plays out very differently depending on the political system.
It is, however, well suited to a republic! :~)
That’s a conservative populist.
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A progressive one would vote to roll back poverty.
KB – legislation isn’t the answer to everything. In fact, too much of it merely makes people into scofflaws.
… as to the ideologically (as opposed to pragmatically) concern implicit in modern conservatism. .
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I linked to this same Alterman post in another thread but it appears as appropriate here.
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…Conservatism is self-consciously ideological in a way liberalism is not. Milton Friedman argues that “freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.” This belief leads a conservative columnist like George F. Will to support policies like the privatization of Social Security irrespective of whether such a transformation will make the program more or less effective, but because of “reasons [that] rise from the philosophy of freedom.”
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Only concerns with ideological purity and disregard for pragmatism can result in the equating of working against poverty with the ‘giving away’ of flat abs or that one might be a slippery slope toward the other.
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Ideas and people are rarely described as populist anymore because such ideas are only referred to as populist until some GOP staffer releases a talking point about how it should be referred to as class warfare instead. Then, of course, the media readily obey. Remember, these are the same people, who despite living in a liberal democracy founded on liberal democratic principals managed to, through the relentless parroting in the media (talk radio in particular), tarnish the very word ‘liberal’.
That might be a bit of an embellishment.
To be fair, the GOP staffer would likely release a talking point about how it should be referred to as MoonBatty Socialistic FemiNazism.
Three cheers for the “marketplace of ideas”, eh?
….a “vote to roll back poverty” (KB’s words) and “working against poverty” (your words)?
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The former is passive; a let-George-do-it dependence upon government programs which may or may not accomplish the aim, but which can be checked off the To Do list when the vote is taken. YOUR words are active, and populist. As I said, Populist John and Mary DO work to eradicate and alleviate the effects of poverty – they just may not feel that government is better than personal responsibiltiy as a delivery system.
… silly me. Why would anyone who wants a Government to accomplish anything use active verbs.
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Seriously… with the exception of (ineffective) charity, the Government is the medium through which we should be banding together for those things that the marketplace and charity have demonstrated an inability to address.
… that “…” paragraph was supposed to be in block quote.
Populism is the contention that obstacles between popular will and government policy should be removed — even when those obstacles are sensible and in there for a reason. I see this more as a process thing than anybody else.
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Direct election of Senators was populism. Most of us would call that good. The expectation that electors would directly obey the presidential vote result in a state is populism. Also good.
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The idea that government can be accomplished by referendum, or that public officials should be subject to recall is populism. Good or bad?
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The idea that the average person on the street is better qualified to write laws than people who read and write laws is populism. The idea that education is a bad thing, and “book-learning” is undesirable among candidates (such as John Kerry and Al Gore) is populism. Most would say bad.
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Of course, as with the idea of “freedom”, shameless commentators have realized that calling something “populist” is generally a winner. Thus, anything they like because populist whether it actually is or not. Whether it is a good idea or not.
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When I think of populists, I think of:
Andrew Jackson
William Jennings Bryant
Huey Long
Rene Levesque
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Bit of a mixed bag there, what?