HERE’S A LITTLE TEST FOR all you political junkies. What presidential candidate said each of the following?
1. “The facts are . . . the American people are hurting. These people are hurting in the inner cities. We’re shipping the, quote, “low paying jobs” overseas.”
2. “Washington is a federal forum whose operating slogan has been “billions for corporations, bills for the people.'”
3. “Members of Congress should generate some leadership by example. They should stop sponging off the taxpayers.”
4. “If you want to serve the people, you’ve got to listen to real people. If you stay inside the Beltway, the special interests become the real people.”
5. “Why are our people not realizing the fruits of their labor? I will tell you. Because we have a government that is frozen in the ice of its own indifference, a government that does not listen anymore to the forgotten men and women who work in the forges and factories and plants and businesses of this country. We have instead a government that is too busy taking the phone calls from lobbyists for foreign countries and the corporate contributors of the Fortune 500.”
6. “Now all those fellows with thousand-dollar suits and alligator shoes running up and down the halls of Congress that make policy now — the lobbyists, the PAC guys, the foreign lobbyists . . . we’re going to get rid of them, and the Congress will be listening to the people.”
7. “Today our birthright of sovereignty, purchased with the blood of patriots, is being traded away for foreign money, handed over to faceless foreign bureaucrats at places like the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization … What is the matter with our lead- ers?
8. GATT and the World Trade Organization mean “replacing democratic powers residing in the U.S. government with the autocratic authority of a world government.” Pat Buchanan, you say? They all could easily have come from the mouth or pen of the controversial Republican candidate. But only numbers 1, 5, and 7 are his. Numbers 2, 3, and 8 belong to . . . Ralph Nader, numbers 4 and 6 to Ross Perot.
Buchanan, Perot, Nader — the Three Amigos of contemporary American populism. Perot, of course, was a presidential candidate in 1992 and is poised to run again on his Reform party ticket this year. Nader will be on the ballot in California and other states as the presidential nominee of the Green party — and polls show him doing quite well. And Buchanan’s rise to prominence speaks for itself.
That these eight statements could have been said interchangeably by Buchanan, Perot, or Nader — the three strangest bedfellows in modern American political history — speaks volumes about the state of play in politics today and about the populist challenge facing our leaders tomorrow. This populism is different in one key respect from its predecessors: It has a strong base on the left, with Nader joined by prominent congressional liberals like David Bonior and top labor officials; in the center, with Perot; and on the bedrock right, with Buchanan. Of course, there are still sharp political differences between these camps, on issues from abortion to national health reform to tort reform to budget deficits. But it is striking how much more the three groups are in sync than they are at odds.
Populism is nothing new in America. As the late historian Richard Hofstadter reminded us in a series of books, it has more than once been a prominent force, including in the 1820s, under Andrew Jackson, in the 1890s, in a movement led by William Jennings Bryan, and in the 1930s, led by America Firster Father Coughlin.
All these waves of populism had elements in common, including a visceral distrust of all elites, starting with the moneyed interests but including the political leadership in Washington; staunch protectionism; a sizable dollop of isolationism; and a touch of nativism. From Jackson on, American populism sought to unleash the popular will by undermining or bypassing representative democratic institutions like Congress. Consider one more quote, this one from Andrew Jackson:
“Could it really be urged that the framers of the Constitution intended that our government should become a government of brokers? If so, then the profits of this national brokers’shop must inure to the benefit of the whole and not to a few privileged monied capitalists to the utter rejection of the many.” Change a few words to contemporary idioms, and this too could come from Buchanan, Perot, or Nader.
Populism has thrived whenever American workers felt embattled or in trouble, which usually has meant in the middle of economic turmoil, like the panic of 1819, the depression of 1894-’96, and the Great Depression in the 1930s. The 1990s would seem to be a curious time for ascendant populism. After all, the economy continues to grow, if at a slower rate than before, with low unemployment and low inflation.
Why then is populism showing such strength now, and showing it across the ideological board? There is a real driving cause: the uncertainty generated by the global economy. If most Americans have iobs, and believe they will have jobs next year, they still do not feel safe. Mergers, bankruptcies, buyouts, layoffs — all have become regular facts of life to workers, who have lost any sense that there is loyalty up and loyalty down in today’s workplace, or any likelihood that their children will be better off than they are.
That unease has been heightened by the voters’ continuing deep hostility toward politicians and other elites. Combine the two with a corrosive cynicism toward the political process, and voila — all the ingredients needed for populism to thrive.
The press’s unremitting hostility toward business leaders and politicians, especially Congress, and obsessive coverage of scandal, real, alleged, and imagined, over the past decade and a half have turned a nascent problem into a combustible one, which Buchanan, Perot, and Nader threaten to ignite.
To be sure, Pat Buchanan is unlikely to turn his crusade into a Republican nomination for the White House. His support in GOP primaries and caucuses probably has a ceiling of 30-35 percent of voters — not enough to win, but enough to be a major factor at the Republican convention in San Diego in August.
More significantly, what happens to his supporters and to the broader share of the electorate that resonates to the populist message?
There is a large market for that message — and in America, where there is a market, there is a product. Buchanan’s message paves the way for an even more significant Perot candidacy in “96. That is good news for Bill Clinton. But Buchanan also fuels Nader’s left-wing populist crusade, which really could threaten Clinton in California, a must-win state for him. More broadly, the Buchanan movement means even more populist candidates for Congress, joining the bulk of 1994’s GOP freshman class and a substantial share of the congressional classes of 1990 and 1992. In the Democratic party, it means the continuing ascendancy of David Bonior as a congressional leader and the sharpening of the populist side of Dick Gephardt’s message, begun on the presidential campaign trail in 1988, developed in his anti-NAFTA rhetoric in 1995, and honed in his 1996 attacks on the GOP’s Medicare proposal.
The American political and business establishment is broadly internationalist, free-trade oriented, and anti-nativist. Buchanan’s rise will jolt them enough to prevent his success this year. But it would be foolhardy to ignore the broader political trend in the country. No political force in America is more vibrant or resonant right now than populism. If political and business leaders in both parties don’t move quickly to address in a constructive — meaning nonisolationist, non-protectionist, and non- nativist — fashion the issues Buchanan, Nader, and Perot are raising, the movement will only get stronger, especially if the economy falters.
In that case, Pat Buchanan will be back in 2000, with more credibility, a broader base, and even more momentum — and a second Buchanan in the White House, with a Congress more sympathetic to this one’s isolationist and protectionist siren song, will no longer be a farfetched joke.
