If, for some perverse reason, liberals want to throw the presidential election, they should go right on denouncing Donald Trump as a “populist.”
If, for some perverse reason, liberals want to throw the presidential election, they should go right on denouncing Donald Trump as a “populist.”
If I thought he really were a populist, I’d vote for him. And I’m as far from being a supporter as you can get.
Calling him a populist violates the first rule of advertising: Tout your product, knock the other guy’s. Populist means “for the people.” So if you award that title to your opponent, you’re saying you’re not for the people. In other words, you’re an “elitist,” and the Democrats are burdened with enough evidence of that, without copping a plea to being out of touch with workaday folks.
Hillary Clinton recently spoke out against America’s escalating income gap — good strategy — while wearing a $12,495 Armani jacket — dumb move. She should have appeared in an off-the-rack blouse from Kmart. Then by contrast, she could have pointed to obvious signs that Trump is anything but a homespun man of the people: a private jet, skyscrapers, golf resorts and failed gambling casinos, all emblazoned with his name.
Trump isn’t a populist but a demagogue. The difference being that a populist seeks political power to work for the good of the average citizen. A demagogue claims the same motivation, but is truly only interested in aggrandizing himself.
Notice how Trump took time out from promising what he’d do for us to rant and rave about a federal judge hearing a lawsuit against him. That display of unbridled egoism mixed with a tincture of racism — he repeatedly underscored the judge’s Mexican heritage — sent Republican officeholders scurrying for cover. Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk unendorsed Trump.
Another Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, hinted she might vote for Clinton.
Populism is a simple idea. Abraham Lincoln put it succinctly, speaking of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Yet for 95 percent of human history, the opposite idea held sway: Government is for the few, not the many. The common people get the crumbs.
Our Founding Fathers borrowed the concept of a bicameral legislature from England, calling the chambers the Senate and the House of Representatives. The names of their English counterparts made it clear who was top dog: Members of the House of Lords didn’t have to dirty their hands running for office, like members of the House of Commons. Lords inherited their seat from their fathers.
Even after we ditched titles of nobility, populism hit some rough patches in this country. In the late 19th century, American society was splitting in two, much like the current division between the 1 percent and everyone else. The Industrial Revolution had created a new aristocracy of wealth. Whole sectors of the economy were monopolized by family dynasties: John D. Rockefeller and his descendants had a lock on oil production and distribution, J.J. Hill and Cornelius Vanderbilt dominated the railroads. In their respective fields, their word was law. Government hardly regulated and barely taxed the Captains of Industry.
Farmers were particularly at the mercy of the monopolies. They needed money to buy seed and equipment, which banks were willing to loan when times were good, but insisted on collecting even in lean times. They shipped their produce to market via railroads that could pretty much charge as they pleased.
Squeezed by those constraints, Southern and Western farmers rebelled against the status quo, leading to the formation of a People’s Party in 1891. Its adherents demanded the breakup of the monopolies and backing the dollar with silver as well as gold. That would increase the money supply, making it easier for farmers to pay their debts.
In 1896, a populist orator, William Jennings Bryan, electrified a Democratic Party convention meeting in Chicago. Demanding silver money, he said: “You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold!” He got the nomination but lost the election. Scared out of its wits, the business community loudly forecast total disaster if Bryan went to the White House.
Nonetheless, that made the Democrats the party of populism. During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed it the champion of the forgotten man.
Then strangely, the Democrats let the populist franchise get away. No longer embracing it, they used it to derogate upstart defectors from their ranks, like Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace. By what stretch of the imagination could someone who denied African-Americans equal rights be a populist?
The same sleight-of-hand is involved in calling Donald Trump a populist. A populist is a unifier, while Trump is a divider. His campaign depends on pitting one group against another, vulgarly denigrating one after another.
When Lincoln spoke of government of, by and for the people, he didn’t add a caveat, as Trump might: “Except for Muslims, Mexicans, scum reporters, climate-change hucksters, women not as beautiful as my wife, Clueless Obama, Lying Hillary and a senator I call Pocahontas.”
Ron Grossman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Readers may email him at rgrossman@tribpub.com