BOOK REVIEWS gggff

American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898, by Robert C. McMath, Jr. New York, Hill and Wang, 1992.   Review by Larry DeWitt December 2003 Say the word "Populism" to a room full of historians and most of them will start generating images in their minds of discontented sod-farmers huddling together at the Grange in their bib-overalls, complaining about the banks and the railroads and the other "monied interests" who are preventing them from having a little more money of their own to be interested in. This is certainly the variety of populism we find emphasized in Robert C. McMath Jr.'s American Populism. McMath, as many historians of populism before him, peers at the past through a narrow slit of time (1877 to 1898) and it is no surprise that he finds the story of populism to be primarily one of rural revolt, arising first in the declining agricultural regions of upstate New York, flaring up again among the hardscrabble farmers on the Texas frontier, before spreading like a contagion up into the agricultural heartland of the Great Plains. Added into the mix are occasional flourishes of labor populism, from such familiar quarters as the Knights of Labor. While McMath is better than some of his predecessors in acknowledging that the populist movement was more than just a farmer/labor movement (he touches on such monetary policy components as greenbackism and the free silver movement) he is still limited by his too-limited timeframe. Consequently, the story of American populism for McMath is one which emerges in the aftermath of the Depression of 1873 and the end of Reconstruction, has a brief may-fly existence, and dies out by the turn of century. This leaves out, in my view, too much that is rightly classified as populist in American history and lights populism with too much of a cast as a merely rural revolt. The first wave of scholarship on populism, which McMath identifies as coming from New Deal-era historians such as John Hicks, saw populism as a reaction to the economic stresses produced by the Depression of 1873, in much the same way that these historians viewed the New Deal as a product of the economic hard times of the Great Depression. This view of populism also suggested (not very convincingly) that populism could unite black and white laborers in a common rebellion against the monied classes. Writing in the mid-1950s (at the height of Cold War McCarthyism) Richard Hofstadter offered a portrait of the darker strains of populism. Hofstadter found populists to be not so much economically distressed as socially disaffected. "Status anxiety" was the term Hofstadter used to summarize his take on populism. Accounts of populism in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the concerns of those eras, and the historiography focused on populism as an example of "movement organizations"--very much like the civil rights and feminist movements of that period. According to this school of thought, disaffected farmers became populists because they belonged to organizations of like-minded people (such as granges and farmers' alliances) which provided an organizational forum for their discontent and which engaged them in group political dynamics leading to the formation of the populist movement. So populism, as one prominent historian of this school summarized it, can be explained as follows: "The cooperatives recruited farmers to the Alliance, and the Alliance made people populists." (1) This is sometimes called, by McMath, the "resource mobilization" theory of populism. So we have three phases of prior historiography: economic interest; status anxiety; and resource mobilization to explain the rise of populism in America--all within the narrow world of late 19th century Southern and Great Plains farmers. To this prior scholarship, McMath wishes to add a newer focus on social history, and a dollop of recognition that there might be more to populism than only rural revolt. The rural populist story McMath tells begins when economic and social changes interact with the unique physical geography of the upper South, east Texas, and the Great Plains. The coming of the railroads, the end of Reconstruction, the settlement of western lands, the spread of King Cotton and the emergence of bright-leaf tobacco, all combined into a stew of expectations for rural prosperity--expectations which were ultimately dashed by uncooperative weather, the closing of open range by fencing, real estate speculators, and various forms of human avarice, to produce a fertile soil, so to speak, for popular protest. Out of this geography, economics, and social structure, emerges, almost inevitably it seems, the forms of rural protest which McMath identifies as American Populism. Geography and familiar social patterns--such as the tendency of rural folks to visit with each other--are much more powerful determinants of populist protest than any political ideology, in the way McMath sees it. In a chapter entitled "The Culture of Protest" he does make a glancing mention of the fact that there were ideological progenitors to populist sentiments much earlier (he specifically mentions Jacksonian democracy) but he treats all of these earlier manifestations of populism as mere background, as in some vague way producing a mind-set amenable to protest but which does not really become populism until the farmers of his story organize into alliances and granges. McMath does mention two other important forms of populist protest, the labor movements starting in antebellum America and continuing up through the period he studies, and the monetary policy movements that flourished throughout this period (but earlier and later as well!); but here again he treats these almost as background to the real populism, which must, it seems, somehow be mostly about farmers. One strength of McMath's book is the detailed account he provides of what we can call the organizational dynamics of the rural populist organizations he studies. McMath explains in detail how cooperative purchasing and marketing schemes and political agendas were sometimes joined in a single alliance; he describes how movement leaders organized and proselytized for new members; he mentions the failed attempts of urban labor organizations to form joint efforts with rural farm organizations to pursue their common populist interests; and he weaves the thread of uncomfortable interplay between white mid-level farmers and their black counterparts, again depicting a series of mostly failed efforts at unity. He is also strong on the regional differences in alliance-type organizations--which showed quite specific and differing patterns from the South to the West to the Great Plains. McMath is also quite good at the small details which illustrate big principles, like the effects of monopolies on farmer discontent. Consider the simple matter of the burlap-like material--called jute--with which cotton bales are wrapped. In 1888 the jute manufacturers formed a monopoly and raised jute prices 60% on the eve of the cotton harvest. McMath's description of how the farmers' reacted to this outrage, is a classic illustration of the frequent clash between monied monopolies and the laboring classes, which fueled so much of populist resentment. Actually, while McMath sees himself as an innovator, he represents a traditional view of populism, a view which identifies populism mainly as a mass movement in the late 1870s to late 1880s among farmers in the South, West and the Great Plains, with a little nod here and there to urban labor. Within this narrow view, McMath may well be an innovator, in somewhat the same way a convention of late 19th century buggy-whip makers might see the latest buggy-whip as an innovation--provided they compare it only to other work in their craft and ignore the larger industrial revolution going on all around them. There has been an ongoing failing in much of the prior historiography of populism, and McMath repeats this failing, albeit with variations. The key problem with McMath, and the historiography he recounts as the prelude to his own contribution, is that it takes only one narrow variety of populism--that associated with agrarian farming movements--and presents this as the main story of populism in America. Actually, populism is a much broader and earlier tradition in American political thought, and agrarian populism is only one chapter in this broader story. To see why and how this is so, we need to make some important distinctions which McMath tends to brush past in a hurry to get back to the farm. The first distinction we need to make is between agrarian populism and political populism. This is a distinction drawn most clearly by Margaret Canovan in her history of populism. (2) Canovan gives us a more insightful definition of populism than any we can distill from McMath's story of farm-focused populism. Canovan uses a typology of seven varieties of populism, four political and three agrarian, and only one involving McMath's farm-focused populism. All seven forms of populism, according to Canovan, have only two elements in common; they all "involve some kind of exaltation of and appeal to 'the people,' and all are in one sense or another antielitist." (3) One reason historians are tempted to equate populism with rural revolt is that it makes matters much more tidy and explanations much easier. But if populism is a more complex phenomenon, then matters are more difficult on several scores. Even the definition of populism is not easy to come by. It seems to me that any workable definition must capture within its net a bewildering variety of strange fish. It must somehow include Jeffersonian yeomen; Jacksonian antimonopoly democrats; Knights of Labor organizers; the Greenback Party; the free silver movement; the Populist Party; as well as those Great Plains farmers in their Alliances and Granges. It must make the stretch from William Jennings Bryan to Ross Perot, and it must explain how Molly Ivans and Jim Hightower can be classic examples of contemporary Texas populists and how Lyndon Johnson could rightly see himself in the same populist tradition as Huey Long. My own feeble and rickety definition of populism is that it is a diverse collection of movements which have in common a faith in the "common man," a distrust of elite interests, and a central concern over issues of economic justice. Populists tend to be defined more by whom they oppose than by who they are. Populists distrust big business; financial interests; and sometimes government; and tend to support labor over capital. Populists are especially antagonistic to various forms of monopoly control of the economy, and many espouse some form of a labor theory of value (often called "producerism"). One intriguing feature of populism in almost all it flavors is that it has typically been a socially conservative political ideology, while being simultaneously a source of agitation for reform. As one historian described one conservative form of populism (that of the labor populism of the Knights of Labor) it sought "a middle ground between the individualistic libertarianism of bourgeois America and the collectivism of working-class socialists." (4) In the standard account of populism as rural revolt this conservative strain in populism is explained simply by pointing to its presumed rustic origins, as if citizens of small towns are somehow inherently conservative. But if I am correct in asserting that populism is much broader than rural revolt, then this becomes an unanswered question for the historiography of populism. (My initial conjecture is that the association of social conservatism with populism may have begun during the antebellum period when most reformers were evangelical as well as progressive. But this conjecture needs more research and more reflection before it can stand much scrutiny.) Another broad distinction which I think it essential to make is between what I will call Progressive Populism and Right-Wing Populism. Berlet and Lyons make the focus of their work on populism the idea of separating out right-wing varieties of populism (which they deplore) from left-wing ones (which they admire). (5) This distinction allows them to trace a sweeping arc through American history, placing the beginnings of right-wing populism with Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 and the beginnings of left-wing populism with Shay's Rebellion of 1786. The distinction between the two was that Bacon used scapegoating and attacking oppressed groups (Indians) along with his anti-elitist agenda, while Shay properly (in Berlet and Lyons' view) attacked only the entrenched power elite in his populist revolt. (6) Berlet and Lyons have a radically leftist agenda, and their book is often more polemical than instructive and more shrill than learned. But their insistence on separating out right-wing varieties of populism is a key insight, missing not only from McMath's work but from most prior historiography on populism. A similar distinction is made by Michael Kazin in his much more reliable, but equally left-leaning, The Populist Persuasion: An American History. (7) Kazin appreciates that there are both right and left versions of populism, although his account is very much centered around the conflict between labor and capital, as contrasted to McMath's focus on rural farming cooperatives. The labor/capital tension is certainly one of the primary dynamics in political populism, although not the only one (monetary policy, for example, is another major recurring issue). Kazin's own definition of populism, like Canovan's, is centered on its anti-elite character: "That is the most basic and telling definition of populism: a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter." (8) Viewing populism in this way, and writing in 1995, Kazin is able to see a "populist persuasion" as a constant in American political discourse running all the way from Thomas Jefferson to William Jefferson Clinton. (9) However, Kazin is firmly entrenched in fashionable contemporary historiography so he doesn't so much perceive a persistent populist political philosophy as he notices the persistence of populist forms of rhetoric. Kazin, and historians in his postmodern tradition, like to speak of "tropes" and "themes" and "images" and "kinds of expression," more than simply of political ideas. The substance of populist political ideas does not interest Kazin so much as does the "kinds of expression" which make up the populist efforts at "persuasion." In this respect, I find Kazin thoroughly unsatisfying--rather like the waiter in a restaurant offering only the pictures of the food on the menu to the diners and expecting that such images constitute a meal. But Kazin does again convincingly demonstrate that sod-farmers are not the only people rightfully labeled "populists." Unlike Berlet and Lyons, who see right-wing populists lurking under every bed from the Colonial Era to the present, Kazin sees the rise of right-wing populism starting only in the 1940s. The more interesting separation, in Kazin's account, occurred during the Progressive Era when the labor component of populism shifted from yeoman farmers to industrial workers, and the labor component split--forevermore it seems--from religious-based populism (which was especially prevalent among antebellum reformers (10)). Whichever of these supplemental authors we choose to augment McMath, they all point to the fact that populism is not merely about farmers or rural America, and it did not end in 1898 with the collapse of the Populist Party. Appreciating that populism is both older and broader, and more persistent, than this one-dimensional view, allows us to understand a great many puzzlers of American history. It allows us to understand, for example, how both William Jennings Bryan and Father Charles Coughlin should correctly be seen as populists (they both worshiped a cross of wood and crusaded against a cross of gold), although they otherwise had little in common. It explains how it could possibly be the case that Andrew Jackson and H. Ross Perot might also be connected philosophically, even though one deplored monied interests and the other was the very incarnation of those interests. Indeed, my broad thesis on populism in American history is that by pulling apart political populism from its rural cousins, and by extracting progressive varieties of populism from illiberal right-wing ones, we can trace a genealogy of populism in American political thought, beginning at least with the antebellum reform movements and continuing at least through Lyndon Johnson's populist-inspired attempts to build the Great Society. I would also go along with Berlet and Lyons in their insistence that right-wing populism is alive and well in present-day American. I would even go so far as to suggest that there may be signs of a reawakening of progressive populism in, for example, the more recent writings of political commentator Kevin Phillips. (11) Robert McMath Jr., like most historians before him, is stuck in an overly narrow view of what constitutes populism in American history. He tries to stick a toe outside the tent by adding a chapter on the free silver movement to his account of rural revolt, in a kind of fay recognition that there is more to populism than farmers with manure on their boots. He understands, implicitly, that there was at least a monetary and a labor element to populism. What we find in McMath's book is good enough as far as it goes. It is, however, woefully inadequate as an introduction to American populism precisely because it does not go remotely far enough. Populism is one of the four great intellectual traditions in American political thought. (12) Identifying it as being mainly a farmers' revolt in the late 19th century is to mistake this major intellectual tradition for a quaint historical artifact. Endnotes 1. McMath, op. cit., pg. 15. This is McMath's summary of the work of Lawrence Goodwyn, which appeared in 1976 in his book Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in  America. 2. Canovan, Margaret, Populism, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. 3. Canovan, op. cit., pg. 294. 4. Bruce Laurie, as quoted in McMath, op. cit., pg. 73. 5. Berlet, Chip and Lyons, Matthew N., Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, New York, The Guilford Press, 2000. 6. Berlet and Lyons' unsympathetic reading of American history would have us view the American Revolution itself as an example of a repressive right-wing populist revolt, since it continued to oppress women and Indians and African slaves as well as rebelling against an imperial power. 7. Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion: An American History, New York, Basic Books, 1995. In one of the book's "dust-jacket blurbs" Eric Foner describes the book's purpose as being "not simply to reinterpret a part of the American past, but to help rescue today's Left from political oblivion." 8. Kazin, op. cit., pg. 1. 9. Although Kazin finds echoes of populist rhetoric as far back as Jefferson and as far forward as Clinton, he still accepts the received view that populism as a movement really begins only with the rural revolt of the late 19th century. Kazin differs from McMath in understanding that populism did not die with the death of the Populist Party. 10. See my review of Steven Mintz's Moralists & Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers. 11. Although Phillips achieved his mark on American politics by authoring the blueprint of the Republican Party's "southern strategy" for Richard Nixon in 1969, in recent years Phillips-moved by the classic progressive populist intuition that vast disparities in wealth between the rich and the rest of us are symptoms of a society in need of reforms-has authored a series of books which are clearly in the mainstream tradition of progressive political populism as I have defined it here. His 1990 work, The Politics of Rich and Poor (New York, Random House, 1990), followed by Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics (Boston, Little Brown, 1994), and his recent history of wealth in America, Wealth and Democracy (New York, Broadway Books, 2002), are all very much in the classic tradition of the Free Silver movement of the 19th century and of political populism in general. 12. The four great American political philosophies are: Libertarian; Conservative; Liberal and Populist. For a more detailed explanation of my political typology-as well as some reflections on how this typology can give us insights into a key political technique of the conservative revolution during the Reagan Era-see the Appendix below. Appendix: An American Political Typology and its Use in Explaining the Conservative Revolution of the Reagan Era- A Political Typology- Kevin Phillips is an interesting character. He came to prominence during the Nixon Era when he wrote a book in 1969 called The Emerging Republican Majority. This book defined what would become known as the "Southern Strategy" for the Republicans. Basically, Phillips said to his party, forget about the black vote, let the Democrats have it. What we need to do is break apart the old New Deal coalition by appealing to conservative white Southerners on social issues. This worked famously and the Republicans resurgence dates really from Phillips' strategy. The so-called "Blue Collar Democrats" or "Reagan Democrats" were Phillips' gift to the Republicans. So he was a folk hero of sorts within the party for many years. But following the Reagan Administration, Phillips suddenly starting criticizing Republicans. He wrote a book called The Politics of Rich and Poor in 1990 which basically said that the Republican party's cultivation of the rich was a source of concern--that the growing gap between rich and poor was starting to look ominous for his party. He expanded on this theme in his 1994 Arrogant Capital. His most recent book, Wealth and Democracy, is the culmination of this trend in his writing. The Republicans were dumbfounded by their hero's defection. They didn't understand how or why he could be criticizing other Republicans. The key to the answer is that Phillips is from that segment of the Republican coalition that I would call Populists. Conceptually, we have four main political philosophies in America and only two serious political parties. So some philosophical distinctions get muddled and some strange fellows get in bed together. A quick sketch: We have Liberals and Conservatives, Populists and Libertarians. If we look at two metrics, economic fairness and social values, we can see the differences. Liberals believe the government should be involved in producing economic fairness but should stay out of social values (implicitly allowing non-conservative values to flourish); Conservatives believe that the government should stay out of economic issues but should be actively promoting conservative social values; Populists think the government should be involved in both spheres, promoting economic fairness and conservative moral values; Libertarians believe the government should be involved in neither. So arraying the four political philosophies along the single metric of the role of government, Libertarians opt for the minimum involvement and Populists for the maximum; Conservatives and Liberals split the role of government, each preferring a government with only half an interest in their lives--opposite halves to be sure. Libertarians believe the government ought to keep its nose out of everyone's business. Period. The government has no business promoting economic equality and no business policing people's morals. That government is best which governs lest is the true Libertarian motto. (Although I like to think Jefferson wouldn't throw his lot in with today's Libertarians.) Today's Libertarians believe the government ought to provide for the national defense and not much else. No Social Security, no labor laws, no obscenity laws, no laws forbidding gambling or prostitution or drug use, etc. A genuine Conservative believes that in the economic realm it is pure laissez faire; but in the realm of morals, people should behave in approved ways and the force of law and government can surely be applied in furtherance of this end. Conservatives believe in family values, the free enterprise system, outlawing homosexuals in various professions, criminalizing drugs, and so on. A good, old-fashioned, honest-to-God Liberal (there are many fewer of them than we think) believes the government must intervene to prevent huge economic disparities--that government has an obligation to look after the poor and disadvantaged, but resists fiercely any intrusion of government into the private conduct of its citizens. This is why Liberals are supporters of all sorts of counter-cultural causes--which alienates both Conservatives and Populists. A Populist is pained by the specter of economic inequality and exploitation, but shares many of the same moral values and tastes of the Conservative. So a Populist is willing to countenance an intrusive government in both the moral and economic realms. The Populist stands up for the little guy against the corporate bosses. Populists tend to fear all things BIG; as in big business, big labor, big government, and, sometimes, the Big World of international relations. Populists sometimes believe in environmentalism (think Teddy Roosevelt); and sometimes civil rights (think Lyndon Johnson); but they also tend to think the National Endowment for the Arts goes too far in supporting artists who offend the sensibilities of decent citizens. Populists, like Conservatives, are offended by many of the same people and activities which Liberals feel duty-bound to protect. So, Populists can make common cause with Conservatives on issues related to social values (Phillips' Southern Strategy is an example), but they can also make common cause with Liberals over issues of economic fairness (Phillips' newer books). So Phillips has been consistent all along, it is just that the Republicans do not appreciate that there is more to their coalition than Conservatives. This typology, if I may immodestly say so, is a useful key to understanding much of the political to-ing and fro-ing of American political history. It explains how dubious the Democrats' claims are on Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as founders of the Democratic Party (they were both Populists in this typology). It also explains why it is equally fatuous for Republicans to lay claim to Lincoln as the founder of their party (Lincoln too is probably best understood as a Populist). It explains why Teddy Roosevelt actually has more in common with Lyndon Johnson than he does with the President with whom he served (McKinley) or the party he represented (at least until his 1912 third-party Progressive campaign). This typology is also, by the way, the key to a resurgence for the Democrats if they are smart enough and skillful enough to use it. If Democrats can seize the Populist sentiment--and stay quiet on social issues--they might have a chance of getting back some of those Populists who deserted them for Reagan in the 1980s. Just how Reagan achieved this capture of the populist sentiment is the subject for many learned books; but one key insight is readily at hand. The Reagan Revolution- During her first Christmas in the White House, kindly, just-plain-folks Barbara Bush strolled over the South Lawn, across E Street, down onto the Ellipse, where, at a ceremony which tugged at the heartstrings, she flipped a switch lighting the nation's Christmas Tree. It struck me as a little incongruous at the time, since during the eight years of his presidency Ronald Reagan always lit the Christmas tree while standing on the South Portico of the White House. He never actually walked the 500 yards to where the common folks (and the tree) were. Initially I just wrote this incongruity off as the Bushs' attempt to make an opening pseudo-populist gesture, like Jimmy Carter's open air stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue during his inaugural parade. But it turns out something more sinister was revealed by Barbara Bush's early December stroll. We subsequently learned that during his entire presidency Reagan never actually lit the National Christmas Tree. Instead, a staffer with a walkie talkie was hidden out of sight behind Reagan (pay no attention to the staffer behind the curtain) and when Reagan flipped a switch on the podium on the South Portico--which was connected to nothing--this hidden staffer radioed to a Park Ranger down by the Tree who flipped the actual switch. But hey, it looked good on television. For me, this little vignette sums up the entire Reagan presidency. Another insight into the Reagan Administration, if one is needed, was inadvertently offered in a petulant moment by Lyn Nofziger, who was Reagan's Press Secretary at the start of the Reagan Administration. Nofziger was an ugly, unappealing, pugnacious character: perpetual cigar hanging out of one corner of a sneer, rumpled fedora cocked to the side over a bearded grumpy face--and with manners to match. But every politician needs a thug, an enforcer, a guy to do the dirty work. Reagan had Lyn Nofziger. Early in the Reagan presidency complaint was voiced at the low level of qualifications of many of the political cronies Reagan was bringing with him into government. The suggestion was even made that many of them were outright incompetents. "So what?" bellowed Nofziger. "Goddamnit, its our incompetents turn!" Nofziger's one redeeming feature is that he was crude and unpolished enough to occasionally tell the truth. I remember specifically the first time I heard a politician tell the truth. While Barry Goldwater was defeated soundly in 1964, many of his fellow cactus-skin conservatives made their way into Congress for the first time, there to plant their secret seeds to bloom and be harvested by Ronald Reagan a decade and a half later. One such character was Sam Steiger. Steiger was only just a bit more polished than Lyn Nofziger, but he was every bit as blunt, which is why he only lasted a couple of terms before self-destructing. Years later Steiger would further splinter an already damaged Republican Party in Arizona by running as the Libertarian candidate for Governor against an inept Republican car salesman and John Birch Society official named Evan Mecham. Mecham was Arizona's answer to Harold Stassen. Like Stassen, Mecham was a laughable perennial candidate for Governor who, against all expectations, was actually elected Governor in 1986 and whose first official act was to issue an Executive Order forbidding the State from recognizing the federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Mecham imploded in less than one term, being quickly impeached and removed from office. But Steiger earned the eternal enmity of the Republican Party in Arizona by trying to save them from Mecham. In any case, I vividly remember the first time I became aware of Congressman Steiger. My little hometown of Holbrook, Arizona is the county seat of sparsely-populated Navajo County, and each year we host the County Fair, around my birthday in early September. One of the staples of these small-town County Fairs is that the local politicians hang around dispensing the glow of their presence, and usually participating in a live radio interview. (We have no television stations within a hundred miles of Holbrook.) As it happens, I was listening to the only radio station in Holbrook one bright September afternoon when our new Congressman, Sam Steiger, was being interviewed. The first question out of the box was, "Well, Sam, how do you like being a member of Congress.?" Steiger chuckled at this obviously unexpected question, paused a moment, and then said, straight out, on the radio, "Well, it sure beats the hell out of heavy lifting." I can't tell you how exhilarating it was to hear something so blunt and honest. For Bill Clinton the defining moment of his political imprinting came when he met John F. Kennedy. For me, it may have been this moment when I heard for the first time (and very nearly for the last time) a political leader utter the simple, blunt truth. A kind of populist bluntness was the essence of Steiger's political appeal in Arizona. Despite Lyn Nofziger's honest, if impolitic, admission, millions of Americans acclaimed Ronald Reagan as the most popular President since Franklin Roosevelt. His singular success as a politician was precisely in breaking apart the political coalition FDR had put together in the 1930s. He did this, I suggest, by cleaving the diamond right along the fault line joining Liberals and Populists in the New Deal coalition. Reagan captured the Populists from the Democrats and the Conservative Revolution was fait accompli. So was Reagan a Populist? Not really. The trick performed by Ronald Reagan was simply to smear three of these political categories into one and convince us that there were only two political philosophies possible: Liberals and Everybody Else. So if you're not ONE OF THEM, you're on our side. And since most people don't see themselves as Liberals, they must be part of Everybody Else. Reagan did this to Carter and Mondale; George H. W. Bush did it to Dukakis; and a whole generation of Republicans, of whatever flavor, have hit upon it as their one simple trick to get into office. (It is interesting to speculate as to what Reagan really was. He was so much an empty a suit that I must confess I haven't the slightest idea. Nor, I suspect, did he.) I think the Republic would be well-served if we could somehow manage to create two additional political parties and to assign everyone to the true party of their choice. Politics, not to mention our understanding of history, would be vastly improved in the process.