Michael Barone on the True Meaning of Populism

Michael Barone

Michael Barone gives a magisterial short-course on populism, from Andrew Jackson to Obama. The punch line:

"...when Republicans either had majorities in Congress or held the White House, Americans did not have much occasion to think hard about "spread the wealth around" policies. But in 2009, with Mr. Obama as president and large Democratic majorities in Congress, they did.

The reaction to the stimulus package's vast increases in government spending and the health-care bills, with their redistributive taxes, has been unmistakably negative. If you have any doubts about this, check out the election returns in Massachusetts.

Why has the politics of economic redistribution had such limited success in America? One reason is that Americans, unlike Western Europeans, tend to believe that there is a connection between effort and reward and that people can work their way up economically. If people do something to earn their benefits, like paying Social Security taxes, that's fine. But giving money to those who have not in some way earned it is a no-no. [my emph] Moreover, like Andrew Jackson, most Americans suspect that some of the income that is redistributed will end up in the hands not of the worthy but of the well-connected.

Last year Mr. Obama and his policy strategists seem to have assumed that the financial crisis and deep recession would make Americans look more favorably on big government programs. But it turns out that economic distress did not make us Western Europeans.

Now the president and his advisers seem to be assuming that populist attacks on the rich will rally the downtrodden masses to their side. History does not provide much hope for this audacity. William Jennings Bryan, whose oratorical skills outshined even Mr. Obama's, got lower percentages of the vote each time he ran."