Word: populist
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...which the prize is a budget mess to clean up and 34 million ungovernable Californians to lead. As the final deadline for entering the race passed Saturday evening, Conan the Candidate was one of several dozen vying for that responsibility. Among the others on the ballot: socialite turned populist cable pundit Arianna Huffington, ex--baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, pornographer Larry Flynt and porn star Mary Carey. Representing the et tu, Brute wing of Davis' party is his Lieutenant Governor, Cruz Bustamante...
Schwarzenegger will not be the only candidate who has the resources, powerful backers and name identification to push out Davis. Or even the only one who speaks with an accent: Huffington, running as an Independent and a populist outsider, has hired advisers who helped wrestler Jesse Ventura win the Minnesota governorship in 1998. Businessman Bill Simon, the Republican nominee defeated by Davis last year, has claim to the conservative base that provides the Republicans with what little life they have in California. Ueberroth, though officially a Republican, will sell himself as a serious candidate with crossover appeal in a state...
DIED. VANCE HARTKE, 84, three-term Democratic Senator from Indiana; of a heart attack; in Falls Church, Va. A populist and passionate liberal, Hartke was known in the Senate for his early opposition to the war in Vietnam. In 1966, more than two years before America's deep divisions over the war would become dramatically clear at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he was one of six Senators to draft a letter to President Johnson, his onetime mentor in the Senate, seeking a suspension of bombing in North Vietnam...
Feral fund raising, negative ads and visionless governance are not unique to Sacramento, nor are the efforts of right-wing populist extremists to use constitutional gimmickry to subvert democracy. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was part of the latter trend, as is the current effort in the Texas state legislature--orchestrated by Congressman Tom DeLay--to redraw district lines. As a nation, we seem to be losing the habits of civility and citizenship. Public life is becoming a pricey boutique, catering only to special interests and political eccentrics. The California recall is goofy, irresponsible...
...public's right to recall a defective politician in California, as well as the right to pass legislation by ballot vote, was a populist reform inserted into the state constitution 100 years ago. These changes assumed a responsible electorate and a powerful, corrupt political class. The first assumption was overly romantic and the second overly cynical. Today California suffers from an excess of democracy and a dearth of citizenship. In the past 25 years--starting with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which limited the increase in property taxes to 1% per year--California has passed a slew...