Word: populists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...defending Carter, but he insists he is simply giving the President a fair shake against "ridiculous criticism." The 90% of blacks who voted for Carter in 1976 believed his promise of more jobs, says Rowan, only to find black unemployment now worse: "Carter turned out to be not a populist but a smalltown businessman." But after surveying the presidential field, Rowan concludes, "I'm not supporting any of these turkeys...
...they were active or passive and positive or negative toward their job. In his new book, The Pulse of Politics (Norton; $14.95), Barber divides presidential elections since 1900 into three phases: conflict, conscience and conciliation. First comes a tooth-and-claw struggle: a stand-pat William McKinley vs. fiery Populist William Jennings Bryan in 1900, or Richard Nixon vs. George Mc-Govern in 1972. Then all-out conflict gives way to a rivalry of conscience, lofty moralizing in place of mere politics: Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, or Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford in 1976. Finally, exhausted...
...Citizens' Party may become the strongest challenge to the two-party system from the left since the brief challenge of the Populist Party in the 1890's. In fact, author Studs Terkel convened the gathering on a Friday night by saying, "We are all born-again Populists." Much of the rhetoric that weekend recalled the Populists' fight against turn-of-the-century monopoly capitalism. But what really united the 262 delegates gathered to create a new political alternative was a shared belief that the existing political parties are no longer addressing the issues of most concern to Americans...
Commoner, of course, has a vested interest in making an analogy with a successful political departure, but perhaps Studs Terkel's comparison to the Populist era is more appropriate to the contemporary political scene. Eugene V. Debs, founder of the American Socialist Party, once said during that period, "I would rather vote for what I want and not get it, than vote for what I don't want...
...supplant state charters of corporations with federal charters when the public good required them. In 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt suggested--to no avail--that "the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate commerce." Thirty-seven years later, populist Sen. Joseph O'Mahoney proposed a more far-reaching program called the "National Charters for National Business." It bombed...