Word: populists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...could they? Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon, six years ago collaborated with his writer son Benjamin on a novel called On the Brink. It describes the aftermath of an OPEC price increase to the then incredible level of $38 per bbl. The populist Federal Reserve chairman decides to help the President, plagued with 25% inflation, by printing money night and day. The result: Coca-Cola sells for $1,350 a sixpack, short cab rides cost $6,000 and wheat is $5 million a bushel. Soon violent rioting breaks out, and thousands...
...Jimmy Carter? "He is a complex, contradictory personality," Mazlish and Diamond say. They continue in a flash of insight: "Most of us, of course, are complex and full of contradictions." Carter's brand of neo-populist rhetoric and waffling reflects those contradictions. Expediency exists as part of Carter's "realism." The president blurs the lines between liberalism and conservatism because he must be "true to his own character, with its basic need to embrace contradictions." Carter's remembrances of his downtrodden childhood, his career as a "nuclear engineer," his faith in Bert Lance--all explained...
...work. The president has also promised to "provide fiscal relief to the most hard pressed communities," to fund neighborhood organizations, to "provide additional social and health services to the disadvantaged people in cities" and to "improve the urban physical environment"--more and better housing. But this self-declared populist president has sorely disappointed the urban poor. They've seen no new national health plan. Carter's welfare "reform" proposal may establish minimum family payments, but only in certain states of his native South and the Southwest. While Texas--the land of wind-fall profits--would have most of its welfare...
When Republican Populist Lee Dreyfus ran for Governor of Wisconsin in 1978, he refused to accept campaign contributions of more than $2,500 from the political action committees (PACs) of special interest groups like the Wisconsin Realtors Association, even though the legal limit was $25,000. Said he: "If you give me $25,000, I've got to listen to you pretty hard." He won handily, and last week Governor Dreyfus went a step further. He sent a bill to the state legislature that would prohibit PACs from contributing any money directly to candidates but would permit the committees...
Although he has retained an effective crew of strategists, Carter has long since adjusted his image to include such twists as his current favorite, the hard-headed protecter of American dignity. As president, he has also sacrificed two populist advantages that he capitalized on in 1976: no clear record on national issues and no association with the incumbent administration...