Huckabee’s Populism

There’s always been some kind of populism in American politics.  From Jacksonian Democracy to the “National Grange,” suspicion of the government, the East, and other anonymous interests associated with a complicated modern economy have tended to unify people who feel they are on the outside.

The old Perot-Buchananite (and before them George Wallace) strain of populism was anti-government, informed by rural values, suspicious of the welfare state and social engineering, defensive of family and local autonomy, unimpressed with technical expertise, pro-gun, isolationist, and this generally characterized the basic views of social conservatives from Nixon up to the first President Bush’s presidency.  Many evangelicals constituted the core of this group, though “ethnic whites” in the North and Midwest also shared this worldview.

But Huckabee is different.  His is a suburban populism.  It is a suspicion primarily of elites, but it lacks the austere rural values of the old populists, the “no handouts” pride of autonomy among rural Americans, and their suspicion of government “safety nets.”  It’s not necessarily against free trade, and it has a kind of emotional attachment to a purely moralistic foreign policy on behalf of “democracy” and Israel; it is afraid to take strong stands on issues like race and immigration, because suburban people hate being called “mean.”  More than anything else, the new populism is far more emotive and emotional in its rhetoric, just as the new Mega-Churches invade the boundaries of family and personal life through creepy programs like Promise Keepers.

The rhetoric of Huckabee reflects the change in the Evangelical Churches, as they have moved from the South, where a traditional world view informed the raw theological beliefs, to places like Colorado Springs and Naperville, Illinois.  The new suburban mega-church preaches strongly against gay marriage and abortion, but it also preaches “the gospel of prosperity” and the stewardship principle with regard to global warming.  These churches have changed their tune with lightening speed as the times have changed.  Above all, this type of church privileges the raw feelings and emotions of adherents:  so long as they proceed with good will, there is not much to be gained by actually thinking and developing something that resembles a philosophy when it comes to worldly affairs.  This is the populism that Bush sometimes exploits, as in his utterly sincere statements that he has “looked Putin in the eye” and seen his soul, but also his mantra that the only failure in war is one of will, rather than of tactics or strategy. 

We’re too great of a nation to weaken ourselves purposely with this kind of leadership.  If the Republicans are going to lose this time around, let us at least learn that the incompetence and emotivism of Bush was a big reason for his failures.  This kind of populism will do little to protect anything resembling the traditional limited government principles of the founders, and it will degrade conservative goals, all the while folks like Bush and Huckabee are lambasted as “ultraconservatives.”