In his book, The Populist Persuasion, Michael Kazin defines populism this way:
a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter.
America has, of course, been rife with this stuff from the beginning, when we kicked out the Brits, through such stump stompers as Huey Long to the current exponents of the craft like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and, yes, even Barack Obama. The us-against-them view, in which the powerful are swindling the powerless, is both clearly anchored in historical fact and easily exploited to justify ideas that are not clearly anchored in historical fact.
But the times are also changing. There is a good graduate thesis to be written about the effect of a changing media landscape on populism. The Internet itself–with its empowerment of the rabble to the detriment of the powerful, e.g. any Swampland comment thread–is an inherently populist medium. At the same time, the ideological polarization of corporate-owned journalism–see Fox News, MSNBC–plays heavily on populist themes. And so we get breakout stars of Congress like Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who are new media populists to their core.
In the current issue of TIME magazine–subscribe here for $1.99–Jay Newton-Small and I look at how Bachmann and Grayson have exceeded expectations.
In another era, strident politicians on the ideological edges found themselves marginalized once they got to Washington, where power accrues to longevity–and longevity tends to mellow. But Grayson and Bachmann found a back door.
Populists have been doing it for years–telling the common man that politicians are against them or that the political process is a farce. The difference today is that politicians no longer need to broaden their appeal beyond a committed, activist base. And they know more precisely than ever what the base wants. The soapbox, which became the sound bite, thanks to radio and television, has gone interactive. If you say it today, the audience will come to you. “There is an interactive element to this. I spend enough time online to figure out what people are thinking,” explains Grayson. “I think what the Internet has done is to make mass politicking something that can also be microtargeted.”
Read the entire story online here.
For examples of YouTube Populism in action, click below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-usmvYOPfco&hl=en&fs=1&]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXyhKXUP7PM&hl=en&fs=1&]