Relevant article: “Can Populism Be Liberal?”
She’s absolutely a populist. I don’t even think she’s genuinely a conservative, not to the extent that her rally cries are even political. Death panels, “quit making things up,” “Real Americans,” are basically just a hand grab at populist buttons. Most of her political rhetoric is about herself, most of her supporters can’t articulate an explanation of what she stands for but resort to personal testaments that she’s a real person, a mom, etc. Their defense of her isn’t based on principles, it’s based on critical judgments of anyone who “attacks” her.
I would even go so far as to say that she’s like some kind of religious icon more than a political one. People who would vote for her think that everything will fix itself because she’s a good Christian and… I don’t know, she will be God’s instrument, I guess. She herself believes this, as is evidenced by her comments that her candidacy was God’s plan.
If you follow her on Twitter or Facebook she is a sporadic social networker, but her tweets seem to be trial balloons for populist messages. Obama will be the master of the organized social network, but Palin might be the first politician to master the back channel.
Both Nixon and Bush believed in big government. Nixon was a major force behind affirmative action, instituted wage and price controls, killed off the gold standard, and proposed nationalized health insurance. Bush pushed through the prescription drug benefit in a time of war and enormous deficits, both of his own making.
His grandmother was a bank vice president. His mother had a Ph.D. and worked in international economic development. His father had a master’s from Harvard and was a high government official in Kenya. It’s not as if he was the son of a janitor from Watts.
Shockingly, I do not.
If their policies were mainstream then God help us all.
Absolutely, at least within the last 50 years.
I wouldn’t quite say that, but he would have if he could have gotten away with it.
I seem to recall specifically stating that I was not accusing Obama of being “loony left”.
Whoop-de-doo. This helped him in his career how?
Both things were completely irrelevant to helping him with his career, especially the absent father.
I see “Palin” and “Populist” in the thread title. Nothing about Obama having a background that portended an inevitable presidency.
Are you saying he had no particular advantage over the average person? Where do you live, Palm Beach?
The average person is a drooling moron without the connections to get a job at McDonalds. What about the average politician?
What Dio originally said was that Obama is “also completely self-made, having started out without any kind of money or connections”.
What you’re talking about—namely, having “no particular advantage over the average person”—is not quite the same thing.
Having a solidly middle-class and well-educated family, which Obama certainly had, does give you an advantage over the average person. But “having money or connections” generally implies being wealthy or influential far beyond the level of good education and solid middle-class status.
I admit it’s a rather peculiar locution: if you say that somebody’s family “has no money”, you mean that they’re poor, while if you say that they “have money”, you mean that they’re rich.
Neither of those expressions applies to the middle-class people in between, who are left in the odd position of not “having money” but also not “having no money”.
I would describe Bill Clinton as completely self-made, but not Obama. If anything, he had a terrific set of genes.
I would say that these are not remarkable advantages, no. Certainly not the stuff that typically launches Presidents. His academic, professional and political career did not happen because his grandmother worked at a bank.
I would say his “advantages,” such as they were, came from a supportive family, an encouraging mother and an above average natural intellect inherited from both parents.
Terrific. I have all those things too. They are nothing compared to the kind of advantages and connections of a Bush or a Gore or a Kennedy.
This seems to have summed it up. I was under the impression that she was being groomed (or grooming herself) for future office; this changed when she became a Fox correspondent the other day. I believe she’ll settle in as a pundit, and thats that. Is she a populist? Well, the term has a pretty seriously negative association, these days – but in the pure sense? Yes, I believe she attempted to tap into general notions of “the people” with her Everywoman angle.
I agree with you. It’s interesting to see people overlay her rather ambiguous rhetoric with their own political leanings and find whatever they seek in her. She’s a “true conservative” according to many, while having at least as many “non conservative” actions and policies as, say, Huckabee. But while he is reviled for them, she is revered.
She’s a cipher.
In the final analysis, everybody who gets elected is populist. Depending, of course, on who is defining populist. There is not a consensus on the true definition.
hh
I guess the real question is, is she a demagogue. And the answer is: yes, they could put her picture next to the word in the dictionary.