Populism is back, but will it work?

One of the surprises of the early election season was the failure of populist messages to catch fire. John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Rep. Ron Paul, and Sen. Hillary Clinton saw situational success, but not enough to ignite the political prairie. Suddenly, with Wall Street on the brink, populism is back with the unlikeliest of proponents: Sen. John McCain.

The Republican presidential candidate is railing against CEOs, the elite, and corporate greed. His sudden conversion from a proponent of unfettered capitalism to champion of the little guy has not gone unnoticed. Conservative pundit George Will, on ABC's This Week Sept. 21, for example, was not pleased:

McCain has found his inner voice, it is his inner William Jennings Bryan. He's a populist now. The problem is if you're running as above all else a leader, populism is always pandering and pandering is always the reverse of leadership.

For Will, McCain's makeover is not only an example of campaign opportunism but, in effect, a disqualifying maneuver for a man who has based his entire campaign on experience, judgement, and the willingness to buck tides, not lead pitch-fork parades. With McCain attacking multimillion-dollar payouts to failed executives, one might call his latest line of outrage his "Cross of Golden Parachutes" gambit.

This comes on the heels of McCain's flirtation with populism in his pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate: a self-styled reformer who is a kind of hockey-mom everywoman and who can deflect attention from McCain's own non-populist lifestyle of decades as a Washington insider and owner of 13 cars and more houses than he knows.

Plus, her religious background lends her classic populist cred of the Mike Huckabee (and Bryan) style. One news analyst, Tom Teepen of Cox News Service, likened McCain's new approach to a kind of religious conversion experience: "[H]e is suddenly talking the language of economic populism — for McCain, [that's] as unexpected as speaking in tongues ..." An appropriate simile, as for 20 years Palin was a member of a church congregation where tongues was fluently spoken. She is perhaps versed in both the language of God and the language of economics for the little guy. There are few programs more populist than sending Alaskans bonus checks to share in oil revenue.

McCain also underscored his willingness to throw out experience as a qualification with the Palin V.P. pick, and his appearance on Sunday, Sept. 21, on CBS's 60 Minutes emphasized that. He insisted that Palin, the bulk of whose experience was gained as mayor of a town the size of Yelm, Wash., was fully prepared to be president, though apparently not fully prepared to give press interviews or agree to a debate format without training wheels.

The point is that Palin's popularity among the party faithful is not based on her experience but on her lack of experience. She is an uncorrupted person of faith who is one of the people. In a sense, it is Palin who is the new William Jennings Bryan, who was nicknamed "The Great Commoner." This commoner can also field dress a moose, a factoid that adds to her folksy outsiderness.

Why has populism made a comeback? Fear and anger. While people have felt anxiety over the war and economy, the last week moved the meter into the panic zone over the safety of their retirement funds, credit, bank accounts, insurance policies, and money market funds. In short, the great American nest egg is about to crack. How bad is it? So bad that there seems to be bipartisan agreement to turn the secretary of the Treasury into an economic Hugo Chavez by nationalizing the investment banks, writing him a check for a trillion dollars, and giving him dictatorial powers.

That has resurrected populism in this cycle. Washington Post blogger Chris Cilliza sees it in both McCain and Sen. Barrack Obama camps:

McCain's decision to embrace populism on the stump is not only a nod to the successes (limited, of course) of Edwards and Clinton during the primary season but also a recognition of the current political environment.

Find any national poll conducted over the last six months and two trends are immediately apparent: large majorities of voters believe Washington doesn't work for them and those same large majorities believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Given that political reality, it's a no-brainer that both Obama and McCain are — each in their own way — running against Washington. And, given the uncertainty and anger that crops ups in these same polls, it also makes sound political sense for both candidates to portray themselves as the only person willing and able to go to Washington and be a voice for the voiceless in the White House.