THE NATION : THE CULTURE WARS : Missing the Grass-Roots: Confusing Talk-Show Hosts With Real Populists

Since the bombing in Oklahoma City, some conservative talk-show hosts have sounded defensive as they try to explain how their harsh attacks on the federal Establishment differ from those of the violent right. But few people doubt that the Limbaughs and the Liddys are tapping into the frustrations of ordinary white citizens who blame the government and liberals in high places for everything from affirmative action and high taxes to subsidizing homoerotic art.

Yet, there’s something missing from this latest breed of populist spokesmen (almost all are men). Talk-show jockeys incite, provoke, entertain and sometimes even educate listeners. But those listeners remain an audience. The medium dictates how they can participate: People generally call in either to cheer the host or to blast him. Seldom do callers debate one another. The only form of political activism most talk-show hosts recommend is to vote for conservative politicians.

What the radio right offers is a populism for an angry but essentially passive people. As such, it departs from the grass-roots approach used by earlier voices--both on the left and right--who praised the values and labor of hard-working, God-fearing Americans and damned their elitist foes.

Populism has become a promiscuous label that journalists and copywriters routinely apply to rock stars, discount book stores and low-cost computer printers--as well as diverse political figures from Jesse Jackson to Newt Gingrich. But the term was coined by the insurgency of small farmers and wage earners who created the People’s Party in the 1890s. This link with grass-roots movements needs to be remembered. For when citizens organized outside the circles of power, they often moved the nation.

The original Populists were certainly not known for rhetorical moderation. In 1892, Tom Watson, leader of the Georgia People’s Party, accused the Democrats of “constantly and corruptly” sacrificing “the liberty and prosperity of the country . . . to Plutocratic greed,” and charged the GOP with doing the bidding of “boodlers, monopolists, gamblers, gigantic corporations, bondholders, bankers.”

Watson and his fellow Populists, however, were not just extravagant talkers. They helped millions of economically strapped men and women in the South and Midwest to imagine a different future and work toward that end. The Populists organized farmer cooperatives, challenged private ownership of railroads and utilities, endorsed strikes and boycotts for higher wages and built local coalitions that elected scores of officeholders who stayed faithful to their principles.

The People’s Party stirred up unified opposition to the state and big business, but failed to achieve its aim of putting the federal government back in “the hands of the ‘plain people’ with whom it originated.” An embittered Watson soon became as flamboyant a public hater of Jews, Catholics and blacks as he had once been of “Plutocrats.”

But the Populist challenge influenced mainstream officeholders to regulate banks and railroads and establish the progressive income tax. And the blend of anti-elite bombast and practical organizing pioneered by the People’s Party influenced a series of mass movements in the 20th Century.

First was the Anti-Saloon League, core of the prohibition crusade that attracted millions of Protestant Americans during the first two decades of this century. The League, vowed its superintendent, Purley Baker, was waging moral combat against a “liquor trust” that had no regard for “love for country, human character, domestic happiness (or) personal reputation.” Baker commanded a dry army that included some 20,000 speakers, several publishing houses and untold numbers of churches whose words and donations boosted the cause. Prohibition became part of the Constitution--though its enforcement proved impossible.

Then, in the 1930s, came the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the group most responsible for establishing unionism in the corporate heart of American manufacturing. CIO President John L. Lewis regularly took to the radio to vent his wrath at “the robber barons of industry” for trying to stop labor from achieving “industrial democracy.” His rhythmic, stentorian delivery sounded terrific on the air. But Lewis’ voice was only one tool CIO activists used in persuading millions of auto workers, stevedores and steel-makers to join unions.

Since World War II, there has been no white-dominated mass movement to rival the size and determination of the CIO and the prohibitionists. And the black freedom movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s could not simply adapt for its purposes the traditional rhetoric about the virtuous, hard-working majority and a greedy Establishment. When it came to racism, the power structure included almost every white person, while African Americans were a people whose distinctive history and status severely qualified the romantic conception of America’s origins.

But the populist-speaking movements that did exist never confused their rhetoric with political action. For example, the taxpayers’ revolt that helped lift Ronald Reagan into the White House mobilized suburban homeowners “mad as hell” about supposedly bearing the financial burden of welfare programs. The venting of populist rage that resulted in Proposition 13 was undoubtedly cathartic. But it was only a means to an end.

Contrast this with today’s talk-show fulminators. G. Gordon Liddy has boasted he uses portraits of President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton for target practice. What does this sick joke serve, other than to gain Liddy the higher ratings that often accompany enhanced notoriety? Rush Limbaugh has implied that the President’s daughter is “the White House dog.” How does that mobilize his followers to do anything besides grin and hoot?

Limbaugh does have a marvelous voice, a fine sense of pacing and can laugh at himself--skills liberals would do well to learn. And, to his credit, he often gives his “ditto-heads” political lessons that show a good (if inaccurate) pedagogue at work. On one show last year, Limbaugh asked, “Why is the Clinton health-care plan socialist?” He then patiently criticized nine answers from callers until he got the one he wanted.

But celebrity could dilute Limbaugh’s political message. He is now a spokesman for Florida Orange Juice and Pizza Hut--and gotten embroiled in inevitable battles over whether this is appropriate. As his endorsements and appearances pile up, the leading voice of conservative discontent may gradually transform himself into the kind of media “personality” whose aura outshines his politics.

The airwaves are full of clever populist talkers. But a broad movement that can make sense of the economic woes and cultural anxieties gripping millions of Americans--of all races--is nowhere in sight.

Three years ago, an angry young man wrote a letter to his hometown paper in upstate New York. “The ‘American Dream’ of the middle class has all but disappeared,” he complained, “substituted with people struggling just to buy next week’s groceries . . . . What is it going to take to open up the eyes of our elected officials? America is in serious decline!” Concluded Timothy J. McVeigh, “Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that! But it might.”

We can’t know if McVeigh would have abandoned his murderous notions had there been a way for him to channel his rage into grass-roots reform. But there are many who share his frustrations about the interlocking woes of our nation. Conservative talk-show hosts do little to explain those problems and nothing to solve them. Ordinary Americans must again learn how to speak and act for themselves.