![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
Abstract
This essay argues that a sustained form can be located in the complicated history of populist rhetoric. Despite its chameleonic qualities, the advancement of populism is constituted by alterations in the focus and content, not the structure, of populist activism. This structure, or what I term its argumentative frame, positions a virtuous people against a powerful enemy and expresses disdain toward traditional forms of democratic deliberation and republican representation. I trace these themes through the rhetoric of the People's Party, Huey Long, and George Wallace. I conclude by analyzing the link between populism's persistence in U.S. history and the nation's Founding.
This essay is derived from the author's M.A. thesis completed under the direction of John Murphy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the National Communication Association in Boston, MA. The author thanks John Murphy, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Kirt Wilson, Ed Panetta, Kevin DeLuca, David Henry, and two reviewers for their valuable insights.
Notes
1. Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, "Introduction," in Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, ed. G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (London: Macmillan Press, 1969), 1.
2. Alan Jackson, "Little Man," High Mileage (Nashville: Arista Records, 1998).
3. Ann Coulter, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 123.
4. Coulter, How to Talk, 123.
5. Cited in William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 274.
6. For more on political languages, see Terrance Ball, James Farr, and Russell Hanson, "Editor's Introduction," in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. T. Ball, J. Farr, and R. Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1–5; John Murphy, "The Language of Liberal Consensus: John Kennedy, Technical Reason, and the 'New Economics' at Yale University," Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2004): 133–57.
7. Paul Taggart, Populism (Philadelphia: Open Press, 2000), 10, 25.
8. Cited in Greider, Who Will Tell the People, 274. After his assessment of the importance of populism in U.S. electoral politics, Lee Atwater uses the binary that I appropriate: "The Democrats have always got to nail Republicans as the party of the fat cats.... The Democrats will maintain that they are they party of the little man, the common man."
9. Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), 9.
10. Robert Gunderson, "The Calamity Howlers," Quarterly Journal of Speech 26 (1940): 401–11; Charles W. Lomas, "Dennis Kearney: Case Study in Demagoguery," Quarterly Journal of Speech 41 (1955): 234–42; Howard S. Erlich, "Populist Rhetoric Reassessed: A Paradox," Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977): 140–51; Ronald Lee, "The New Populist Campaign for Economic Democracy: A Rhetorical Exploration," Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986): 274–89; Thomas R. Burkholder, "Kansas Populism, Woman's Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth: A Case Study in the Limits of Transcendence," Communication Studies 40 (1989): 292–307.
11. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 5.
12. Margaret Canovan, Populism (London: Junction, 1981), 264.
13. Ionescu and Gellner, Populism, 1. Paul Taggart characterizes Ionescu and Gellner's book as "the definitive collection on populism"; Taggart, Populism, 15.
14. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 1.
15. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 1.
16. Richard Hofstadter, "North America," in Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, ed. G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (London: Macmillan, 1969), 11.
17. Michael McGee, "In Search of 'The People': A Rhetorical Alternative," Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (1975): 238.
18. Gunderson, "Calamity Howlers," 403.
19. Burkholder, "Kansas Populism," 298.
20. Harry Boyte, "The Making of a Democratic Populist: A Profile," in The New Populism: The Politics of Empowerment, ed. H. Boyte and F. Riessman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 8.
21. McGee, "In Search," 239–40, emphasis in the original.
22. Taggart, Populism, 26.
23. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 27.
24. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 28.
25. Stuart Hall, "The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity," in Culture, Globalization, and the World System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, ed. A. King (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 20.
26. Boyte, "The Making," 8.
27. Kenneth Burke, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle," in Readings in Rhetorical Criticism, ed. C. R. Burgchardt (State College, PA: Strata Publishing, 2000), 210.
28. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 31.
29. Gunderson, "Calamity Howlers," 403.
30. Lawrence Goodwyn, "Populism and Powerlessness," in The New Populism: The Politics of Empowerment, ed. H. Boyte and F. Riessman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 23–4.
31. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 29.
32. "People's Party's Platform," Omaha Morning World-Herald, July 5, 1892. Available at http://www.wwnorton.com/eamerica/media/ch22/resources/documents/populist.htm.
33. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 28.
34. "People's Party's Platform," Omaha Morning World-Herald.
35. Donald MacRae, "Populism as an Ideology," in Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, ed. G. Ionescu and E. Gellner (London: Macmillan, 1969), 157. I take MacRae's use of "ideology" to mean a political philosophy with a corresponding political program.
36. "People's Party's Platform," Omaha Morning World-Herald.
37. Burkholder, "Kansas Populism," 294.
38. MacRae, "Populism as an Ideology," 158.
39. William Miller, "The Republican Tradition," in American Populism, ed. W. F. Holmes (Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1994), 213.
40. Margaret Canovan, "Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy," Political Studies 47 (1999): 9.
41. Hofstadter, "North America," 11.
42. Glen Jeansonne, "Introduction," in Huey at 100: Centennial Essays on Huey P. Long, ed. G. Jeansonne (Ruston, LA: McGinty Publications, 1995), 2.
43. Cited in Jeansonne, "Introduction," 1.
44. J. Michael Hogan and Glen L. Williams, "The Rusticity and Religiosity of Huey P. Long," Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7 (2004): 150.
45. Huey P. Long, "Every Man a King," in American Rhetoric from Roosevelt to Reagan, ed. H. R. Ryan (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Heights Press, 1987). When citing speeches that I analyze closely, the corresponding paragraph number is noted within the text of the essay.
46. Huey P. Long, Every Man a King: The Autobiography of Huey P. Long, ed. T. H. Williams (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 338.
47. Long, Every Man, 339.
48. Long, Every Man, 339.
49. Long, Every Man, 339.
50. Cited in Jeansonne, "Introduction," 5.
51. Jeansonne, "Introduction," 6.
52. Jeansonne, "Introduction," 7.
53. William Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 247.
54. Cited in Hair, The Kingfish, 269.
55. Cited in Jeansonne, "Introduction," 6.
56. Hair, The Kingfish, 267.
57. Hogan and Williams, "Rusticity and Religiosity," 156.
58. T. Harry Williams, "Introduction," in Every Man a King: The Autobiography of Huey P. Long, ed. T .H. Williams (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), x–xi.
59. Hair, The Kingfish, 271.
60. Although clear causality is difficult to establish, I speculate that Long's feigned ignorance of Marxism and his repeated invocation of Biblical principles on behalf of economic redistribution insulated him from Red-baiters more than some of his contemporaries, such as Eugene Debs. Despite various differences in their politics, Long may have been able to parlay his Bible-infused progressivism to greater political heights because of this rhetorical buttressing.
61. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 4.
62. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 4.
63. Stephen Lesher, George Wallace: American Populist (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994), xi; Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 474.
64. Lesher, George Wallace, 15.
65. Cited in Lesher, George Wallace, 15.
66. Dorothy Freeman, A Critical Analysis of the Rhetorical Strategies Employed in the Political Speaking of George C. Wallace in the 1968 Presidential Campaign (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Indiana, 1981, Ann Arbor: UMI, 1981, 8203077), 28.
67. Carter, Politics, 472.
68. George C. Wallace, "1963 Inaugural Address of Governor George Wallace," in Alabama Department of Archives and History, January 14, 1963. Available at http://www.archives.state.al.us/govs_list/inauguralspeech.html.
69. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 230.
70. Jody Carlson, George C. Wallace and the Politics of Powerlessness (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981), 5.
71. Carter, Politics, 474.
72. Carter, Politics, 459.
73. Lesher, George Wallace, xi.
74. Lesher, George Wallace, xi.
75. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 234.
76. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 234.
77. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 235.
78. Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 237.
79. As opposed to MacRae's usage, I take Wallace's notion of "ideology" to be consistent with a "false consciousness" definition. for more on both the power and danger of this use of "ideology," see Stephen Hartnett, Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 17–25.
80. Carter, Politics, 12.
81. Carter, Politics, 473.
82. Carter, Politics, 12.
83. Cited in Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, 235.
84. Mary Stuckey, Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2004), 33–56.
85. Edmund Burke, "Speech to the Electors of Bristol," in Select Works of Edmund Burke, and Miscellaneous Writings, Library of Economics and Liberty. Available at http://www.econlib.org/library/lfbooks/burke/brkswv4c1.html.
86. Stephen H. Browne, "Jefferson's First Declaration of Independence: A Summary View of the Rights of British America Revisited," Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 416.
87. For several examples see Stuckey, Defining, 14–15.
88. Although there are numerous examples of this oft-repeated concern in Madison's writings, one of the most famous examples is in Federalist no. 52, in which Madison argues,
-
It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. if a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.
89. Cornel West, "Populism: A Black Socialist Critique," in The New Populism: The Politics of Empowerment, ed. H. Boyte and F. Riessman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 208.
90. Elisabeth Gerber, The Populist Paradox (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).