The Republican gamble

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1995 by Robert J. Bresler

Last November, a wave of populist anger gave Republicans 16 control of the Congress for the first time in 42 years. This was the third time that such a wave washed across the shores of American politics in the last several decades. Each time, it has been more ferocious, and each time, it has receded in frustration and disappointment. The first came in the 1968 presidential election, when many white working- and middle-class voters, alienated from the Democratic Party on civil rights, Vietnam, and cultural liberalism, voted for either Richard Nixon or George Wallace.

Nixon, it seemed, understood these voters by their resentments (which mirrored many of his own), not their aspirations. As president, he provided them only the psychic gratification of bashing the anti-war movement and assorted undesirables. This overheated rhetoric cloaked a domestic program more attuned to liberal interest groups than the alienated working class. Nixon sponsored and signed a laundry list of environmental and consumer legislation, institutionalized affirmative action programs, increased Federal regulatory activity, and presided over an explosion of entitlement spending for the poor and elderly.

These programs provoked little opposition from Nixon's populist constituents, but neither did they generate any enthusiasm. Nixon desired to make his mark in foreign policy. On domestic issues, he did nothing to define a new Republican-populist agenda. With little to distinguish them from the Democrats, the Congressional Republicans failed to win the allegiance of these voters and to create a new base for a Republican majority. The Watergate scandals and the inflation of the early 1970s eventually turned voters sour on Nixon. His successor, Gerald Ford, offered them only bland Republican orthodoxy and was unable to hold Nixon's populist base. Most of these voters, particularly those in the South, returned to the Democratic Party in 1976 to support native son Jimmy Carter.

They hardly were impressed by Pres. Carter's performance. He offered them neither substance nor rhetoric, and what loyalty he had gained from them by virtue of being a southerner quickly faded. The Carter Administration ended in economic calamity, producing a second wave of populist anger that elected Ronald Reagan. Far more popular with these voters than Richard Nixon, Pres. Reagan was slightly more successful in rebuilding the Republican base. On economic issues, he did make progress. New jobs were created; inflation and interest rates were reduced; and the economy grew at a significant rate (6.2% in the 1984 election year). Nonetheless, many families, hit by a decline in wages, required the income of two earners to stay ahead.

Despite his optimistic and nostalgic tone (which were in sharp contrast to Nixon's dour speeches and Carter's lugubrious ones), Reagan failed to make a serious impact. He was swimming upstream in attempting to shape the tenor of American life and was outmaneuvered by a new cultural elite. These were people who had been affected profoundly by the cultural radicalism of the 1960s and were moving into positions of authority in the media, the entertainment field, the major foundations, and the academic world. They brought a certain permissiveness and a countercultural perspective to their work that offended the conservative populists who adhered to traditional values, objecting to the endless parade of movies, television programs, and rock music obsessed with sex and violence. Electing a conservative president had made little difference.

George Bush's efforts to portray himself as a populist during the 1988 campaign--eating pork rinds, campaigning with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and bashing liberals--seemed grossly opportunistic coming from an upper-class product of Groton and Yale. The leaders of the Democratic Congress sensed that Bush's populism had no substance. They forced him to retreat from his oft-stated positions on taxes and quotas and stood smugly at his side as he signed the 1990 tax increase and the 1992 Civil Rights Act.

Pres. Clinton's cultural liberalism and stories of his wayward behavior served not simply to antagonize conservative populists, but to enrage them. Fair or not, Clinton has become a symbol of moral decline. The improvement of the economy did little to ameliorate that perception, particularly since wages remained stagnant. In the face of this disappointment, the third wave of populist anger manifested itself in the sweeping Republican victories at the Congressional, state, and local levels. What bound these people together was not merely a disdain for Clinton and the Democrats, but a deep suspicion of government.

Such cynicism notwithstanding, they still expect results from their political leaders beyond hand-wringing over rising crime, growing illegitimacy, declining educational standards, and deteriorating neighborhoods. Their anger, more intense than ever, has built to a rage. Each time they have unleashed it in an election, little has followed.