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Populism, Politics, and Public Policy: 1970s Conservatism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2011
Extract
A quarter century and more has passed since the 1970s made its debut. History, always problematic as an objective undertaking, encourages present-mindedness when proximity to events in question governs our perspectives. This article does not pretend to have avoided this pitfall. Today the animus against government dominates political discourse. “Outsiders” who aspire to office boast of that status; “insiders” obscure theirs. All politicians design to show their commonness, their oneness with the people, the beleaguered people, victims of the socially privileged, of haughty bureaucrats, and the sundry occult forces that sustain their misery. Ours, it has been observed, has become a dominantly “populist” culture, its anti-elitism resounding from local Serb Halls in Milwaukee and elsewhere to the very chambers of the Capitol itself.
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- Information
- Journal of Policy History , Volume 10 , Special Issue 1: Loss of Confidence: Politics and Policy in the 1970s , January 1998 , pp. 75 - 98
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- Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1998
References
Notes
1. I do not attempt in this article to offer a comprehensive overview of the conservative movement in the 1970s, but have taken a more precisely thematic focus. Thus I do not consider foreign policy issues or the place of the religious Right. For these subjects, see Ehrman, John, The Rise of the Neoconservatives: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1994 (New Haven, 1995)Google Scholar, and Himmelstein, Jerome, To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), 97–128Google Scholar. For a review of scholarly literature on American conservatism since the mid-twentieth century, see Hixson, William B. Jr., Search for the American Right Wing: An Analysis of the Social Science Record, 1955–1987 (Princeton, 1992).Google Scholar
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58. [Reagan], A Time for Choosing, 154, 177, 187.
59. Ibid., 169, 171, 188, 167 (the quotation).
60. Ibid., 176.
61. Ibid., 184, 189.
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64. See the list compiled by Gary Dorrien, Neoconservative Mind, 10–11.
65. As possible predecessors for the kind of populist and laissez-faire conservatism I am describing here, it might seem that southern politics supplies a source. Powerful demagogues, especially those that appeal to a white, racist populace, do represent a significant strand in the American right-wing tradition. But this type invariably wanted at the very least to control business or did in fact attack big business as a populist device that inaugurated a political career. We have seen the case of Wallace in Alabama here. Huey Long in Louisiana attempted a grassroots effort against Standard Oil and learned from Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi the political advantages of denouncing the wealthy. See Harry Williams, T., Huey Long (New York, 1969), 71, 104–5, 152, 214–15Google Scholar. Leander Perez of Louisiana criticized federal control of business only that he might have more of the same in his own parish. See Jeansonne, Glen, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta (Baton Rouge, 1977), 101–20.Google Scholar
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67. See Judis, John B., William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York, 1988), 377–79Google Scholar. Phillips had written: we cannot “expect Alabama truck drivers or Ohio steelworkers to sign on with a politics captivated by Ivy League five-syllable word polishers.” Quoted in ibid., 379.
68. See Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, 53–80.
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72. Lind, Michael, Up from Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America (New York, 1996), 5.Google Scholar
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74. For Lind's outline of a “true” conservatism, i.e., a “creative traditionalism” as presented by Peter Viereck, see ibid., 49–54.