Editorial
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
Editorial Clod Populism's Man of Change Politics is hard work. Whenever elections are utterly unavoidable politicians have to conjure up new potions, regardless how lucrative their present...
...His dedication to change may bring blood to the cheeks of the moony-eyed in the press corps, and it may summon goose pimples amongst the intellectualoids now so abundant on college campuses and in suburbia...
...The clod populists of yesteryear promised to beat the bushes for hyphenates, Jews, Afro-Americans, and agents of the Pope...
...Accordingly, this century has had two titans...
...But to be a successful American politician these days, one must be something more than a bigot, a demogogue, a barbarian or a moron...
...Certain of these changes are bound to be benign, and others will multiply our miseries...
...Golf caddies have le'arnt to treat such incantations with a snort...
...it is also wrong-headed and deceitful...
...Then it is time for what pundits are given to calling a New Politics...
...It is the horse laugh of the century...
...He believes in the canards his handlers prepare for him to pin on Mr...
...The clods might be crude, but they are a savvy lot...
...Whenever elections are utterly unavoidable politicians have to conjure up new potions, regardless how lucrative their present swindles seem to be...
...It is against the status quo, and I think it represents a majority of the American people...
...Poor George just is not bright enough to be guilty of sin...
...Propositions so preposterous it would be an impropriety to mention them in this sophisticated journal...
...To hear them tell it, the only real Americans left dwelt out where the pollen blows freely and where all dignitaries wore Oshgosh overalls exuding a fragrance of fresh cow manure...
...He really does believe the windy rhetoric which howels through a presidential campaign...
...Only a pedant or an ignoramus would overrate his intelligence...
...God bless George McGovern...
...So they have rummaged through the fossils of American political theory and retrieved that pernicious old species of flimflammery: populism...
...What Pious George really means when he purrs on about change is that under his administration change will have a special character, ushering us into an era of milk and honey...
...William Jennings Bryan would have made it, but for the reassuring fact that our illustrious ancestors in their wisdom boxed his ears every time he stalked the White House...
...Now, it is claimed, the New Clod Populists are about to have their day...
...At one point he agglutinated all the razzle-dazzle change beheld for him into one gorgeous passage: "It is the people who have been passed by in American life and are frustrated that they have not had a voice in bringing about the changes that they think would improve their lives...
...This year the Barnum and Baileys of political science have had to whip up a new show...
...Once again mean-spiritedness is being raised to the level of political philosophy...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Of course, he also seems to believe that by bolstering their budget the bureaucrats at HEW will be able to defend Israel and that his New Age economists need not be initiated into the mysteries of addition and subtraction and that the voters are going to elect a presidential nominee whose key argument is that if elected no one will take his proposals seriously, not even Congress...
...George really does believe...
...Nixon...
...Harding...
...I doubt this will happen, but their brief reappearance on center stage should be good for a laugh...
...For intelligent thinking persons this would be the ancient sin of hubris, but for a prairie sphinx it is merely presumption refreshed by confusion...
...Surely not even George believes that the ominous forces opposing him are going to rescind change...
...When Pious George kisses a baby he believes that it is because he has fallen in love...
...Citizens are a finicky lot who demand from their politicians not only magic but variety...
...Naturally the citizenry soon lost interest in such a preposterous act, and the clod populists gave way to sleep-inducing Republicans and unctuous Democrats...
...He will keep America "on course...
...Nixon, Mr...
...Realizing that most voters are inherent grumblers, given to the gambler's blind optimism, the clod populists uttered the ritualistic assurances that they would bring change and change would be rosy...
...He thinks he is on to something wondrous...
...He actually believes that these frowzy sonorities about change mean something...
...When the rest of them declared their allegiance to change one suspects they all knew what they were about...
...They would spin fanciful yarns about the mysterious puissance of eastern bankers and insist that there were dark schemes being hatched in the back rooms of Chinese restaurants...
...How excrutiatingly he labors to express it in hues of quaint magniloquence, his face a curious surface of muscles and lumps, his big bovine eyes rolling in their sauce...
...In the last analysis the most ridiculous thing about Pious George's crusade is not that he is a clod or that every sensible politician in the country left his phone off the hook when George thrashed about looking for a running mate or that he is not able to utter a complex sentence without contradicting himself or that he believes that his advocacy of change really means something...
...He is riding its wave...
...By "the rich" they mean those men whose numbers are so trivial that they can easily be ganged up on by a mob - especially a mob of legislative quacks...
...The other was W.G...
...Actually his approaches to technology, ecology, economic growth and democratic process reveal a peculiar timidity toward change...
...And clod populism's traditional racism and bigotry is even being fitted out in a modern snakeskin called quotas or proportional representation - two tortured readings of democratic theory which commission a handful of scoundrels to dictate the value of every other citizen, both in matters of law and in matters of employment...
...It is rather that he believes...
...Pious feels he has a special relationship with history...
...It became the leitmotif of his crusade...
...Last spring Change became clod populism's special appeal...
...Now, of course, this is an example of practically unsurpassed campaign spoonery...
...And it is not even enough to be an adroit quick-change artist...
...And somehow he will prevail, abreast with and at home with change...
...But for a moderately intelligent fellow it has no more impact than moon spots or television advertising...
...In the last election Mr...
...Not only is it a tushery upon a tushery...
...Nevertheless, at this very hour, one clod populist sweats furiously to surpass these great men of the past, and he stakes his sublime ambition on the same contrivance which served him so well in last spring's primaries...
...After all just possibly there will be a few dullards enfranchised and eager to vote for a candidate who promises to lighten their loads...
...It is an appalling choice in this Age of Idealism, for populism has never amounted to much more than the politicalization of baseness...
...And "the powerful" seems to mean anyone else who has distinguished himself by attracting the lusts of the yokels and their keepers...
...Unlike Mr...
...But no one with a dash of intelligence will seriously question the ceaselessness of change, not even a presidential candidate...
...According to the populist intelligentsia most Framers of the Constitution spent their lives philosophizing with cows and shedding tears over the arrival of every shipload of "foreign borns...
...Innocently he intones his promise and his covenant - change...and nowhere do we glimpse the vagrant grin, the saucy wink, that would indicate a knowing design...
...it became something more...
...This is a coalition of change, a coalition of conscience, a coalition of progress...
...They can tolerate only so much of a politician's wizardry before they begin to snore or to play with their toes...
...One was John Kennedy...
...He believes that America rots without his leadership...
...Nixon even tested the winds with something called a New Federalism, and from time to time he has attempted to rouse his dozing majority with something he calls a New American Revolution...
...Still George believes...
...As this spinning globe of some three billion passengers careens through the vast reaches of space we had all better hold on tightly and we had best expect some changes...
...But for Pious George, Ph.D...
...No president in this century has ever been so gullible, and the only presidential candidate to match his gaping credulity was the remarkable Bryan...
...For he is unique even amongst clod populists...
...I speak of Pious George from the Praires and the surprisingly potent, if not very original, issue of Change...
...So also was it a special proclamation, priority, belief, promise and magic wand...
...As every clever political orator in America will tell you, that which separates the charismatic man of destiny from the general mob of wheezing tub thumpers is the ability to speak in elevated and even inspirational terms about a nullity, a platitude or an imbecility...
...A true masterpiece embraces all three...
...In the past our really superior politicians realized this and deftly stirred up the citizenry with New Deals and New Frontiers...
...Yes he believes all this and more...
...Fairy tales that would bounce off little children, and absurdities that would bring waves of glee to a man on his death bed...
...As with the clod populism of the past, our present prodigies marshal the nation's pent-up envy and greed by bawling about the achievements of superior men, whom they deprecate as "the rich and the powerful...
...He believes in his "agenda for change" with all of its contradictions...
...It was an oratorical hallucinogen, relied upon by every clod populist from Chisholm to Lindsay...
Vol. 6 • October 1972 • No. 1
