4
regarded as a corruption of democratic discourse itself. In this view, populism is
transformed into a media commodification: “everything from Bruce Springstein to Rush
Limbaugh to loose fitting trousers” is given the “branding as ‘populist’” (Kazin 1995, 5).
A focus on charismatic leadership is also a frequently cited element of populism.
Taguieff’s typology, for example, asserts that “a populist party is a personal party” led by
a demagogue (1997). But this feature raises problems as well. Democratic politicians
frequently claim their sympathies with “working people” and often cite their own class
origins. The expectation that democratic leaders govern rhetorically through direct
appeals to the people has become a norm of democratic politics in general (Tulis 1987).
Margaret Canovan, for example, notes President Carter’s extensive use of populist tropes
and his self-description of his political views as “populist,” but contends that since his
“rhetorical radicalism never extended to anything definite in the way of new proposals
for reform” his populism was primarily mainly a ameliorative electoral strategy (1981,
273).
ii
Thus populist critics acknowledge a pervasive “populism lite” in democratic
politics. Moreover, personalization of political conflict is also a standard feature of
democratic discourse that in the United States was employed by Andrew Jackson and
Franklin Roosevelt who stated that he “welcomed the hatred” of elites in the 1936
campaign.
iii
Students of populism too note that populist movements place great emphasis upon
a “redeeming break” with the past that has created a systemic crisis. Richard Hofstader
places great weight in his analysis on the preamble of the Peoples’ Party Platform (“We
meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin”)
as evidence of the hysterical ambience of populism.
iv
But once again, the identification of
Convention