Sarah Palin's Faux Populism

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. Posted September 11, 2008.

Living in a small town and being able to field dress a moose does not make
Palin a populist, no matter how much pundits want to pretend it does.

It was not my intention to be writing about Sarah Palin, since everyone with
a laptop, a No. 2 pencil or a red crayon seems to be covering that beat. But
then came the pundits:

"She's a populist," gushed Karl Rove on Fox TV. Weird, since this right-wing
political slime and corporate whore loathes, demonizes, mocks, fears and
tries to destroy real populists.

"Perfect populist pitch," beamed CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield right after
Palin's big speech at the GOP fawnfest in St. Paul. In his less infatuated
moments, Greenfield surely must realize how ludicrous his comment was, since
once, long ago, he co-authored a book that had "populist" in the title, so
he has at least had a brush with the authentic people's movement that the
term encapsulates.

So they made me do it. Karl, Jeff and other pundits who are rushing to place
the gleaming crown of populism atop the head of this shameless corporate
servant -- they are the ones who have driven me to write about Palin.
Someone has to nail the media establishment for its willing perversion of
language, American history and the substance of today's genuine populism.

Palin might be popular, she might be able to field dress a moose, she might
live in a small town, she might enjoy delivering "news flashes" to media
elites, she might even become vice president -- but none of this makes her a
populist. To the contrary, she is to populism what bear is to beer, only not
as close.

You want a taste of the real thing? Try this from another woman who hailed
from a town (smaller than Wasilla, Alaska) and was renowned for her
political oratory:

Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by
the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall
Street and for Wall Street. ... Our laws are the output of a system which
clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. ...

There are thirty men in the United States whose aggregate wealth is over one
and one-half billion dollars. There are half a million looking for work. ...
We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the
National banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the
government. We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out. ... We will
stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and will
not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the Government pays its
debts to us.

The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus
far beware.

That, my media friends, is populism. It comes from Mary Ellen Lease, who was
speaking to the national convention of the populist party in Topeka, Kan.,
in 1890. In a time before women could vote, Lease traveled the countryside
to rally a grassroots revolt against the corporate predators of her day,
urging farmers to "raise less corn and more hell." She didn't need to brag
that she was a pit bull in lipstick, because her message, idealism and
actions made her an actual force for change.

America has been blessed with populist women ever since, including such
honest and insistent voices as Ida Tarbell, Mother Jones, Dorothy Day, Rosa
Parks, Rachel Carson, Karen Silkwood, Barbara Jordan, Molly Ivins, Barbara
Ehrenreich and Granny D. Measure Sarah Palin against these.

Populism was and is a ground-level, democratic movement with the guts and
gumption to go right at the moneyed elites. It is unabashedly class-based,
confronting the Rockefellers on behalf of the Littlefellers. To be a
populist is to challenge the very structure of corporate power that is
running roughshod over workers, consumers, the environment, small farmers,
poor people, the middle class -- and America's historic ideals of economic
fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.

"Populist" is not an empty political buzzword that can be attached to
someone like Palin, whose campaigns (lieutenant governor, governor and now
Veep) are financed and even run by the lobbyists and executives of Big Oil,
Wall Street bankers, drug companies, telecom giants and other entrenched
economic interests.

Populists don't support opening our national parks and coastlines to allow
the ExxonMobils to take publicly owned oil and sell it to China. Palin does.
Populists favor a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing
consumers at the pump while milking taxpayers for billions of dollars in
subsidies. Palin doesn't. Populists don't hire corporate lobbyists to
deliver a boatload of earmarked federal funds, then turn around and claim to
be a heroic opponent of earmarks. Palin did. Populists favor shifting more
of America's tax burden from the middle class to the superwealthy, while
opposing another huge tax giveaway for corporations. Palin doesn't and
doesn't.

Another thing populists don't do is sneer at community organizers, as Palin
did in her nationally televised coming-out party. Indeed, populists of old
were community organizers, as are today's. They work in communities all
across our great land, putting in long days at low pay to help empower
ordinary folks who are besieged by the avarice and arrogance of Palin's own
corporate backers. Since the governor likes to put her fundamental
Christianity on political display, she might give some thought to a new
bumper sticker that expresses a bit of Biblical populism: "Jesus was a
community organizer while Pontius Pilate was governor."

Environmental justice groups, ACORN, living wage campaigns, the Bus Project,
clean water efforts, union organizing drives, PIRG, Fighting Bob Fest, Jobs
with Justice, Apollo Alliance, United Students Against Sweatshops, the
Evangelical Environmental Network, clean election initiatives, stopping
mountaintop removal, USAction, community supported agriculture, Campus
Progress, local business alliances, Citizens Trade Campaign, Wellstone
Action -- these are but a few of those doing terrific community organizing
today. They embody the vitality of modern populism, doing the essential
grunt-level work of democracy.

What gives Palin any legitimacy to denigrate that? She embraces none of
these causes, instead supporting the rich and powerful whom grassroots folks
are having to battle. She's a plutocrat, not a populist. Big difference.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and
author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go
With the Flow" (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly "Hightower
Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.