Time Essay: The New Populism: Radicalizing the Middle

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More perceptive observers—among them Organizer Saul Alinsky and Columnist Joseph Kraft—understood him better. They realized that his fears for his safety were justified and, more significant, that he had genuine economic grievances. With that, the Forgotten American had arrived, and the Republicans were the first to seize him. In 1968 he was metamorphosed into the Silent Majority and took a suitable place in a sort of faded Norman Rockwell portrait lit by a harsh new light. Even while denouncing and fearing the left-wing radicals, he himself grew impatient with politics as usual, and seemed ready to resort to more desperate measures. Middle American discontent as such is not populism. That requires an acceptance of relatively radical solutions; hence the odd convergence of left and right on certain issues. Both, for instance, denounce big bureaucracy in business, labor and government and demand more local control.

As discontent became more visible, liberals hastily reversed themselves. They came to realize that no substantial reform can be accomplished without the foot soldiers: the working-class whites. As they look back on it now, the radical student crusade of the 1960s, though it raised many valid issues, seems to have been something of an indulgence. It was too remote from the ordinary citizen; it had too high a moral opinion of itself and too low a regard for the morals of others. Writer-Activist Jack Newfield, who wrote approvingly of the exclusive radicals of the '60s in his book A Prophetic Minority, takes an altered view in a recently published sequel, A Populist Manifesto, co-authored by Jeff Greenfield, a former Robert Kennedy aide. The Manifesto argues that reform is possible only if poor or near-poor blacks and whites are brought together on economic issues that affect both: tax reform, consumer protection, free medical care for everybody. Earlier, Senator Fred Harris had written a book. Now Is the Time, in which he, too, proposed a far-ranging populist program that would unite groups of people who had only recently been at each other's throats.

As stitched together by its various theorists, populism calls for a drastic overhaul of the nation's economy—a kind of bargain-basement socialism. Its chief demand is one that has struck so responsive a chord in America that even President Nixon has started formulating a program of tax reform. Nothing has more outraged Middle-Forgotten-Populist Man as much as the fact that the wealthy often escape taxes while he is forced to cough up more and more. In calling for a fairer system and a closing of loopholes, the populists are being no more than eminently sensible. They are also on target when they insist that giving underaffluent people easier access to mortgages would appeal to both blacks and whites who are struggling, often against insuperable financial odds, to find decent homes in the cities and suburbs. But the developing scandals in the FHA are a caution against expecting miracles from federal intervention.