foundations of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Central to
Kazin’s analysis was Bryan’s mastery of an impassioned
rhetorical style that appealed to the common person and
mobilized the masses.
Palin’s oratory and the Tea Party protests in some
ways resemble Bryan’s combative rhetoric style. But Palin’s
critics note that few common people could have afforded
the $349 cost of a ticket to hear her speech in Nashville,
which helped pay her $100,000 fee. Perhaps the most
important point is that Palin’s supporters and critics alike
seek to lay claim to a “populist” label dating back to the
1880s and 1890s.Source: John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt(1931); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of
Reform(1955); Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise(1976); Michael Kazin,
A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan(2006).I
n February 2010 the National Tea Party held its first conven-
tion. Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for Vice President in
2008, delivered the keynote address.“This movement is
about the people,” she added,“and Washington has broken
trust with the people.” Palin’s broad definition of “populism”
evoked the grass-roots insurgency of farmers and industrial
workers that culminated in the Populist party of the 1890s.
Back then, well-educated Americans generally dis-
missed the Populists as ill-informed and simple-minded,
and this disdain persisted well into the twentieth century.
But in 1931 historian John D. Hicks championed the
Populists as far-sighted reformers who sought to protect
small farmers from the excesses of rapacious railroad
barons and eastern financiers. Although the Populist move-
ment swiftly collapsed, Hicks insisted that its ideas showed
“an amazing vitality.”
But as Hitler seized power later in the 1930s by appeal-
ing to the prejudices of the German masses, American intel-
lectuals returned to their skepticism toward grass-roots
populism. Historian Richard Hofstadter charged the Populists
with bigotry and derided their nostalgia for the past.
In 1976 Lawrence Goodwyn countered Hofstadter’s
criticisms. The Populists were not backward-looking cranks,
but activists in a “cooperative crusade” whose main goal—
weakening the monopoly power of the corporations—was
sound. But Goodwyn’s assertion raised another question: If
the Populists were on the right track, why did their move-
ment die out?
In 2006 Michael Kazin declared that Bryan had not
failed. On the contrary, the Populist movement had laid the
DEBATING THE PAST
Populism—Crusade of Cranks
or Potent Grass-Roots Protest?
547Sarah Palin, latter-day proponent of populism at a Tea Party
convention in Nashville (2010), sought to “go back to our roots
as a God-fearing nation” that would “start seeking some divine
intervention.”
A William Jennings Bryan poster alludes to religion: “no crown of
thorns” and “no cross of gold.”