This article ran in the Tallahassee Democrat on December 8, 1996

Last month a group called the Alliance for Democracy met in the dust of a small Texas town to talk about reviving a populism of the political left. In the current conservative political climate that might seem as though they saw a mirage produced by the Texas heat. Don't get me wrong: I'd vote for former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower for president in a heartbeat. But the chance of a traditional left of center populism taking off today, even in Texas, is about the same as Jim gluing feathers to his arms and expecting to glide over the sagebrush.

Yet, because populism of the center and right have been very successful over the past half century, maybe a reformist populism could prosper if it engaged the appropriate issues. They should call it Dilbert populism.

If we consider the history of populism it becomes clear how it would work best today. The definition of populism derives from its origin in the agrarian uprising in the 1880s and 1890s, in which farmers were against monopolies, urban East Coast financiers and corporations (banks and railroads figured prominently), and undemocratic government, among other issues. It defended the cultural and economic status of the agrarian common person.

As a consequence, this left of center impulse proposed regulation of industries like the railroads, cooperatively run ventures by farmers themselves, and more direct democracy in the form of ballot referendums. It became associated with figures such as William Jennings Bryan in the 1890s. This left leaning populism has continued on rather weakly over the intervening century partly because we live in a rather conservative political culture. It has shown itself occasionally, as in the unsuccessful presidential campaigns of Henry Wallace in 1948 and George McGovern in 1972. And it is this left wing of populism--populated today by Jim Hightower, Ronnie Dugger (publisher of the Texas Observer), and Molly Ivins (a syndicated columnist)--that the group in Texas is trying to revive.

There also grew up a populism of the right earlier in this century, based on social and cultural grievances of agrarians and smalltowners who felt that their individual autonomy was threatened by big government, bureaucratic hierarchies, city dwellers, immigrants, and intellectuals. What it held in common with leftist populism was agrarianism and a defense of the common person. Where it differed is that it saw big government as more threatening than big business. Representative of this more conservative populism were Louisiana Senator Huey Long in the 1930s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater and Alabama Governor George Wallace in the 1960s, and the rural militias of Idaho, Montana, and Alabama in the 1980s and 1990s.

More interesting, because more recognizable to us in recent decades, is the "middle-American populism" that surfaced in the late 1960s and continues to exercise great power in our politics. Named the Silent Majority by Richard Nixon, this large collection of the population reaches from the lower-middle to the upper-middle class, and inhabits the middle-to-conservative section of the ideological spectrum. Nixon, who wore a blue suit even at the beach, was too stiff to be a populist, and never led the common people convincingly. But since the late 1970s, this new middle-American populism, with a decidedly conservative agenda, has been led effectively by Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Phil Gramm.

How, you might ask, can a large majority of conservative middle Americans masquerade in the overalls of a powerless populist minority? Because they feel deprived of power by that small minority of bureaucrats in Washington, editors in newspapers, and intellectuals in universities. That's why the populist rhetoric of exclusion has worked so well in elections of the past twenty years. That's why everyone from the president to your senator to your local county commissioner runs as an outsider against Washington and the media.

So where does this leave Jim Hightower and the others in Texas who want to revive a populism of the left? Unlike the earlier populism, the Alliance brand has to be more suburban than agrarian. Since 1940, the U.S. population living on farms has declined from 23% to 2%. According to the 1990 census, about 77% of the people now live in metropolitan areas, up a couple of percentage points from 1980. Further, we prefer to live in the largest metropolitan areas.

The Alliance constituency is more likely to spend the workday in a cubicle than on a tractor. The populist left, then, should launch a Dilbert populism. How? Look beneath the fluorescent lights and before the computer screens in city and suburban offices. Don't underestimate the ability of workers in rolling office chairs to be alienated from the corporate world they inhabit. Cubiclers might defend their own organization, but not necessarily the one down the road.

The anticorporate feelings of the old populism are beginning to show themselves in some urban concerns about corporate responsibility. Those at the Alliance meeting in Texas correctly pointed out the dissatisfaction some communities feel toward Walmart moving into town. People in Tallahassee ought to identify with that complaint, since Walmart showed its definition of corporate responsibility to our community by vaporizing the trees on their new lot on Apalachee Parkway. Apparently they have the same plans for landscaping their new site as they did for their old spot around the corner: a wasteland of dingy broken pavement, punctuated by so little greenery they can water it with a teacup.

Although most Americans prefer big cities, increasingly there is talk of neighborhoods designed around the concept of a New Urbanism that is more pedestrian friendly. Urban people, it seems, still want to create a kind of populist, human-scale environment and livability in their communities. Further, there is a populist discontent waiting to be tapped among Internet users who want freedom from government censorship.

A Dilbert populism that included cubiclers and Internet surfers would have a much larger constituency than a populism of small town barbers and farmers. Forget Texas. To revive populism, meetings should be held in the lunchroom down the hall from your desk.