Paul A. Heise

for Lebanon Daily News

To understand the politics of today, particularly the rise of populists like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, we have to compare it to a previous populist period in the 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover faced the same kind of angry populist uprising that Trump and Sanders face today. The US did not succumb to the strongman, fascist model that engulfed the political world. But others did and it became the age of dictatorship that led to World War II.

The anger and fear was certainly more desperate then than it is now. The country faced a true insurrection. Cox's army of 50,000 mostly veterans marched on Washington demanding veterans' bonuses. Pres. Hoover ordered their encampment destroyed by troops led by Gen. Douglas McArthur and Maj. George Patton. Business leaders tried to recruit Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler to lead a coup d'état against Roosevelt.

The most serious generator of populism is fear and insecurity. That is why the phrase "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" resonated with the people. The common man turns populist when he feel he has been betrayed and abandoned by the establishment leaders who were given the wealth, privilege and power necessary to protect the people. When the common man no longer trusts the governing elite he becomes desperate for new leadership and ripe for dictatorship.

Hoover tried to govern but he had lost all political credibility. In 1932, after those first glorious 100 days of Congress, Roosevelt, was given a very broad mandate and he certainly used it to flirt with strongman populism and fascist economics. But in the end our system of checks and balances allowed the Supreme Court to invalidate the National Industrial Recovery Act and Roosevelt turned to a less authoritarian populism.

Today our desperate economic inequality generates a valid populism. The last 35 years saw an accumulation of political power and a redistribution of wealth to the very, very rich. This created an economy where the residual left to the workers was insufficient to buy the goods they are producing.

America is in the early stages of choosing someone to divert the populist demands into effective political action. Of the Republicans, Cruz and Kasich are clueless as to the populist demands. They see a common political problem – getting elected by responding to traditional social, moral and conservative positions. Trump, on the other hand, speaks directly to populist insecurity and fear by promising the people that he will take care of them. How is beside the point. Legality is irrelevant. Effectiveness is ignored. This Caudillo, El Duce says he is strong, smart, experienced and ready. He is the traditional strongman not unlike Franco, Mussolini, Chang Kai-shek, or any of these leaders who were not much interested in the rule of law.

The clearest distinction is between Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton is the technician who has all of the background and experience necessary to address the specific issues. She is what the Russians called an apparatchik. She would diddle with Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, make public college education debt-free, raise the minimum wage to $10 or $12 and do whatever is necessary to strengthen the status quo. In normal times, she would cruise to reelection.

In times when the populace is insecure, frightened and ready for revolt, it takes more than that. Bernie Sanders is pounding the plight of the middle class. He promises a revolution that addresses their economic prospects. That includes a single-payer health system, a minimum wage of $15 an hour, a tax on Wall Street speculation to pay for free public college, vigorous action on climate change and serious spending on infrastructure.

Bernie Sanders is a proud New Dealer. He speaks directly and openly to the fears of those driving the populist insurrection. Clinton is being pushed to the left. But her agenda, like those of Cruz and Kasich, is beside the point to the angry citizens who see Bernie Sanders as the populist responsive to their needs. Trump is the answer only to his own needs for attention and power.

- Paul A. Heise, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Lebanon Valley College.

