The Seventeenth Amendment and the Populist Wave
In a discussion of federalism, Bob Zadek calls the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments the two worst amendments to the Constitution, both adopted in the same year. The Sixteenth gave the country the income tax, which Zadek says was unconstitutional and required an amendment to permit. The Seventeenth changed how senators are elected: the founders provided that senators were elected by state legislatures, not by the people, because they feared democracy and the impulsive voting of the mob — by which Zadek means people who react extremely to the events of the moment rather than taking a long view. Since the Senate was to be the more deliberative body, with wise men serving six-year terms, it was the legislative body representing the states, not the people of those states. That system, Zadek says, worked for 130 or 140 years, until the populism of the Teddy Roosevelt administration and a few scandals involving the buying of Senate seats produced a wave of populism — which he glosses as thinking of today’s Donald Trump populism — and an amendment providing for direct election of senators. Once that happened, Zadek argues, states were doomed to lose their co-equal status with Washington and were relegated to being mere agencies of the federal government, existing to carry out federal policy rather than state policy, with only minor administrative latitude. Sarah Stillman on Minors on the Sex-Offender List (2016)
Zadek proposes that a majority of states be permitted to nullify any federal law — 27 or 26 states voting to nullify, and the law repealed — leaving the detail of population or state count to others. He calls nullification a grand old concept, noting that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1798 supported a proposition where federal law could be nullified by the states, though their concept was that a state was free not to follow federal law. Sarah Stillman on Minors on the Sex-Offender List (2016)
Democracy, Meritocracy, and the Virus of Populism
Jayant Bhandari argues that democracy does not work because the lowest common denominator in every society — the lowest 51% — decides who should run the country, calling it a non- and anti-meritocratic system of governance. He points to Pakistan, which he says did reasonably well under military dictatorship and became slowly and surely a religious country each time it became democratic, with women locked back into their houses because fanatic elements rule when the masses decide who should rule. Capitalism and Morality: Twin Pillars of the West (2017)
Bhandari tells Bob Zadek that in his view democracy actually is the worst form of government. Because governments are the biggest and most powerful institutions anywhere, and because the least competent people in terms of understanding public policy and governance are the ones striving for bread and circuses, a cycle of populism overtakes the institutions of government and slowly corrupts everything in society — associations, businesses, everything becomes democratic and gets the virus of populism. He calls democracy a cancer, very visible in third-world countries and only slowly decaying Western societies over the last 200 years, so that institutions no longer stand on moral pillars but on the pillars of populism. Capitalism and Morality: Twin Pillars of the West (2017)
Zadek frames the exchange by saying a listener would conclude that democracy is not necessarily the best tool for governance, effective only selectively, in the right place at the right time — whereas democracy is generally looked upon as a universal good, as something you cannot have too much of. Zadek says he agrees 100% that democracy is not automatically a universal good but simply one element of governance. Capitalism and Morality: Twin Pillars of the West (2017)
Pitchfork Populism and the 2016 Election
Bradford R. Kane, author of Pitchfork Populism, tells Zadek there is a long history of populist movements in the United States, and that one could argue even the founding of the country in the 1770s was an outgrowth of a populist movement. He cites an agrarian populist movement during the 1800s and various economic populist movements; in Kansas, Mary Elizabeth Lease led a movement in the late 1800s; Jacob Coxey marched Coxey’s Army from Ohio on foot to Washington, D.C. in search of veterans’ benefits; and there were William Jennings Bryan and Teddy Roosevelt with his Progressive Party when he tried to return to power. What such movements are typically about, Kane says, is empowering people — where people wanted their concerns addressed, they organized. Populism 201: Advanced Topics in American Democracy (2020)
Kane explains that he calls the subject of his book “pitchfork populism” because it is actually not populism but a form, a distortion — a false populism. Donald Trump identified a disaffected, aggrieved cohort, embraced them, mobilized and energized them to empower him; their organizing principle was just to support him and allow him to do whatever he wants with his transactional approach to governing. Kane notes references to that transactional approach from Senator Ben Sasse and from John Kelly, former Chief of Staff to Donald Trump. Populism 201: Advanced Topics in American Democracy (2020)
Zadek asks whether populism is a subset of democracy, given that we vote for president, representatives, and senators, and whether the country has had a populist government since its founding. Kane answers that democracy is basically empowering the people, that the white settlers who came to what became the colonies were fleeing oppression in Europe — though the tragic part is that many of the oppressed became oppressors — and were trapped in a caste society of serfs and lords and ladies with no social mobility. They came for social mobility, a combination of liberty and equality that formed the national split personality and the root of libertarianism as well. Kane says the essence of the United States is a populist country with a premium placed on power to the people. Populism 201: Advanced Topics in American Democracy (2020)
Zadek supplements this with economic mobility, saying that in Western Europe where you were economically was determined the moment you were born and was immutable, whereas America offered and still offers economic mobility with no built-in structural barriers. He asks Kane about the tension between liberty and equality in the founding documents, which Kane describes as individualism versus collectivism. Populism 201: Advanced Topics in American Democracy (2020)
Zadek also recalls that the second or third show he did 12 or 13 years earlier had Don Boudreaux, an economist who writes a daily column called Cafe Hayek, as guest on the subject of insider trading — a show in which Zadek wished insider trading were mandatory rather than a crime, arguing that criminalizing it harms the market, investors, and everybody. He states that from a libertarian point of view the most valid and appropriate role of government is to protect individuals from having their rights, which preceded government, protected from bad acts of others and against theft, physical harm, and fraud. Populism 201: Advanced Topics in American Democracy (2020)
Populism After Trump
Introducing William Howell and Terry Moe, authors of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy, Zadek observes that four years earlier, give or take, the word populism was not heard on the evening news or in reference to American politics; it was heard in reference to dysfunctional governments around the world, was not a very flattering concept, and was something political junkies paid passing attention to so they could feel smug that it wasn’t us. Then came the Trump presidency, and the word entered the political vocabulary, residing there almost nightly for four years. Zadek asks what populism exactly is, whether it is to be welcomed or feared, and whether it has advantages and disadvantages. He calls the moment the perfect time, on the Sunday before inauguration, when perhaps the first populist president in a hundred years, give or take, was leaving the White House. Populism After Trump (2021)
Zadek presses the question of whether populism is more than style — not political tactics, presentation, or manipulation, since every president has a style and likability is always important, which Trump, he says, did not have at least not broadly. If populism were only style, Zadek says, it wouldn’t pay to write a book, and style would never be an existential threat to democracy. Populism After Trump (2021)
Terry Moe answers that populism in the United States is partly due to a white backlash to social diversity and to the very real, powerful, worldwide socio-economic forces of globalization, technological change, and immigration that have brought real economic harms and insecurities and cultural anxieties to tens of millions of Americans. People are really feeling these things and are angry at a system that hasn’t solved these problems, at an ineffective government. Moe says that if Hillary had won, those people would still have been angry, the populist base would still have been there, like a volcano ready to explode; Trump simply took advantage of that in 2016, and if he hadn’t won, someone else would have taken advantage of it later. Moe calls this very real and really dangerous. Populism After Trump (2021)
Across episodes: no development
Populism is touched on in the Stillman episode (the Seventeenth Amendment and nullification), the Bhandari episode (democracy and the virus of populism), the Kane episode (pitchfork populism and the 2016 election), and the Howell and Moe episode (populism after Trump); the excerpts show no development between the earlier and later treatments, only different speakers advancing different framings.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what became of Zadek’s nullification proposal, nor how Kane’s book treats the 2020 election beyond the topics listed. They do not give the outcome of any election, the contents of any bill, or the holding of any case. Moe’s definition of populism breaks off at the point where he begins to answer, and the excerpts contain no statement of what reforms Howell and Moe propose.