The primary reason these efforts are doomed is not because of the thought behind them, which is often at least stimulating and worth the contention, but because the books are published in the first place. If the southern strategy had been clouded in secrecy it might have gotten .somewhere, if Richard Scammon hadn't opened the closet door of the American center, same politician might have been able to put his advice to good effect, and if the Field boys had been modest enough to restrict their ideas to a memo to McGovern, the senator might have had populism to himself for awhile. The most recent example of this phenomenon is unfortunate since, unlike the machiavellian cynicism of Phillips, Scammon and Wattenburq, the new populism is an idea worth pursuing. But like just about everything else in this country the people have lost control of it. And if anything should belong to the people and not the Hartford Insurance, it's populism.
American populism has a long past.
It began when the first Indian shot the first arrow at a colonist attempting to foreclose on his hunting lands. As early as 1676, the farmers in Virginia were upset enough about high taxes, low prices and the payolagiven to those close to the governor that they followed Nathaniel Bacon into rebellion. One hundred and ten years later, in an act of ingratitude towards the great American revolution, farmers of Massachusetts complaining that however men might have been created, they were not staying equal. Under the leadership of Daniel Shays they took on the new establishment in open rebellion to free themselves high taxes and legal costs, rampant foreclosures, exorbitant salaries for public officials and other abuses. The rebels were routed and fled.