|
|
|
Fred Harris "Populist Chic"
Stuart Elliott New America April 1976 At the 1975 Democratic Issues conferences, former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris regularly got the most enthusiastic applause,, but the consensus was that while Harris said all the right things, he was too extreme to get elected. That prediction has been proven accurate by the early primaries. Harris has, nonetheless, played an important role in the Democratic race. He has functioned as the spoiler in the New Politics camp. His supporters prevented Birch Bayh from receiving the endorsement of the New Democratic Coalition, New York's New Politics center, and that denial contributed to Bayh's demise. Harris did well enough in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to stay alive, to finish ahead of Bayh in Massachusetts, and to siphon off votes that might have made Udall's vote totals more impressive. W ill Stay in RaceHarris has vowed to stay in the race, deemphasizing the New York and Wisconsin primaries to marshal his meager resources for an all-out effort in the April 27 Pennsylvania primary. Although the New Politics forces wish that Harris would withdraw (and a lack of funds may force his exit even before Pennsylvania), there is a certain logic in his refusal to step aside. Harris is not simply the most "left" of the reform-liberal candidates, his campaign was constructed on the unique premise that Harris could unite an affluent, reformist constituency with the working class that shunned George McGovern. With Bayh's exit, Udall has become the New Politics candidate. But unlike Bayh, Udall does not appear to be the type of candidate who can appeal to working class voters. Unfortunately for Harris, despite an austere campaign style that until recently relied on a camper instead of a jet, he does not appear to be that candidate either. Harris has been endorsed by George Hardy, the president of the Service Employees International Union, and has received enthusiastic receptions at some union gatherings. But by and large, Harris has so far attracted more support from affluent, college-educated liberals than from working people. There is little indication that he can broaden his appeal beyond the radical fringe of the New Politics movement, which places a premium on insurgency, style, and rhetoric.
But Harris did not start out that way. In his 1973 book The New Populism Harris showed a keen sensitivity to the status of working people. He has even had harsh words for liberals of the New Politics variety. He has said that liberals told blacks, the poor, and the old, "Vote for us because it's in your self-interest," and then turned around and told working class whites, "Vote for us because your conscience demands it." He has dodged the shibboleths of the New Politics movement by saying that as far as busing is concerned, "The issue is class and not race." There are a number of reasons why Harris has failed to build the kind of working class base that is an ideological requirement of his campaign. One reason is a lack of public recognition and money. But a more fundamental reason is that Harris is attracting exactly the wrong kind of supporters. Among his key backers, for example, is Norman Lear, whose "All in the Family" has perpetrated some of the worst anti-worker stereotypes. Harris might well have made a useful contribution to the Democratic Party if he had been able to mobilize working class support, as he intended to do. But his campaign has attracted only the narrow, affluent reformer base. He has not been a candidate of the working class, but of liberal elitism.Elements of his elitist position are in his foreign policy. In The New Populism, for example, Harris wrote that the new populism was concerned primarily with domestic issues; he did not so much as present even the most rudimentary foreign policy perspective. Since then he has embraced a foreign policy that represents an extreme manifestation of moralistic isolationism. He has advocated drastic cuts in defense forces, and he has asserted that the question is not whether the CIA should be reformed but whether it should exist at all. Like the New Politics politician, Harris feels perfectly free to criticize American democracy, but does not care to extend his critical attitudes toward Communism. He has said, for instance, "Let's recognize Cuba—a country that produces the best rum and cigars can't be all that bad." Harris's new populism is not only inconsistent in its foreign policy, it also rests on a fundamental miscalculation of the international perspective of the American people, and of the working class in particular. There undoubtedly powerful populist currents in American opinion that oppose aid to dictatorships, but those currents are even more opposed to Communism, which is correctly seen as the greatest threat to democracy.
Elected to the Senate in 1964 as a moderate, Harris moved to the left during his years in Washington, especially after his service on the Kerner Commission on Urban Violence. In 1972 he made a brief six-week bid for the Presidency only to have to drop out before the New Hampshire primary because of inadequate financing.During the late 1960s, Harris developed the idea of a new populism in response to what he perceived as the limitations and failures of New Deal liberalism and the crisis of the New Deal coalition. The new populism was to be built around issues of class, rather than conscience. Harris distinguishes himself from the other contenders by his insistence that the fundamental political issue is privilege. He maintains that "the widespread diffusion of economic and political power ought to be the express goal—the stated goal—of government." Harris's economic program is, on the surface, the most radical of those of any of the Democratic presidential candidates. He advocates far-reaching tax reform, the permanent establishment of two million local government jobs to provide work for the unemployed, and the immediate introduction of selective price controls on non-competitive industries. There is something of an anti-trust trend in the platforms of the Democratic candidates this year, and as might be expected, Harris promises to pursue a more vigorous antitrust policy than any of his rivals. He has indicated that he would want to break up all oligopolistic industries. In a slight deviation from his anti-bigness theme, Harris has urged the creation of a public corporation to develop America's energy resources and has said that in some cases—the railways, for instance—he would favor nationalization. Harris's new populism is thus a peculiar amalgamation of liberal, radical, and conservative notions. Although he favors full employment, he also calls constantly for a "dose of free enterprise for the economy." His new populism is often not so much new as a confused replay of the traditional middle-class reformist impulse to recapture the free market, untainted by the modern giant corporations. His program is based on the misconception that the only way to achieve a wider degree of public control over the economy is to break the economy into small pieces. Such an approach neglects the undeniable efficiency of large-scale production, minimizes the difficulties and disorder that would be created by an attempt to break up the large corporations, and ignores the fact that even after they were broken up, the remaining subdivisions would still be huge enterprises requiring public control.
The appeal of Harris's economic radicalism is limited by its anachronistic qualities, which run counter to the common sense of the American voters. But what is worse, Harris's new populism does not deal effectively with the full-employment issue. In fact, it plays down the need for jobs, preferring instead the often demagogic attacks on big business. Although the new populism is profoundly flawed, it is a clear representation of a quasi-social democratic economic policy within the Democratic Party. The issues of full employment, tax reform, and corporate domination of the economy are sure to be with the Democratic Party for years to come, regardless of the success of the Harris campaign. What is less certain is whether the Democrats can avoid the temptations of self-righteous moralism to build a coalition around economic and class issues. The Harris campaign demonstrates that it takes more than good intentions to build such a coalition. |
|
|