The People, No

April 1, 2020
Political commentator Frank tries to reclaim populism from the Trumpites and tea partiers. "I hate the common masses and avoid them." So said Roman poet Horace centuries ago. Best known for his 2004 polemic What's the Matter With Kansas?--Kansas being the birthplace of a left-agrarian populist movement of old--Frank conversely urges his readers, likely to be among the urban elite, from dismissing those folks in flyover country who, given one person and one vote, are presumed likely to make poor choices: "If you give them half a chance, they will go out and vote for a charlatan like Donald Trump." Since its emergence as a political force in the U.S. in the 19th century, populism has always been dismissed as a refuge of the stupid or lunatic, the purview of con artists and bigots. Yet, the author argues, populism is not just an old American way of doing politics, but fundamentally a progressive one as well, uniquely concerned for the well-being of workers. Trump managed to parlay his putative commitment to those workers into votes. However, notes Frank, he is definitively an autocrat and not a populist, who made promises of "populist-style reform, none of them sincere," that sounded good enough to enough voters to launch him into an office won by that least populist of institutions, the Electoral College. "How does it help us, I wonder, to deliberately devalue the coinage of the American reform tradition?" asks Frank, who encourages his readers to imagine that the matter of most pressing importance in the political landscape today is economic justice for the vast majority of people who have been overlooked by supposed progress--to say nothing of both political parties. The author lays on the indignation a little too thick at times, but it's a convincing case all the same. A sometimes-overheated but eminently readable contribution to political discourse.

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May 4, 2020
Political commentator Frank (Rendezvous with Oblivion) urges liberals to reclaim “the high ground of populism” in this fervent and acerbically witty call to action. Mischaracterized today as bigoted demogoguery, the term populism, Frank notes, originated with the rise of the egalitarian and racially inclusive People’s Party in the 19th-century Midwest. Reeling from an economic crisis, Democrats nominated populist Nebraska politician William Jennings Bryant for the presidency in 1896 instead of their own incumbent, Grover Cleveland. Though Bryant’s loss to William McKinley set the high-water mark of the People’s Party, it influenced such policy reforms as the direct election of U.S. senators and women’s suffrage. New Deal programs harkened back to the Populist Era, according to Frank, but also elevated a new kind of antipopulist elite to the top of the U.S. government: the technocrat. Frank claims the populist badge for civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who proposed a massive housing and employment program for African-Americans, and documents pushback, from both the right and the left, to populist advances, including LBJ’s Great Society reforms, Democrat Fred Harris’s “spectacular low-budget campaign” in the 1976 presidential election, and the recent candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Frank blends diligent research with well-placed snark to keep readers turning the pages. Liberals will be outraged, enlightened, and entertained.

Starred review from May 1, 2020
Best known for his penetrating book What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Stole the Heart of America (2004), Frank now examines the long history of American populism and shows how this movement has been demonized by everyone from the conservative wealthy in the 1890s to today's anti-Trumpers. Pinpointing the exact moment that populism got its name (on a train traveling from Kansas City to Topeka in 1891), Frank explains that populists wanted power taken from "the plutocrats while advancing the . . . rights and needs, the interests and welfare of the people." Looking to join the interests of northern workers with southern farmers, both white and black (tenuously, in that case), populism began as an effort to wrest capitalism from the robber barons, advocating that those who provided product should also receive part of the profit. Those at the top met this idea with derision. And so began the march of a movement that sometimes changed form?as did the way it was perceived?but never disappeared entirely and still resonates heavily today. Frank shows all this brilliantly, as he places populism in the context of seminal historic events: wars, the Depression, McCarthyism, and recent elections. As in previous books, Frank's writing is notable for its clarity and its ability to make connections. His provocative conclusions, about elites and the people, sometimes turn common assumptions upside down?all the better for making readers think.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2020

The author of What's the Matter with Kansas? returns with a study of populism, which he insists is wrongly used to describe the policies of Donald Trump and right-wing politicians worldwide. Starting with America's left-wing Populist Party of the 1890s, he argues that historically populism has been focused on expanding opportunities for all, and he sees anti-populist sentiment today as being anti-working class. That will stir debate.

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June 1, 2020

Historian and political analyst Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas?) provides a sprightly crafted survey of populist philosophy over the past century as it contends with more established political forces that have considered its ideas to be backwards and undemocratic. Frank begins with a history of the left-wing People's Party that came to prominence in the late 19th century, and he is not shy in voicing his firm opinion that the beliefs of the common man are often much more valuable than those of the elite, who often dominated political conversation. According to Frank, the solution to our current political ills and polarization lies most securely with giving everyday people a voice and a place to be heard. He considers populism to be an expression of promise and optimism, and urges readers to reconsider the meaning of populism as well as how it has been used to describe the rise of Donald Trump along with leaders in European countries. VERDICT A valuable history of an important political tradition, and what it means for the future.--Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.