Is Populism a Mirage?

In my entire life until now, and for more than a century before I was born, there was a coherent left and right in this country.

The right believed more thoroughly in free markets, smaller government, lower taxes and a more robust foreign policy. The left had more faith in a larger role for government and was skeptical about foreign involvements. But the game was played between the 40-yard lines. Everybody believed in liberal democracy. Everybody believed in the rule of law, though some liberals heard “law and order” as an invitation to repression. Everybody believed in free speech, but the left wanted more room to express less traditional cultural ideas. And, crucially, everybody believed in reason. So, the argument was about whose policies and ideas really were most in support of liberal democratic values. Lying or being ignorant of key facts or history was out of bounds and discredited the speaker.

Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower were reasoned, principled advocates for left and right in American politics.

With Trump’s return we can finally say that that’s gone now. Trump mixes up old left and right positions. He’s for tariffs and isolationism, old leftist ideas, while being against most nontraditional cultural expressions, something William Buckley would have been at home with. (Buckley once said, “I stand astride history, screaming, ‘Stop!'”) And Trump goes totally fact-free. He just says stuff and his acolytes don’t care if his statements are supported by facts or reason. It’s more religion than politics.

But, to be fair, even the left became illiberal. Ideas like actively discriminating on the basis of race to make up for historical discrimination, cancelling speakers and suppressing speech that was deemed unacceptable and suspending the rule of law when the accused was charged with sexual harassment became liberal orthodoxy. The left made language a battle ground, with new landmines planted every day. In fact, much of Trump’s illiberalism is a reaction to the illiberalism on the left.

So, while the Democratic Party largely remains liberal democracy’s last champion, it hasn’t been pure on that score in recent times either. Joe Biden was the embodiment of the contradiction. On the one hand, he gave great, impassioned speeches about Trump’s threats to the rule of law. And then on his way out the door he pardoned a half dozen of his relatives. Biden talked a good game, but his actions made a mockery of his words.

The tension right now is between those of us who want to defend liberal democracy and populists who want to tear it down and replace it with… something. That something isn’t quite clear. In a person right now it’s Donald Trump. But once Trump is gone, then what? His voters don’t show up for anybody but him and there’s no heir apparent. J.D. Vance, maybe. I don’t know. That’s far from clear.

And for now that is my greatest hope — or what passes for hope these days. It’s the hope that hard-right populism isn’t really a thing after all. That it’s just a mirage, a cult of one guy. And once that guy’s gone, his voters, who don’t vote otherwise, disengage again. Populism withers in Trump voters’ parent’s basements.

So, my wildly optimistic idea is that Trump doesn’t represent the end of liberal democracy, but just a correction. He was brought to office in part by a reaction against the illiberal excesses of the hard-left. So, once things like DEI, affirmative action and porous border policies are nocked back, the fire will be put out and liberal democracy can reassert itself in the form of a chastened, more moderate Democratic Party.

Before leaving you today, let me certify that I was not on drugs or alcohol while writing this blog.

YSDA stands for

Free speech.

The rule of law.

Reason.

Tolerance.

Pluralism.