Students Silly to Scorn Populism

I was among the large crowd that came to the Kennedy School's ARCO Forum last Monday night to hear H. Ross Perot speak. As a recent Crimson article about the event stated, the crowed did laugh and heckle periodically throughout Perot's presentation, but I fear they did so without a complete realization of what they were witnessing.

There is more to populism than meets the eye. Though it often seems to spring from out-of-the-loop sources not worth the attention of the intelligentsia, at the right moments in history is able to tap immense stores of dormant power, residing in the simple mass of the populace. In any nation, and perhaps especially in a democracy, the normally passive majority can be roused to levels of action which, due merely to their weight in numbers, can have profound effects on society. Whether the action comes in the from of picking up a ballot or picking up a rifle, the collective force of the populace is a power which has often proven governments and institutions both to be ultimately helpless.

Populism can display both good and bad qualities. Huey Long transformed the state of Louisiana, aiding thousands of poverty-stricken and poorly educated citizens. Yet at the same time, he nearly became an American despot.

I do not think that Ross Perot can be seen as a man of either such extremes. I supported him in 1992 because I believed, if nothing else that it is good to shake up our lethargic two party system every now and then, so as to remind those in government that in the United States, the final say exists not in plush conference rooms but with the American public, living on this sprawling mass of land which many intellectuals seem to forget actually exists.

Ross Perot's speech didn't play well at Harvard. But he isn't dumb--he knew it wouldn't. It will play well in my hometown also. But now Perot can add in a line: "I told all this to those people up at Harvard, where your future politicians come from, and they just laughed."

And so as I sat silently in my back row seat and observed my fellow students chuckling and cracking jokes, I thought to myself: don't be so smug. Remember, when it comes to an election, or for that matter to a social movement, economic theory will always lose to the gut reaction. William E. Pike '95