June 20, 2007
 
EDITORIAL: Spreading the Populism
 
The Providence Journal
 
"I think a president ought to call out companies ... in which the CEO leads his company into bankruptcy ... and gets a $100 million bonus while the workers down below end up losing their jobs and have worked 20 and 30 years for pensions and they're gone ... That's immoral. ... And that's not free enterprise; that's theft."
 
These words were spoken by the conservative Republican former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, who is also a Baptist minister, and they suggest the strength of populist trends in both parties -- driven to no small degree by a feeling among many people in the middle class that they are being mercilessly squeezed by national and global economic forces led by elites unconcerned about their problems.
 
This feeling, amplified by such commentators as Lou Dobbs, informs many issues, including America's health-system woes and immigration.
 
And indeed, sometimes you get the feeling that officials in Washington are so privileged that they forget about these issues, dwelling on Iraq, stem-cell research, abortion and the like instead. The seeming obliviousness to such socio-economic matters as Americans' concern about uncontrolled immigration, and the consequent effects on income levels, and the lack of universal health insurance, which is the norm in other industrialized nations, is fueling much anger.
 
That an increasing number of conservatives, such as Huckabee, and liberals, such as John Edwards, embrace somewhat similar views on some real or alleged social and economic injustices demonstrates the width and depth of the unhappiness about these issues and suggests that some other candidates and the glamorous national news media (whose representatives are often way out of touch with middle-class concerns) may be underestimating them to their peril.
 
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.