Edwards pitches populism

Candidate stakes his bid on attacking the powerful

DES MOINES, Iowa -- When John Edwards is on the campaign trail these days, chances are he is railing against big insurance, big oil, big drug companies, big banks and big agribusiness.

In Edwards' view of the world, people have lost control of their government to powerful interests that hire lobbyists and bankroll the campaigns of office holders.

It is the reason, Edwards argues, that there is no universal health insurance, that drug costs are high and that there have been so many bad trade deals. It is why, he argues, the country is so reliant on oil, and why the Bush administration has hired contractors such as Blackwater to do what the military should.

"We all know what has happened in our democracy," Edwards told about 300 people at a Des Moines convention center Monday, as he began a week-long bus tour across Iowa. "What has happened is the few have taken over the democracy against the interests of the many."

Not since Harry Truman has there been a major presidential candidate with such a pronounced populist message, according to Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University who has written extensively on populism. It shows up in different ways for Edwards. He has criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton, for example, for not joining him in refusing to take contributions from Washington lobbyists and political action committees. His rhetoric has more of an us-versus-them theme to it than those of the other major candidates.

He even dresses differently from the other candidates. Edwards is the only major candidate who frequently wears blue jeans on the campaign trail.

The approach seems to have helped Edwards as he courts organized labor and liberal voters angered over the misdeeds of corporations such as Enron and the perceived coziness of companies such as Haliburton with the Bush administration.

Ron Robek is attracted to Edwards' message that big businesses and their lobbyists have accumulated too much power.

"They have complete control," said Robek, a 68-year-old retired small business owner from a Des Moines suburb. "The lobbyists are running the country, which is why we are in such a mess."

But populism has rarely been a winning formula for candidates.

"Part of the problem is that Americans can be resentful of the rich, and especially the rich who got money in unethical ways," Kazin said. "But most Americans don't like class-conscious politics. That is one of the things that hurt William Jennings Bryan, and it hurts candidates who say the kinds of things that Edwards says."

Populism has been a part of the language of American politics at least since Andrew Jackson ran against the banking industry in the early 1800s, said Kazin. Bryan ran as an anti-Wall street populist around the turn of the century. Franklin Roosevelt ran against "economic royalists" in his 1936 re-election campaign, Al Gore talked in 2000 about the "people versus the powerful," and John Kerry warned in 2004 against "Benedict Arnold" companies that send jobs overseas.

There have also been conservative forms of populism. Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace complained about federal bureaucrats, and Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot talked about bad trade deals.

Edwards is part of a populist tradition in North Carolina.

A Populist revolt in 1898 took control of state government. North Carolina was the only Southern state to elect to the Senate a member of the old Populist Party. Candidates with populist, anti-big business platforms have been elected to the Senate (Robert Reynolds in 1932) and as governor (Daniel Russell in 1896, Kerr Scott in 1948).