In the course of criticizing the extension of the franchise, Walter Bagehot (1873, xxiii) expressed the fear "that both our political parties will bid for the support of the working man; that both of them will promise to do as he likes if he will only tell them what it is....I can conceive of nothing more corrupting or worse for a set of poor ignorant people than that two combinations of well-taught and rich men should constantly offer to defer to their decision, and compete for the office of executing it. Vox populi will be vox diaboli."We will have "the supremacy of ignorance over instruction and of numbers over knowledge." These sentiments have continued into the allegedly more democratic world of a century and a half later. We have entered a new and dangerous age of populism. Populists succeed when they appeal to the passions of voters, rousing them through fear and anger to reject the messy compromises that are intrinsic to a politics of moderation, and to look for scapegoat targets upon which they can vent their frustrations. Populists of the right have embraced nativism and populists of the left have targeted Wall Street and kindled class war. For more than a decade, populism has undermined Congress as an institution, leading to increased partisan polarization and representatives who find it difficult to seek compromises for fear of being challenged in primaries by partisan hardliners (Brand 2016).
展开▼
