Hightower Lowdown

The name Felix Walker is not one you would recognize, but this 19th-century congressman inadvertently contributed a word to America's political lexicon that you will recognize--a word that fairly well sums up a lot of what we're getting these days from right-wing politicos and pundits.

In the 1820s, Walker was the U.S. representative for Buncombe County, North Carolina. In an age of great political orators, Walker was not one. He was a droner, a dull fellow known for expressing his dullness at great length on every topic. No matter what issue was up for debate in the House--no matter whether he had any real knowledge, facts, or insights to add--Walker would rise to speak, insisting that his constituents back home would want his voice heard. He would then launch into a wandering, wearisome, often-nonsensical discourse that he always called "a speech for Buncombe."

Exasperated colleagues began to refer to Walker's interminable prattling as "just so much buncombe," a phrase that has been passed down to us as "bunk"--a synonym for meaningless political claptrap.

We've been getting an overload of bunk in recent weeks from a gaggle of Fox-brained Republican Congress critters. They've been flapping their gums to demonize and destroy a grassroots group that has offended them by--get ready to be outraged--organizing and helping to empower thousands of Americans who live in low-income and working-class neighborhoods all across the country.

ACORN is this grassroots group. For four decades, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been going door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood, to extend basic democratic tools to people who've been dissed and dismissed by the political system. What ACORN's effort amounts to is civic education. Few members of the local chapters have ever been active in community decision making. After all, that process is usually held in the tight grip of moneyed interests who reside and work in distant, much tonier zip codes, and regular folks rarely are welcome. [ read more ]

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is America's "Man in the Stans"--Afghanistan and Pakistan, that is. Handpicked by President Obama to be special representative to what is at present the hottest of hot spots in the muddled global war on terrorists, Holbrooke is among the Washington influentials who is now urging Obama to hurl tens of thousands of additional troops and tens of billions of additional dollars into the Afghanistan war effort.

Why should America do that? What victory do we seek? In August, Holbrooke responded with a diplomatic quibble: "I don't use the word 'victory' but 'success' instead." Okay. What success will we achieve? Well, dodged the man who would commit untold numbers of people to their death in this hellish land, "success" really can't be defined. "We'll know it when we see it."

On such gossamer wings does America's Afghanistan policy fly.

This war has slogged on for nearly nine years, making it longer than America's involvement in World Wars I and II combined. We've already spent $228 billion, 826 Americans have been killed (nearly 200 so far this year), and Obama's summer surge has muscled up America's Afghan presence to 68,000 troops (plus another 42,000 from NATO). Yet the Taliban forces we're fighting are stronger than ever, and our own military commanders concede that not only is the war going badly for us, but the situation is rapidly "deteriorating."

Still, most military chieftains and Obamacan hawks say we must do more of what we are doing, only do it better so we can win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, which will require the infusion of more troops and treasure. The president has already requested $68 billion for the war in 2010 (an $8 billion increase over this year), and he is pondering a much greater escalation that would dispatch from 10,000 to 45,000 more Americans into what has now become "Obama's war." [ read more ]

Out in West Texas, an oxymoronic weather phenomenon known as a "dry rainstorm" often occurs. It's particularly tough on farmers. These storms build with all of the tell-tale signs of a downpour headed toward the farmers' fields-- dark clouds on the horizon and lightning that flares like a pinball machine, followed by the promising clap and rumble of rolling thunder. But then--no rain. The clouds, lightning, and thunder blow right over the area, yet they deliver not one drop of the nurturing water the farmers are desperate to have.

This hard experience is why you'll sometimes hear farm folks use a cautionary expression when others have high expectations that something good is about to happen. "I hope so," they'll say, "but remember--thunder ain't rain."

All of America just had a dry rainstorm sweep across it from out of Washington. On June 17, in response to the unbridled Wall Street greed that has crashed our economy, the Obamicans revealed their long-awaited plan to rein in those rapacious banking beasts. Obama himself trumpeted the plan as "a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system. A transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression." Then came the actual rollout of proposed actions. So much thunder, so little rain. [ read more ]

When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for the Congressional Research Service--a legislative agency that digs up facts, prepares briefing papers, and otherwise does research on any topic requested by members of Congress.

My friend could barely speak, because he was hooting, howling, and guffawing over a research question he'd just received. It was from the office of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the aloof and patrician Texas Democrat who was known on Capitol Hill primarily as a faithful emissary for Wall Street interests. At the time, Bentsen was contemplating a run for the presidency, and apparently he was searching for a suitable political identity. "What is a populist?" read the research query. "The senator thinks he might be one."

Uh...no sir, you are not.

Bentsen was closer to being "The Man in the Moon" than he was to being a populist. Yet, he was hardly alone in trying to cloak himself as "The People's Champion" while remaining faithful to the plutocratic powers. These days, there's a whole flock of politicos and pundits doing this--from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich to Glenn Beck.

They are abetted by a media establishment that carelessly (and lazily) misapplies the populist label to anyone who claims to be a maverick and tends to bark a lot. Although the targets they're usually barking at are poor people, teachers, minorities, unions, liberals, protestors, environmentalists, gays, immigrants, or other demonized groups that generally reside far outside the center of the power structure--the barkers are indiscriminately tagged as populist voices.

First of all, populism is not a style, nor is it a synonym for "popular outrage." It is a historically grounded political doctrine (and movement) that supports ordinary folks in their ongoing democratic fight against the moneyed elites. [ read more ]