Populists at the Podium

BRIAN: We’re going to end the hour with the 2016 presidential campaign and Republican candidate Donald Trump. In some ways, Trump embodies a uniquely 21st-century style of populism. His success is fueled as much by reality TV and the 24-hour news cycle as it is by his anti-immigrant message.

DONALD TRUMP: The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime.

BRIAN: Even Donald Trump’s bravado has a history. He’s the latest figure in one strand of populism– that of the rhetoric-fueled angry populist.

JAMELLE BOUIE: They’re everywhere in American history, and they tend to pop up wherever there’s rapid social change or economic dislocation.

BRIAN: This is Jamelle Bouie, Chief Political Correspondent for Slate. He says Donald Trump bears a strong resemblance to one 20th-century populist demagogue in particular– that’s Alabama’s George Wallace. Wallace became a national political figure during the Civil Rights Movement.

JAMELLE BOUIE: It’s actually a little funny to me for how important Wallace was how little a lot of people know anything about him. But Wallace was governor of Alabama. He famously in his inauguration speech– in 1963, I believe– famously said–

GEORGE WALLACE: And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

JAMELLE BOUIE: And to people who know anything about Wallace, I think that is the thing that they know– an explicit champion of the anti-integration white South. But I think less known about Wallace is how he parlayed reaction to civil rights tapping into broader anxieties and fears among a lot of Americans into a pretty successful third party campaign in 1968 and a reasonably successful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972.

BRIAN: Yeah. And it’s important to remind folks that Wallace got on the national political map by registering with alienated voters in places like Wisconsin, which are certainly not south of the Mason Dixon line.

JAMELLE BOUIE: That’s right. Not just Wisconsin, but also California. Early on in his ’68 campaign, no one thought he’d be able to get the 100,000 signatures necessary to get on the Democratic primary ballot, but he managed it. His appeal really did extend throughout the United States– Wisconsin, California, Maryland.

But one thing I had forgotten– just how much Wallace’s appeal was stylistic. A lot of his strength, especially on the campaign trail on his presidential campaigns, was really just his ability to entertain people. He was a showman. He could build an intimate connection with the crowds he spoke to.

BRIAN: Wallace actually had a sense of humor. I want you to listen to this clip. He’s talking to the National Press Club. And as you know, that club had a long history of excluding women.

GEORGE WALLACE: But you ladies and gentleman take heart– gentlemen– I reckon there’s some ladies here. I see by paper that not many ladies are here. You’re having the same fight we’re having in some quarters. But it’s very bad for the folks trying to destroy your traditions and your customs. But you’ve got to get in the mainstream.

JAMELLE BOUIE: And it’s interesting that even the press that covered him– quite a few of the journalists who were around him may have despised his politics, but liked him personally very much.

BRIAN: He connected with people.

JAMELLE BOUIE: Right. There was something very endearing about him.

BRIAN: And what about reading the people or blowing with the political winds, if you will?

JAMELLE BOUIE: Again, this is another similarity between the two figures. But early on in Trump’s rise in the Republican primary, you had Republicans like Jeb Bush say openly and with a lot of irritation that Trump was no conservative. Now Trump says, no, I’m a Republican. I’m a conservative just like everyone else in this race.

And it’s very clear that he, more than anything, is an opportunist. And you can say the same about Wallace. Wallace started his career as basically a New Deal Democrat, someone who wanted to use government at the national and at the state level to–

BRIAN: He was labeled a progressive.

JAMELLE BOUIE: Right. He was a progressive. But when he saw where the wind was blowing, when he saw how audiences reacted to pro-segregation messages in the wake of Brown v Board, his broader national message was very much taking those segregationist and anti-civil rights themes and taking the explicit racial element away from them and leaving something that’s still very clearly read as anti-black resentment but didn’t read as racist in the same way.

GEORGE WALLACE: And I think the climate in our country of those in the top echelons of our government kowtowing to those who have openly and willfully violated the law has made it, of course, unsafe for the average citizen to walk the streets of the large cities of our nation and in the parks.

BRIAN: If you think, along with many others, that Donald Trump is perhaps burning bright now but he’s going to flame out, we certainly know that George Wallace was not elected president in ’68 or ’72. I’m curious to know, given the similarities between Wallace and Trump, what contributions Wallace made to the politics of his time, and what do you think the long-term impact of Trump is going to be even if he doesn’t get the nomination?

JAMELLE BOUIE: So Wallace’s long-term impact– and really, the immediate mark he made in the ’68 race– was that he signaled to Richard Nixon, who by this point was the Republican nominee, that there was something to this message of civil rights resentment, that if you could further drain it of its racial content and turn it into something still evocative of those anxieties, you could succeed, you could win votes.

So Wallace in 1964 was attacking civil rights protesters as lawless, as people who had no regard for rule of law and law and order. Nixon in 1968 is pretty much lifting that language wholesale.

ED: And Nixon ran a series of television ads that year where, for instance, he showed a middle class white woman walking down the street at night, and then you heard footsteps.

MALE SPEAKER: Crimes of violence in the United States have almost doubled in recent years. Freedom from fear is a basic right of every American. We must restore it.

BRIAN: And you hear vote for Nixon. He’s tough on crime.

JAMELLE BOUIE: Right. And so the question, I think, for 2015 and 2016 is, who is Nixon? Who is the figure who sees Trump’s appeal to nativist elements of the Republican Party, nativist elements of the American electorate? And we’ll try to co-opt them in some way, shape, or form.

BRIAN: So who’s the next Donald Trump according Jamelle Bouie?

JAMELLE BOUIE: I think Cruz might try to play the role. But Cruz, unlike Nixon, doesn’t have that kind of broad appeal in the Republican Party. And so my hunch is that Trumpisms, such that it exists, may be marginalized with Trump. But I’ll add as a caveat that Trump may have mobilized or energized a new segment of voters, and who knows what they’re going to do.

BRIAN: Janelle Bouie is the Chief Political Correspondent for Slate. We’ll link to his article, “Our George Wallace,” on our website.