Mr Howard's populism.(John Howard)

• Author: Ayres, Philip
• Position: 168619620
• Pages: 8(5)

Populism in a political leader can express itself in a variety of ways. In descending order of commendability and disinterestedness, one could include:

1) the desire to monitor the general will via opinion polls, referenda, talk-back radio, the comments of taxi drivers, &c, and act on it in most matters of serious public concern, as befits a democracy in which rule should be "of the people, by the people, for the people";

2) the political "killer instinct" that seizes on the opportunity to reflect popular opinion on a selective issueby-issue basis (the more sensational the issue the better), often in the run-up to an election, but at other times too, in order to stay on top of the swaying carousel of popular opinion and more effectively bias it in favour of one's own agendas, which will never be far removed from what is popular: a goodsand-services tax would never make it onto such an agenda, and nor would the Howard government's Work-Choices legislation--in respect of major issues like these, Howard is far from being a populist--but the "Tampa" would qualify, and so would the opportunity, seized on by John Howard, to thwart the current Queensland government's unpopular attempt to amalgamate local councils;

3) the will to power as expressed in the ruthless appeal to popular prejudice, ignorance and greed as levers to divide society and isolate one's political foes--demagoguery; and, most pathetically,

4) a "leading from behind" (the Roman emperor Vitellius was a good example of this--when the crowd turned, it turned on him).

The best populists combine popular appeal with a clear vision of the political future. Among the greatest of these was Julius Caesar, whose appeal went straight to the mass base (he was a genuine life-long populist, not a mere manipulator), by-passing the oligarchic Senate, and whose political vision and achievements over the two or three years of consolidated power he enjoyed were anything but ordinary. Peron in Argentina was a true populist with a clear political vision, but an economic disaster for his country.

Most political leaders of democracies fit into one of the above four categories at least some of the time. Populism is a matter of degree. In a representative democracy, as distinct from participatory democracies such as those in ancient Athens and present-day Switzerland, a degree of populism reflects a healthy recollection that the representative should represent in more than an abstract sense. In a participatory democracy there is less call for a populist leader because many of the important decisions are proposed and carried at the grass-roots level, so that there is no "system", no out-oftouch "them" against which a populist can appeal.

The more ideological a political leader, the less instinctively populist he or...