The End is Near - the last weekend of this never ending presidential campaign. Whatever the outcome, Sarah Palin is an invigorating breath of fresh air and she represents a new wind blowing across the country's political landscape and headed fiercely towards the GOP of old.  That wind is blowing from a proud, old American political tradition - Populism. 

Remember the 1976 movie, "Network?"  Peter Finch's memorable performance with his "I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!" just about sums up the mood of the country, particularly of everyday, ordinary folks - who're the country's foundation.

The American people are angry, frustrated and fed-up.  Their trust in government is at an all time low.  The approval rating for Congress hovers around 13 percent and President Bush rates a historic low of 26 percent. The domestic economic scene is scary: bailouts; financial crisis ( e.g., the S&P 500 slid 5.7 percent,  extending its 2008 downward spiral to 32 percent in the market's worst yearly slump since 1937); sobering news of the ninth straight month of job losses (159,000 in September) with unemployment up 6.1 percent in September from 4.7 percent a year ago. All this together with a host of other issues like energy and health care - have heightened the sense that America is in trouble and headed in the wrong direction.

Conservatives are seething as they look at a two term Republican President and a Republican Congress, for six of the last eight years, and see unbridled spending, pork, new entitlements and a deficit, in case you're counting, up from $161B last year, that's now at $407B in 2008 with estimates that it could go much higher. By the way, our national debt, if case you want to count higher, is now an obscene and unfathomable $10.1TRILLION and rising.
Conservatives pine for Ronald Reagan and got stuck, some would say, with LBJ.

Retiring Congressman Tom Davis (R-Virginia) said bluntly a few months ago, about the Republican brand under President Bush, "If we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf." However, I would add to the congressman's assessment that if the Democratic brand under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were also a dog food, they most assuredly would take them off the shelf too.  Perhaps, congressman, we should have a new brand of dog food on the shelf and toss those other two brands in the dumpster.

The initial defeat of the Wall Street first bailout bill in the House late last month, was an amazing convergence between libertarian ideals and a resurgent populist sentiment.  The revolt, led by Republicans and joined by 95 Democrats "was an epic repudiation of the Washington leadership class by the American people. Two weeks ago the president of the United States, the speaker of the House, the secretary of the Treasury and the leadership of both parties in Congress came forward and announced that the economy was in crisis and a federal bill to solve it urgently needed. The powers were in agreement, the stars aligned, it was going to happen.

And then the phones began to ring, from one end of Capitol Hill to the other. And the message in those calls was, essentially: We don't trust you to fix the problem, we suspect you may have caused it. Go away." (Peggy Noonan,Wall Sreet Journal, October 3).

This populist resentment is not unlike that of the sixties - disillusionment with LBJ's policies undermined faith in the "establishment."  The Bush years have created a new skepticism toward Washington - like the populist backlash towards Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"- with a similar loss of credibility of Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism."

Populism had a short term convert in Hilary Clinton and her campaign -  much too late in the Democratic primary season - when she briefly caught fire and morphed into a gun loving, trailer park, shot swilling, populist waitress campaigning for white, working class voters - voters essential to winning a presidential election. She subtly suggested that her opponent, Barack Obama, was an out of touch elitist. Hillary won Ohio and Pennsylvania as a truck stop babe. She did a Sarah Sixpack to perfection...at least for a month or two.

Sarah Palin's candidacy has ignited a new culture war - the snobbish elites versus the
Joe (not Biden) and Sarah Sixpack crowd.  It's a populist war of Us vs. Them - everyday, honest, hardworking Americans against Wall Street greed, corrupt politicians, liberals and, of course, the media. The dismissive, mocking, condescension that erupted over her candidacy was Them showing their contempt for US.

In the Republican primary, Mike Huckabee was the first candidate to get a whiff of this new populist wind. His early success was based on a Main Street, Wal-Mart appeal. He railed against Wall Street, K Street lobbyists and Club for Growth high rollers. His humor was infectious and the media made him a star - but not for long. Unfortunately, he mixed his populist appeal with too much religion and in 2008 that just doesn't wash anymore with a broad segment of Republican voters.  The Republican field was then left  with pretty traditional Republican candidates all claiming the mantle of Reagan but none understanding that Reagan, like FDR, was great because of the times in which he governed and he can't be reinvented or duplicated. Thus, it wasn't until Sarah Palin appeared on the scene, that the GOP felt the wind of Populism.

To Republicans, Sarah Palin is a bright light, a fresh breeze, a change agent, a reformer and a maverick who identifies with real people around the kitchen table. Notable too, I think, is that unlike Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin is a more genuine heir to the women's liberation movement of the 1970s.  Not a Wellesley College, dormitory fed Hillary style feminism or a Gloria Steinem Ms. born feminism, but a real world, working class feminist anchored by the belief that she had every right to compete with men for all the best rewards and adventures the world had to offer. Palin's populist appeal makes her brand of feminism more authentic than the Hillary or Steinem variety.  There are far more Sarahs across America than there are Hillarys and Glorias.  We're richly blessed because of it too.

Sarah Palin and other new breed Republicans like Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana
are the future of the Republican Party as that wind of Populism blows across the fruited plain - a Main Street air mass far removed from Wall Street. This new breed also includes a few principled, young turks (free market, no bailout) Republicans in the House like Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Mike Pence of Indiana Tom Feeney of Illinois and Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan as well as a small number of similar stalwarts in the Senate - Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and that anti earmark, pork hater, the heroic Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

These days, I'm reminded of Frank Capra's 1939 film classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," about one man's fight against political corruption, starring James Stewart as Jefferson Smith. I imagine a Congress composed of more Sarah Palins and Jefferson Smiths representing the American people. I imagine a Congress of small business owners, sales clerks, waiters and waitresses, truck drives, beauticians, brick masons, secretaries and cooks.  Moreover, I imagine a Congress rid of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schulmer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and those other pork fed, entitled "Thems" who care only for their perks and power and don't give a damn about Us despite their phony posturing to the contrary.

These days, I'm also reminded of another classic, Bob Dylan's Us song of the 1960's about Them, "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

So, to Barney & Friends, that band of pampered rouges, scoundrels and careerist politicians who preen and congregate under the Capitol Dome, I dedicate the following stanza -
"From US to THEM:"

"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."

Yes, "The Times They Are-A Changin'" and, yes, "Blowin' In The Wind."