thinkers of the 1950’s Old Right, WiUmoore Kendall was perhapsrnthe most noted for his endorsement of a kind ot conservativernpopulism that saw the emhodiment of public virtue in thernpeople rather than in the largely imaginar’ aristocracies of contemporaryrnEurope and New England. It was the pseudoconservativernpolitical nincompoop Peter Viereck who actuallvrnthought Adlai Stevenson was a modern-da analogue to PrincernA’letternich and who would later sneer at Barn” Goldwater forrnhis appeal to the masses. Toward the end of his vvrihng career,rneven James Burnham, perhaps the nrost ex])licitly elitist theoristrnot the Old Right, noted not onl’ the incapacitv’ of tlie currentrngoverning sectors of societ}’ to rule but also the populist alternahvernto thenr. “But our go’ernors,” he wrote in 1969,rn— not the officeholders only but the whole broad naturallyrngoverning class, the established elite—are provingrnthemselves no longer capable of governing, of ruling.rnThe} have lost confidence in themselves; therefore theyrncan no longer fight wars or stand up to outlaws. . . . hi ourrncountr)-, it is the paradoxical and unnatural fact that,rnmore and more, the people —the broad middle mass ofrnpeople who do the work—are holding the countn- together,rngiving it, if unconscionsl)- for the most part, whatrndirection it has, and sustaining the governing elite that,rnhaving lost its nerve, must before long lose its mission.rnThis creates a historical monstrosih’, since the broadrnmasses cannot govern, and in truth do not want to. If,rntherefore, the natural governors c[uit, the masses will havernto fashion nev’ ones.rnIt is now something of a commonplace of American politicalrnhistory that the main leaders of the American riglrt in the 1950’srnwere precisely men like Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, whornwere not cut from the same social cloth as such pillars of the Republicanrnestablishment as Henry Cabot Lodge and who did notrneven come from the same part of the countr)’. Indeed, Nixonrnhimself, in his ”Checkers” speech of September 2^, 1952, encapsulatedrnperhaps the most powerful expression of the newrnpopulist right then emerging as a nafional political force.rnPrompted by revelations of a secret slush fund set up forrnNixon by his polihcal cronies in California, the Checkersrnspeech, wrote historian Erie Goldman, “was a stor- of a family,rntold in a tone of utter earnestness bv an ordinar’-looking youngrnman in a none-too-fashionable suit.” Less of a defense of thernslush fund than a rehearsal of what would eventually becomernthe classic Nixonian tactic of accusing the accusers, the speechrnrecounted the modesh’ of Richard Nixon’s social origins in arnpett}’ bourgeois home, his personal struggle against adversity,rnhis marriage, his identity as an ordinar’ man, and his solidarit)’rnwith family and nation. His war record, in his own words, wasrnnot “particularly unusual,” and he and his wife were “like mostrnyoimg couples,” with ordinary possessions —a two-year-oldrnOldsmobile, a mortgage on their home, a life-insurance polic)’,rnand a cocker spaniel named Checkers. His allusion to the dogrnand the modestv of his wife’s wardrobe —”Pat doesn’t have arnmink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican clothrncoat”—evoked classical republican images of domestic frugality-rnand ‘irtne, in contrast to the pretentiousness and corruptionrnof the elite, and played on a recent scandal of the Truman administrationrnin which an official’s wife had received a mink coatrnallegedly in return for political favors from her husband.rnNixon’s determination to “drive the crooks and Communistsrnand those that defend them out of Washington,” his resolutionrnnot to quit the camjaaign, his reference to his wife’s Irish background,rnand his peroration on America and the grcatiiess ofrnCcu. Eisenhower also incorporated populist resentments of tiiernelite and appealed to national solidarih and ethnic identiti-.rnWdiat is absent from the Checkers speech, which receivedrnmassive and enthusiastic popular support, is an- reference to therntraditional bourgeois economic and political ideologv’ that hadrnconveyed the mainstream eonservatie opposition to the NewrnDeal. There vas no attack on New Deal/Truuran-era regulator-rnand economic policies and no invocation of the minimalrn.state, the free market, or economic liberty. Nixon presented hisrnsuccess in his stru^’le against unpromising prospects as rooted inrnhis family, not in individual aspiration, and as both modest andrnuncertain, threatened by his political enemies, ratiier than thernnatural result of adherence to the bourgeois virtues. The Checkersrnspeech was not a regurgitation of classical liberalism, a defensernof the rights of businessmen, or an assertion ofrnIIooeresque individualism; it was, rather, something new tornAmerican politics in the 195U’s—a claim that the forces of commonrnvirtiie, patriotisnr, and social order had been betraved, dispossessedrnby enemv forces, sinister forces of “crooks and Communists,”rnwho had seized power in Washington and threatenedrnnot only to ruin the nation but to destroy any political leader whornquestioned them. Conser’atives toda like to snicker at Hillarvrn’ Clinton’s specter of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” out to getrnher and her husband, but long before Hillan,’, the leaders of thernAmerican right said almost the same thing about their foes onrnthe left—and say it still, as it suits their purposes.rnPopulism, of course, is almost always associated with tire politicalrnleft, and conventional conservatives, who look up theirrnideas in Edmund Burke or his pallid 20tii-century imitators,rnhave immense trouble grasping the fact tiiat, for much of thisrncentur)’, the populfst impulse in the Ihiited States has been towardrnthe right—in the sense of defending and affirming traditionalrnmoral values, family, communit)’, patriotism, religion,rnanticommunism, law and order, and almost every otiier attributernof a healthy social structure, ‘lire brute fact is tiiat cveivrnleft-wing movenrent in American history since the ProgressivernEra has been created and led by elites, mainly centered in academicrninstitutions and firmly allied with sister elites in large corporations,rnbig unions, oversized government, and big-montiirnmedia. I will not rehearse yet again James Burnham’s tiieoreticalrnaccounting for this fact—that, in the early part of tlie lastrncentur)’, a technically and marragerially skilled elite emergedrninto political and social power and began reshaping the institutionsrnit controlled to advance its own interests and made use ofrnthe ideolog)’ that came be known as “liberalism” to justify itselfrnBurnham was by no means tire only thinker to see this transformation,rnand much the same idea can be found, as he acknowledged,rnin the writings of other thinkers —John T. Elynn,rnLawrence Dennis, and Thorstein Veblen, to name only a few.rnAs the conclusion of the pa.s.sage from Buniham quoted abovernsuggests, the emergence of a set of people and interests into socialrnpower as an elite or ruling class committed to a left-wingrnagenda “creates a historical monstrosify.” It is a monstrosih’ inrnpart because elites are not supposed to be left-wing at all butrnright-wing, and for those archaic conservatives who cannot getrnit out of their heads tiiat the incumbent national elite is their al-rn1)’ and that tiiey and other conservatives remain part of the rulingrnstrata of the nation, the result can be only political paralysis.rn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn