a left-wing folksinger like Woody Guthrie—who, as it happens,rnis one of Springsteen’s heroes.” Well, Woody Guthrie wrote arnfew good songs, notwithstanding his affection for Uncle JoernStalin, and as an Oklahoma vagabond he knew more of Americanrnlife than, say, your very average pale Manhattan polemicist.rnOne of the mysteries of Bill Glinton’s presidency is how sornshrewd a pol could adopt so aggressively vapid a theme song:rnFleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,”rnwith its relentlessly upbeat and maddening refrain. An Englishrnband, a jejune song: perfect for the boy whose upbringingrnmeans so little to him that he allowed his media doctors to graftrna phony hometown with a felicitous name—Hope—over hisrnreal one, Hot Springs. Given the nakedly calculating nature ofrnthe Clintons’ marriage, the better Fleetwood Mac themernwould have been “You Can Co Your Own Way / Don’t GornAway.”rnThe people to whom Clinton pitched his campaign, if notrnhis presidency, were Middle Americans very much like thernaudience country singer Dwight Yoakam wants: “cowboys inrnOdessa, Texas, the guy that works in some plant outside Tulsa,rnthe guy working for Rockwell or Lockheed out in the San FernandornValley, the guy who lives in Bakersfield.” Yoakam callsrnthem “the rightful heirs” to this country, a sentiment strikinglyrnsimilar to Ross Perot’s notion of the common folk as thern”owners” of the country.rnYoakam is the unfallen Springsteen of country music. He isrna self-conscious mythographer, a middle-class boy fromrnColumbus, Ohio, who idealizes his grandfather Luther Tibbsrn(a name better than any fabrication), a miners’ union organizerrnin Kentucky. Dwight moved to Los Angeles with a guitarrnand a border-state twang; he wrote lean fiddle and steel-guitarrnsongs with a hard edge, sort of like Hank Williams Sr. if Hankrnhad grown up listening to the Rolling Stones. He played inrnSouthern California’s punk clubs. He represented the puristrnend of the then-burgeoning “cowpunk” movement, a tremendouslyrnfruitful spasm in which several fine bands (Green onrnRed, Blood on the Saddle, Lone Justice, Jason and thernScorchers, Long Ryders) recast contemporary American life inrnthe language of the frontier legends and Western movies thatrnwere dying before wc were even born. They knew, as the LongrnRyders sang, that “you just can’t ride the boxcars anymore,” butrnthey saw hoboes and prospectors and white Indians on thernstreets of Santa Monica and in every Thunderbird-reekingrnwino slumped outside a Davy Jones’s Locker. Yoakam sharedrnthe punks’ defiance, their energized blend of rambunctious bohemianismrnand reactionary longing for some lost Americanrngolden age. He loathed Nashville and its spangled pimps andrncourtesans: I saw him at a little punk club in about 1986, andrnhe spoke darkly of killing Kenny Rogers.rnYou can guess the rest. His independent recordings attractedrnthe attention of Warner Brothers, and they took on the maverick.rnMaybe they broke him, maybe not. He has cut a numberrnof very good songs, including the deracine anthem “I SangrnDixie,” about an old Southerner dying on a Los Angelesrnbarstool. His latest release. This Time (1993), finds Yoakam, likernSpringsteen, in retreat, usually to the sodden haven of thernnearest barroom. He has been cited for “misogyny and prejudice”rnby Pareles of the New York Times. He calls himself a libertarian,rnand he denounces motorcycle helmet laws. He’srnmade his peace with the country music establishment: he appearsrnregularly on Nashville Now, where he is about as incendiaryrnas Minnie Pearl. He dated Sharon Stone for a while, butrnwho can blame him?rnYoakam blazed the path for the “new traditionalists,” arnhokey moniker for the austere counterrevolutionaries whornripped the rhinestones off the Nashville establishment in thern1980’s. That Nashville has spent the 90’s carefully reembroideringrnthem is not Dwight’s fault.rnEven more obstreperous is Steve Earle, a Texas hellion andrnunvarnished spokesman of working-class whites whose bestrnand harshest songs about the yearnings and discouragements ofrnhick Americans are the apparent, sometimes even worthy,rnheirs to a rural realist tradition that can be traced straight backrnto E.W. (The Story of a Country Town) Howe and Josephrn(Zury, The Meanest Man in Spring County) Kirkland and Hamlinrn(Main-Travelled Roads) Garland. When he is good he isrnvery good indeed:rnThere ain’t a lot that you can do in this townrnYou drive down to the lake and then you turn backrnaroundrnYou go to school and you learn to read and writernSo you can walk into the county bank and sign awayrnyour life.rnI work at the fillin’ station on the interstaternPumpin’ gasoline and countin’ out-of-state platesrnThey ask me how far into Memphis, son, and where’srnthe nearest beerrnThey don’t even know that there’s a town around here.rnWhere Springsteen romanticized working-class life in a wayrnthat appealed to the smart, upwardly mobile, but sentimentalrnsons of bus drivers and janitors, Earle, in his unromantic—darernwe say resentful—way, speaks directly for those who are not goingrnto rise above (abandon) it by going off to college and marryingrna girl who reads books and listening to songs extolling thernCommon Man on a state-of-the-art CD player. Again, I quoternextensively from Earle:rnI got a job but it ain’t nearly enoughrnA twenty thousand dollar pickup truckrnBelongs to me and the bank and some funny talkin’rnman from IranrnI left the service got a G.I. loanrnI got married bought myself a homernNow I hang around this one horse town and do the bestrnthat I canrnBeen goin’ nowhere down a one-way trackrnI’d kill to leave but there ain’t no turnin’ backrnCot the wife and the kids and what would everybodyrnsayrnMy brother’s standin’ on a welfare linernAnd any minute now I might get minernMeanwhile there’s the IRS and the devil to payrnHe concludes, “I was born in the land of plenty now therernain’t enough,” and whether that’s true or just whining amidstrnabundance (almost every person I know who’s on relief has cablernTV), it speaks to that disabling fear, the anticipation ofrncatastrophe, that’s made us a nation of cowards on couches,rntaking no chances. “I prefer adventure to security,” CharlesrnLindbergh said, and we are so much his opposites that we ad-rnAPRIL 1994/33rnrnrn