In America, populism has long made up for the absence of a conventional social democratic Left. With the stage set this week in Iowa — a sleepy mid-western agricultural state that gets brief international attention every four years — for the first battle of the 2008 election campaign, American populism is in full flow.

In the early stages of the campaign, all candidates tend to rail against the targets that the American middle class loves to hate — the greedy corporations, the Wall Street bankers, and the special interest groups that grease the American political machine. All of them present themselves as ‘outsiders’ who are determined to bring the ‘permanent establishment’ in Washington to heel.

In the late 19th century, a formal Populist Party emerged in America’s agrarian heartland and campaigned against the east coast banking trusts and pressed for major tax reforms. While the party eventually disappeared, the tradition has endured; and many Republican and Democrat leaders now have to leverage it.

The stronger candidates tend to make a bow to populism in Iowa and quickly move on to the political centre as the campaign goes elsewhere. But the weaker ones, seeking to surprise if not oust the frontrunner, have every incentive to step up the populist ante.

It is not just the agrarian radicals or the urban activists who take to populism in America. Remember the billionaire Ross Perot, whose populist platform was strong enough to ensure the defeat of President George Bush (the father of the current president) in 1992. Many have blamed the left wing populism of Ralph Nader for the defeat of Vice President Al Gore in the closely fought 2000 elections.

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