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 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.

Iowa’s caucus system, which involves intense discussions among small groups of voters, places a premium on ‘retail politics’ and encourages slogans on ‘soaking the rich’ and ‘saving middle America’.

The Iowa results may not really decide who the eventual Democratic and Republican presidential nominees are. But amidst the growing economic inequality within the US and the widespread fear of losing jobs to China and India, the populism that is being dished out in Iowa could be more than a flash in the pan during the consequential American elections this year.

Edwards up close

In the last few weeks, Hillary Clinton, the best known Democratic candidate in much of the world including India, has been fending off a sustained challenge from Barack Obama, who presents his lack of political experience as an advantage and paints the wife of former President Clinton as an embodiment of the Washington status quo.

Clinton and Obama, however, have suddenly found themselves outflanked in Iowa by John Edwards who was the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in the 2004 elections.

Edwards is a multi-millionaire trial lawyer who lives in a 25,000 sq foot mansion that serves as his home cum office in North Carolina. That didn’t stop Edwards from deliberately positioning himself as a champion of the disempowered working classes of America. This has worked well for Edwards, who has gained great momentum as the Iowa caucuses prepare to vote on Thursday.

Edwards’ narrative is about taking America back from special interests groups, who are killing the nation by holding down wages, out-sourcing jobs and denying medical care.

Edwards asks, “How long are we going to let drug companies and insurance companies run America?” He insists, “I don’t think you can take money from these people, sit at the table and deal with them.” No subtlety here about the accusation that Clinton and Obama are prisoners of special interest groups.

Axis of Evil

Like Edwards in the Democratic field, the relatively unknown Mike Huckabee, a former pastor from Arkansas in the south, has muddied the Republican waters by ranting against the ‘Washington-Wall Street axis’.

Pitting himself against the east coast establishment (his main Republican rival in Iowa is Mitt Romney, the sophisticated governor of Massachusetts) Huckabee promises to change the Republican Party by forcing it to represent the interests of the ordinary people rather than the wealthy.

“If you ask a hedge fund manager what’s he worried about, he’s going to give you a very different answer than a guy who just lost his job in a factory”, Huckabee says.

Having already pandered to the Christian Right by opposing abortion and gay rights, Huckabee bets that the ‘rich versus poor’ rhetoric might give him the badly needed boost.

The writer is professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg