Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality.

Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality, by Jeffrey Bell (Regnery Gateway, 202 pp., $21.95

JEFFREY BELL'S Populism and Elitism appears at an opportune moment. The emergence and popularity of Ross Perot--even given his abrupt departure from the presidential race--seem to signify not merely a widespread disaffection from the Washington political elites and the two great parties, but, more deeply, a desire among voters for a chance to choose as their leader a man whom, at least in some aspects, they can see as one of themselves. In the light of Mr. Bell's analysis of the increasingly, self-consciously populist cast of American politics since 1968, the rise of Perot, a political outsider who shares the values of the wider populace rather than the elites, is, if not predictable, at least consistent with deeper national tendencies.

When historians write about politics they often analyze the present too much in terms of categories from the past. When politicians write about history the reverse is often true. Jeffrey Bell is a practical politician, who twice ran for the Senate himself and is a veteran of the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. But while his interest is strictly political, concerned with charting the trends in American political and social life, he aims to set his analysis in a wider historical and geographical context. This ambition, and the insights in which his book abounds, set Populism and Elitism above the general run of political-analytical tracts.

This then is a book which comes out of the political world of Washington, but it is not a typical Washing%on book. Bell's broad historical perspective is sometimes a bit schematic and overly reliant on economic explanations of political change; while his attempt to see factors peculiar to American life as symptomatic of a wider worldwide current seems, to this foreigner at least, a little far-fetched. But that does nothing to diminish the challenge of his thesis.

This thesis takes a long- and a medium-term view. In the long-term view, Mr. Bell argues that the twentieth century is an essentially democratic age of political equality in which every claim to leadership must be justified in terms of popular legitimacy. This legitimacy depends on consent and, ultimately, on a consensus between the values of political leaders and those of the wider population. In the medium-term view, he argues that American politics since 1968 has been characterized, above all, by an increasingly obvious split between the values of the elite and those of the electorate. As a result, leaders who, like Ronald Reagan, reflect popular rather than elite values tend both to be widely liked and admired and to be consistently underestimated and even denigrated by the elites.

This analysis seems fair enough, and Bell makes good use of his scheme in explaining such phenomena as the long-lasting coexistence between a Republican-dominated Presidency and a Democratic legislature. He also applies it to the re-emergence of forms of political debate concerned not with the choice among means toward a consensually agreed-on political end but with so-called value issues, such as abortion, where disagreement is about ends rather than means. Bell traces these changes back to 1968, with the civil-rights legislation of that year, the disputes over the Vietnam War, and, not least, two events connected with the Democratic presidential campaign. In the division between popular and elite reactions to the Chicago riots during the Democratic Convention, he sees an early symptom of what has become a lasting division on issues of law and order; and in the assassination of Robert Kennedy he sees the fateful removal from the scene of the one leader of the majority party who seemed capable of combining popular values with a mastery of elite politics.

On this last assessment in particular opinions will differ, but one can hardly doubt Bell's broader claim that the events of 1968 marked a turning point, out of which emerged a political scene in which a value consensus between the elites and the electorate could no longer be taken for granted. Bell is perhaps at his best in describing the consequences of this turn. He is at his most challenging in suggesting that the increasing electoral significance of value issues, in the fields of both economic and social policy, is at last beginning to upset the always uneasy balance between political elites and the electorate they purport to represent. This presidential season has already shown us how far the balance has shifted.

Mr. Levy is the author of Political Order: Philosophical Anthropology, Modernity, and the Challenge of Ideology (LSU).