This week's buzz piece is Drew Westen's long-form complaint about Obama's lackluster performance as a reformer in the mold of the Roosevelts. There's a lot there, not all of it entirely persuasive or even accurate, but one of the main takeaways is this:
The president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others' misery has no agency and hence no culpability.
In other words, Obama's rhetoric lacks populist indignation. Westen doesn't actually use the word "populist," perhaps because it rivals "evangelical" for the honor of thorniest term in the language. There is currently a libertarian party in the U.S. know as the Populists; there was once a less marginal one with more progressive aims. Small-"p" populism usually refers not to specific ideology but to a general framework: taking the side of the many against the elite few.
