From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

If there's one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans and everybody in between

is that we all hated the bank bailout.

What is popular with the populace?

In his State of the Union address Wednesday, President Barack Obama had just the ticket,

bashing bankers and lobbyists and insurance

companies and even TV talking heads. It was hardly a tirade, and it came too late to preserve the

Democrats' supermajority in the Senate, but perhaps not too late to rally Americans to his

ambitious program. Because We Must hasn't worked

too well for the president, so perhaps because they don't want us to, we'll strike a nerve.

Obama thus, however, timidly joined a club of Us versus Themers going back to William Jennings

Brian, Father Coglin, Joe McCarthy, and Huey Long.

Not to mention Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, George Wallace, Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck.

But if populism is a favorite tactic of the right, the left also has a long history of demonizing a disproportionately

powerful other tycoons being right at the top of the list. Michael Kaysen, a history professor

at Georgetown University, and author of the populist persuasion in American history, says put

upon electorates tend to distill complex problems into a

sense of undue influence held by an arrogant few. I think it's basically a language of

discontented people who blame elites for the problems, whether economic problems, political

problems, cultural problems. It's the people against the elite.

Haven't all presidential candidates in some way been populist in their message, claiming to represent the largest number of American voters? Well, they all try to represent the largest

number, but they don't all rail against an elite. Adelaie Stevenson, for example,

...