SALVADOR ALLENDE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT?
John Edward is a fascinating political phenomenon. In what is alleged to be prickly, anti-socialist America, a populist is making waves with dreamy rhetoric suggestive of a secular utopia presided over by a beneficent paternalistic state!

Salvador Allende was the first democratically elected Marxist president, a noble and gentle soul who came to power in Chile in 1970 and was murdered three years later during the bloody coup by Augusto Pinochet. For the left, Allende wears the halo of a martyr. He dispossessed the bourgeoisie peacefully without massacring them, Bolshevik-style. Workers owned the factories, became their own bosses. Allende promised more for everyone, except a few who could clearly afford to have less-- generous, good-hearted, an optimist, and gentle to the last. Edwards' speech reminds me of Salvador Allende. A few excerpts will illustrate:

John Kerry and I believe that we shouldn't have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck. You don't need me to explain this to you do you?

AUDIENCE: No.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. Can't save any money, can you?

AUDIENCE: No.

Takes every dime you make just to pay your bills.

And you know what happens if something goes wrong, if you have a child that gets sick, a financial problem, a layoff in the family -- you go right off the cliff. And when that happens, what's the first thing that goes? Your dreams.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Yes, it does have to be that way. Life is hard. My theology professors at Notre Dame called this the "theodicy" problem-- why is there suffering, if God is good? An answer people have wrestled with since the dawn of time...

And yet I feel the pull of Edwards' rhetoric, don't you? I'm in $90,000 of student debt. I try to save, to pay a bit of that off. Last night I had borrowed a friend's car, I nicked (ever so slightly!) some Vietnamese immigrants' SUV, ended up paying him $300 not to report it (it being a friend's car) and realized that the little money I'd saved by not going to my good friend Andre's wedding (how sad I was to miss it) had been wasted. "It doesn't have to be that way," you say?

Ultimately, the reason that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" does not appeal to us is that we want to give less than we're able in return for more than we need; and under capitalism, most of us can. So Edwards' form of populism does not stop at socialist austerity:

And we will invest in the jobs of the future and in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition. And we're going to do this because John and I understand that a job is about more than a paycheck; it's about dignity and self- respect.

Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth.

(APPLAUSE)

We don't want people to just get by; we want people to get ahead.

What does this have to do with politics? Does Edwards think the government "invests in the jobs of the future?" The 1990s boom came almost entirely from the private sector, and that's as it should be. But these distinctions are swept aside in the majestic upward sweep of Edwards' hopeful eloquence. Or is Edwards even talking about the government?

EDWARDS: You taught me the values that I carry in my heart: faith, family, responsibility, opportunity for everyone. You taught me that there's dignity and honor in a hard day's work. You taught me to always look out for our neighbors, to never look down on anybody, and treat everybody with respect.

Those are the values that John Kerry and I believe in. And nothing makes me prouder than standing with him in this campaign. I am so humbled to be your candidate for vice president of the United States.

I agree with the hard work and respect part... but what does it have to do with policy or politics? What Edwards wants to do, it seems, is not just to win election but a national transformation, a Great Awakening of some sort. To put it in terms familiar to my Notre Dame theology professors, he wants to solve the theodicy problem. Grand, beautiful, inspiring, but deluded and dangerous.

Allende's plans were economically disastrous, producing first inflation, then recession, and were leading into chaos before the interruption of the coup. During the Pinochet years, unions and dissent were brutally crushed, as the right-wing general implemented the free-market austerity policies endorsed by scholars from the University of Chicago, "lost Chicago boys." Thirty years later Chile has developed a track record as Latin America's best-performing economy, achieving a buoyancy that is downright weird by regional standards. Chile is immune to the intractable problems that plague other countries in the region. Because we would rather not condone Pinochet's methods, there are a number of arguments that this is not thanks to Pinochet, which work well as placebos for simple consciences, but... Anyway, when confronted with this new populism, the lessons of history (and theology) should make us wary.