What surprises me most about the summer of distemper now thankfully drawing to a close isn't its baroque conspiracy theories, extreme political opportunism and public displays of weepy hysteria, so much as the idea that these are somehow unprecedented.
To me they're merely the latest examples of a phenomenon that might be called Wirtism.
If you find the term unfamiliar, that's because I just coined it to honor the memory of William A. Wirt. Wirt's day in the sun came back in 1934, when the obscure Midwestern blowhard placed himself at the center of a political maelstrom by "discovering" a plot by members of Franklin Roosevelt's Brain Trust to launch a Bolshevik takeover of the United States.
That Wirt's yarn was transparently absurd didn't keep it from being taken seriously on the front pages of newspapers coast to coast, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He gave speeches, wrote a book and went to Washington to give personal testimony at a standing-room-only congressional hearing.
If that reminds you of the overly solicitous treatment given by the press, cable news programs and Republican office holders to purveyors of such lurid claptrap as the Obama birth certificate story or the fantasy of healthcare "death panels," now you know why it pays to study history.
Indeed, the Wirt affair is an instructive prequel to this summer's outbreak of political germ warfare. Wirt's story played on the public's fear of the unknown in a time of political and economic stress -- indeed, he offered a concrete foundation for the paranoia about the Roosevelt administration's "radicalism" and "socialism" percolating through portions of the electorate, not to mention through the boardrooms of big business.
Rather a rube himself, he allowed himself to be exploited by wealthy and powerful individuals with a vehement anti-New Deal agenda.
On the plus side, the Roosevelt White House and Democrats in Congress were unafraid to meet his charges head-on. By comparison, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are still hunting for the best formula to counter the brazen mendacity of right-wing attacks on healthcare reform, recovery policy and the president personally.
Prior to moving into the national spotlight, Wirt was schools superintendent of Gary, Ind., where he was known as an advocate of progressive pedagogy. He was also a "crank" -- to use a popular term of the era -- on monetary policy.
