Obama's New Peer Populism

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According to Galbraith, "the bad distribution of income" was another of the key weaknesses that triggered the 1929 collapse. Back then the top 5% of households accounted for 33% of all income.

Today, the top 1% receives 20% of all income and owns 33% of all wealth, while the bottom 60% earn only 22% of the income and own 4% of the wealth, according to the 2008 American Human Development Report (a profound and disturbing document that calculates the well-being of our society based on measures of income, health, and education). Now, 80 million Americans can't earn enough to meet basic expenses for their families. Other sobering statistics from the report: The U.S. was ranked 2nd in human development among the industrialized nations in 1980, now it is 12th. We spend the most on health and education, but are 24th in life expectancy and at the bottom in student test scores.

In the old bottom-up populism, folks waited for an authority figure to fix their troubles, and that's just how Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, responds to this grim evidence of institutional failure. His is the conventional wisdom that wants you to trust the guys in charge. He offers himself as the experienced leader who can solve your problems. But Obama and his campaign have tuned into something more powerful: the possibility of engaging millions of citizens in real influence, voice, and problem solving. That insight first broke through in the shape of his groundbreaking Internet-based strategy of fundraising cum grassroots engagement and social networking that produced a now legendary torrent of cash.

Most importantly, MyBarackObama.com precipitated a Copernican inversion of the political space around Obama. His Internet strategy put people in the center of the campaign universe—where the candidate usually is—and to a large extent his messages and tactics were consistent with that revolutionary principle. The ensuing explosion of political engagement created more than 750,000 active volunteers, 8,000 affinity groups, and 30,000 events—numbers that grow each day, according to Joshua Green in the June issue of The Atlantic.

"control-connect-create"

Obama's unconventional methods channeled a new bottom-out populism—one that has roiled beneath the surface of our institutional life for years and recently gathered explosive force with the spread of the Internet. As the centers of power became ever more distant from and indifferent to the needs of most people, Americans invented a dynamic I call "control-connect-create." Ordinary individuals hungry to take control of their own lives connect directly to resources and other people, creating new solutions outside the old institutional structures.

The peer phenomenon that started with online music swapping spread rapidly to other domains, producing a new universe of virtual communities and social networks. Each day tens of millions of Americans turn to one another for advice, support, and sometimes for workable alternatives to traditional commercial functions. Virtual friends, acquaintances, and strangers control, connect, and create in thousands of domains: health and illness, career training, language instruction, investment and real estate information, education, purchasing advice, job opportunities, news, loans, entertainment, diet, nutrition, fitness, bereavement, everything on Craig's or Angie's list, and much more.

Obama has become the principal conduit for this new peer populism in U.S. politics. It transformed him from a junior senator to a Presidential contender, propelling him into the imaginations of people around the world. It is by now the bedrock of his unconventional campaign and the inviolate principle of his candidacy. In this scenario, he is a cherished first among equals, not a traditional higher authority. This kind of peer relationship feeds on mutual respect, honesty, and trust. These are precisely the kinds of "moral values" that 85% of Americans say are most important to them in considering their choice of candidate, according to a 2008 Harris poll—far more important than specific stands on issues like gay marriage, stem cell research, or even abortion.

Back to Obama's paradox: How to do the conventional unconventionally? Obama has already crossed many frontiers. The convergence of the old populism and the new peer politics is his next political frontier. In the days and weeks ahead, he will have to convince both old and new populists that he deeply understands the scope of institutional breakdown. He'll need to look into voters' eyes and let us feel the ferocity of his commitment. But he must also acknowledge that while much has to change at the top—policies, tax codes, regulations, laws—that's only part of the solution.

Our hopes for renewal and change no longer rest on the promise of a new crowd of experts insulated in yet another bureaucracy. We don't need another "Decider." As first among equals, Obama can tell us how he will help to shape a political, social, legal, and economic environment in which Americans are empowered to control-connect-create for fundamentally new solutions to chronic institutional failures. Give us a New Deal, but help us make it happen in a New Way.

Shoshana Zuboff is the author of The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism. She was the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.