Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

by Rachel Maddow

And unlike most populist pols, the Kingfish, as he liked to be called, had an actual track record of getting things done. In the six and a half years since he had taken power in his home state, the forty-one-year-old Long had delivered twenty-five hundred miles of new paved roads, forty bridges, free textbooks in the public schools, free night schools to teach more than 100,000 illiterate adults to read, and state hospitals to serve everybody in Louisiana, whether they possessed the means to pay their medical bills or not. The state’s voter registration increased by 76 percent in a single year after Long forced the Louisiana legislature to repeal the poll tax. He also raised taxes on corporations doing business in the state, especially on the oil companies that had dominated the state legislature for decades. It was an almost unbelievable record of accomplishment—practical help for regular people, at a time when all the regular people of this country were desperately in need of some practical help. The political story behind how he did it was either exciting or terrifying, depending on the cut of your ideological jib. The bare truth of Huey Long’s Louisiana miracle is that he was able to get it all done because he effectively did away with any competing political interests in the state, not to mention any checks and balances on his own power to rule. Long’s signature innovation in American power politics was bringing the whole state of Louisiana under the control of his po...