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The problem, however, is that a lot of smart people, including those in the so-called “creative classes” of intellectuals and journalists, tend to ignore Gramsci’s indispensable advice.

Across the world, news cycles are largely shaped, dictated and focused on larger-than-life personalities who project an artificial sense of immortality, perfection and potency. In the world of politics, strongmen populists best capture these characteristics. They are the ultimate celebrities, enjoying both power and fame (or notoriety).

Over the past year, I have traveled half-a-dozen times between Manila and Washington. As I always joke during my talks in the United States, “the tree (our former colonial power) doesn’t fall from the leaf (former colony).” Politics in the two countries is eerily similar: polarized, ugly and demoralizingly unpredictable.

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First of all, critics tend to overlook the very factors that catapulted outside-the-box candidates like Trump or Duterte to the presidency. Populists win mainly because they ask the right questions in the most provocatively captivating way. In the case of Duterte, he exposed the hollowness of our democracy by highlighting the grip of oligarchs and political dynasties on our national political economy.

Second, and more crucially, however, populists tend to provide horrible answers once they are in power, thanks to their simplistic solutions and often self-defeating policies, which are resonant during elections but tend to exacerbate existing problems once implemented.

The greatest price of populism is usually systematic damage to carefully built institutions. Under Joseph Estrada, for instance, corruption was so rampant that the Philippines’ tax collection rate virtually collapsed. It was only recently, after almost two decades, that we managed to match the tax effort rates achieved under the Ramos administration.

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