Nobody loves centrism, writes Bill Keller in the New York Times (4/16/12), but they should. “Centrism is easily mocked and not much fun to defend,” writes, noting that critiques of centrism from the left and right have a certain appeal:
The politics of the center–including the professional centrists and trans-partisans of groups like Third Way and Americans Elect–do not quicken the pulse. White bread, elevator music, No Labels, meh.
So what’s to love about white bread? Winning. Elections are, Keller writes,
usually decided by voters who are not wedded to either party, who don’t stay in any ideological lane. These voters are thought to constitute roughly 15 percent of the electorate, give or take a few points. Add enough of them to your loyal base, and victory is yours.
And the middle isn’t boring after all: “The middle is not the home of bland, split-the-difference politics, or a cult that worships bipartisan process for its own sake.” He ticks off a list of centrist attributes, courtesy of the Third Way think tank. Such voters worry about debt, they are progressive on social issues, and “have nothing against the rich–but they don’t oppose tax increases.”
So what does this mean for the general election? “My hunch is that Romney will manage to shake off most of his extremist accouterments, because they never seemed to fit him,” Keller explains.
And what about Obama? Keller worries that Obama’s embrace of the Buffett Rule–which would make sure that millionaires pay more in taxes–makes him seem like less of a centrist:
The president sometimes, as in his last two State of the Union addresses, plays the even-keel, presidential pragmatist, sounding themes of balance and opportunity. Then sometimes lately he sounds more as if he’s trying out for the role of Robin Hood.
The policy isn’t a bad one, according to Keller–it’s just that arguing in favor of it doesn’t sound right:
The problem is that when Obama thrusts these populist themes to the center of his narrative, he sounds a little desperate. The candidate who ran on hope–promising to transcend bickering and get things done–is in danger of sounding like the candidate of partisan insurgency. Just as Romney was unconvincing as a right-wing scourge, Obama, a man lofty in his visions but realistic in his governance, feels inauthentic playing a plutocrat-bashing firebrand. The role the middle really wants him to play, I think, is president.
The Buffett Rule is very popular with the public–Democrats overwhelmingly support it, but so do independents, by a margin of 63 to 33 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll.
That sounds like it’s kind of…centrist, maybe. The lesson here seems more like the same old, same old: When corporate media talk about the “center,” they mean somewhere off to the right of the Democratic Party, wherever that may be. It’s a handy definition if you want to continually move the “the middle” to the right.
Something tells me that there should be no worries about Dear Misleader being mistaken for a “plutocrat-bashing firebrand”, other than by his political rivals and members of the corpress – who, truth be told, know full well the farcicalness of such an appellation.
And delusional FOX trotters, I should add.
Plenty of pennies from plutocratic heaven are being plunked into his campaign coffers. That loose change is coming from those who are wholly aware of how the game is played, and really don’t mind a bit of populist posing, just as all that prattle about “Hope and Change” ™ only elicited a knowing chuckle in such circles.
Can you say “Lawrence Summers”?
I knew that you could.
“When corporate media talk about the ‘center,’ they mean somewhere off to the right of the Democratic Party, wherever that may be. It’s a handy definition if you want to continually move the ‘the middle’ to the right.”
Punch those LexisNexis buttons on phrases like “center-right nation” and “center-right country” to get some idea of how broadly this is taken as an article of faith, not just among commentators on the far right, but in the mainstream corporate press as well. Every time Gallup does one of its surveys showing that more Americans identify themselves as “conservative” than as any other label, we get a new round of the same thing, and no one ever stops to ask those respondents what they mean by the labels they apply to themselves. The U.S. is polled to death, and those polls show that, when it comes to the public, the center–the CENTER, not the left–is generally more liberal than anything even allowed a place at the table in mainstream discourse. That poll you cite is typical. 60% of the public, overall, supports the “Buffett Rule.” The most telling part of it, however, isn’t that Democrats and independents overwhelmingly support it; it’s that even 43% of Republicans support it. By any definition, this is the center.
That is, as I said, typical of polling on pretty much every major issue. I’ve written about this for years. One example:
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/conservative-america.html
So ingrained is this “center-right nation” narrative that one gets the sort of Orwellian commentary I was addressing here:
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/far-to-left-in-american-politics-test.html
And so on.
alex pareene at salon takes a whack at the keller pinata:
Bill Keller once again fundamentally misunderstands the argument against “centrism” as a philosophy: It depends entirely on finding the middle point between two extremes, and in our national politics right now, the middle point between two extremes is almost invariably “the Democratic Party agenda.”Â
An ideological moderate has an ally in Barack Obama. The pathological centrist, on the other hand, dreams of a candidate whose beliefs are directly between Obama and Romney, even though such a candidate would be more conservative than “moderate.”Â
Keller is maybe not the best example of the important role of the “centrist” in the American political arena, as he is one of those many “centrists” whose dedication to “centrism” led him to push for war against Iraq as a means of retaliating against an entirely different group of people who had attacked us on 9/11.
The radical, extreme leftist view, at the time, was that maybe we don’t really need to invade and occupy Iraq, and many of those sage centrists now share that opinion.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/16/bill_keller_joins_krugmanbrooks_op_ed_fight/?source=newsletter
So there are voters who disagree significantly with both parties, and partly agree with them. That doesn’t make them “centrist,” it makes them independent. Many of these independent voters widely disagree with each other on many key issues. The term “centrist” (and, even more so, “moderate”) seems pretty meaningless to me.
I used to think, many years ago, that the NYT was quite a good newspaper, even though it was steadily going downhill. When it started to publish Keller as an OpEd columnist that was the last straw for me. Nada mas!!
I don’t see how a perspective from the left or right is necessarily more rigid than one from the center. Everyone thinks that they decide the issues on the merits. Other than ridiculous columnists like Keller, no one decides to be an independent for the sake of being an independent. Anyway, it is wrong to think that all conservatives, for example, are in lockstep–even though it often seems so. What’s more, in my experience, people who call themselves independent tend to really be liberal or conservative; they just don’t like labels.
Speaking of “centrists,” have you checked out Atrios’ Wanker of Decade? (http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/04/one-true-wanker-of-decade.html)
Where is the room for compromise when a Democrat adopts Republican positions that tha Republicans then disavow. There is, by definition, no middle ground that can be found.
Obama is in a world of shit even when public opinion is on his side.Because it is fleeting and he knows it.He cant piggieback on Buffet for too long because lets face it…Buffet is a phony.The math does not add up as anyone can see.He (buffet) is fighting the IRS tooth and nail for a huge tax dept while he talks a good game.Funny really.And Obama who just paid 20% in taxes is also a phony.He has nothing in the Arena of ideas ,experience,or results that will support him, or itself ,if held up to strutiny.It is easy to point at the rich guy and say it is all his fault.But you have to move people along quickly,because its bullshit and he knows it.See that is the difference here.He KNOWS this is all bullshit.People on blogs like FAIR actually believe it.But he will be debated on this swill.And he can not defend it in depth.So he has to sow discord and get out of town quick.The job of a community activist taken to its extreme.I love the fact that so many believe in the BUFFET rule —- now.Because it is like a court case before the other side has their chance to speak.The bullshit meter is hitting the top,and the other side will soon speak.Ripping to shreds another Obama trial Balloon.If I were Buffet,i would look at what happened to past ‘acquaintances”of Obama who had fallen on the sword for him.Buddy you will be lucky not to be in prison for tax evasion in two years.
What in God’s good green earth are you talking about, dude?
When your birch bark canoe is headed directly for a rock in the middle of the river, who actually listens to the idiot calling “stay the course”? The choice here is obviously either steer left — away from war and toward negotiation, away from income inequity and toward a broader middle class, away from sickness and childhood hunger and toward a healthy social safety net — or steer right — into endless war, an impoverished working class and widespread misery leading to crime and untreated illnesses. How many benefit and to what degree with either of these choices? How many suffer? Tell me where a swing to the right helps get us out of this mess, or even “staying the course,” as either of the two parties would really have us do?
Jon Williams
Your view of how the right and left operate is bizarre.Scare tactics for the uninformed.We are all Americans.We all want peace health ,and prosperity.We all want a fully funded safety net for those who need it.We simply differ on the best way to get there.