Yes to Moderation, No to Centrism
Jul 28th, 2011 | 15 responses
WASHINGTON — What the country yearns for is moderation. What we hear about is the political center. But centrism has become the enemy of moderation.
Moderation in politics is about balance. It means believing in a vibrant and innovative private sector and a government substantial enough to do what the private sector doesn’t and to enforce sensible rules for economic competition. It means incentives for success, help for those making their way up, and security for the sick, the aging, the poor, the unlucky. It means equilibrium between our love of individualism and our desire for community. This, in turn, means that reducing the budget deficit can’t rely only on cutting programs. Yes, taxes need to go up.
All the polls I have ever seen peg the vast majority of Americans as moderate by this definition.
Centrism is something altogether different. It’s not a philosophy. It’s a position based on calculation. It doesn’t start with fixed principles. It measures where everyone else stands on some political spectrum at a given moment and then frantically adjusts.
Because centrism is reactive, you never really know what a centrist believes.
Centrists are constantly packing their bags and chasing off to find a new location as the political conversation veers one way or another.
Right now, this sort of centrism is enabling our irrational, dangerous and decidedly immoderate debt-ceiling conversation. Pushed by the tea party, Republicans have created an unprecedented situation by tying an increase in the debt ceiling, once a routine matter, to sharp cuts in spending. And their most conservative members have blocked any new tax revenues to cut the deficit.
Worse, the right would junk majoritarian democracy altogether through misnamed “balanced budget” amendments that would not permit any tax increases without a two-thirds vote of Congress. This would lock in today’s historically low tax levies on the wealthy by immunizing them from any foreseeable election result.
Yet the center’s devotees, in politics and in the media, fear saying outright that by any past standards — or by the standards of any other democracy — the views of this new right wing are very, very extreme and entirely impractical. Centrists worry that saying this might make them look “leftist” or “partisan.”
Instead, the center bends. It concocts deficit plans that include too little new tax revenue. It accepts cuts in programs that would have seemed radical and draconian even a couple of years ago. It pretends this crisis is caused equally by conservatives and liberals when it is perfectly clear that there would be no crisis at all if the right hadn’t glommed onto the debt ceiling as the (totally inappropriate) vehicle for its anti-government dreams.
It’s time for moderates to abandon centrism and stop shifting with the prevailing winds. They need to state plainly what they’re for, stand their ground, and pull the argument their way. Yes, they would risk looking to “the left” of where the center is now — but only because conservatives have pulled it so far their way.
On the debt ceiling itself, I still find it hard to imagine that Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will allow the country to go over the cliff. They should shelve debt-ceiling fights for the rest of President Obama’s term because there are better ways to argue about taxes and spending. If they flinch from taking on the tea party, even more trouble faces us.
But when this ends, it’s Obama who’ll need a reset. At heart, he’s a moderate who likes balance. Yet Americans have lost track of what he’s really for. Occasionally you wonder if he’s lost track himself. He needs to remind us, and perhaps himself, why he wants to be our president. He could give four or five big speeches — preferably at community colleges in states facing economic trouble — laying out a clear, detailed and, yes, inspirational plan for what the country needs to do to regain its standing and its confidence. And then he has to fight relentlessly to take the debate away from those who think government’s only job is to diminish itself.
His advisers are said to be obsessed with the political center, but this leads to a reactive politics that won’t motivate the hope crowd that elected Obama in the first place. Neither will it alter a discourse whose terms were set during most of this debt fight by the right. There’s nothing wrong with moderation that immoderate doses of conviction and courage won’t cure.
E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com. (c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
15 Responses to “Yes to Moderation, No to Centrism”
“It pretends this crisis is caused equally by conservatives and liberals when it is perfectly clear that there would be no crisis at all if the right hadn’t glommed onto the debt ceiling as the (totally inappropriate) vehicle for its anti-government dreams.”
Yes but democrats aren’t serious about entitlement reform so republicans are allowed to use terrorist tactics.
“It means believing in a vibrant and innovative private sector and a government substantial enough to do what the private sector doesn’t and to enforce sensible rules for economic competition.”
It would be nice if that’s the way things worked. In the real world, out government has devolved into a contest between special interests.
By Dionne’s definition, there are very few centrist voters (apathetic is separate category), but a lot of centrist politicians.
Kind of echoes the Krugman article where he castigates moderates. Dionne’s definitions of moderation vs centrism are arbitrary – it seems like he created his own definitions to support his thesis.
Interestingly the depiction of moderates and centrists as lazy, weak and spineless echoes similar comments from Rush Limbaugh I heard several years ago. Limbaugh, Krugman and Dionne really have the same motivation – they want moderates to take their side and will criticize them when they don’t.
Oh, thanks Dionne, that was a nice centrist article. Well done, first the set up: centrist bad, then the rap: the Reps are centrists. Game won.
Centrists… the phrase implies that a person is in the middle of any debate. The problem with this is that either side can change what “center” is by moving further towards an extreme.
This is a practice done by both sides, but as of late, it has been the bread and butter of the Rep party.
Obama asks for something center left, but reasonable. The right asks for something extreme right. The result is something that is center right…Reps win.
I think the real problem is distortion of definitions for partisan gain. As we can see here every day, those on the far left define the “center” as whatever far leftists think. Those on the far right define the “center” as whatever they think. And whenever either of them is confronted by a REAL centrist who disagrees with the extremists on both sides, both sides simply accuse that person of being a secret agent for the other side who is a liar and a cheat to boot.
Like every other descriptive term in partisan warfare these days, “centrist” means whatever is convenient for the partisan warriors at that particular point in time.
Dionne fails again.
No doubt Krugman is a “centrist” by the dinosaur’s warped judgment.
Democrats have spent a lot of effort to label their platform as “moderate”. It seems clear that this is so they can claim to be moderate while pushing to get their ideology without compromise. This is has always run up against the problem that the center of the political spectrum is a close the Republicans as it is to the Democrats. I guess the author has decided to bit the bullet, and be willing to try and claim the that center is “extreme” when it doesn’t agree with the Democrats.
Though, for the record, he mischaracterizes centrists. Many of us have a general ideology in the center, but are willing to take positions off to either side from issue to issue. Being a centrist doesn’t mean having to take position that is exactly between where the Democrats and Republicans are.
Aside from the fact that this mischaracterizes politics as having only two choices, it assumes that the landscape should be defined by the two parties. In the end it is just another support for the two party “Duopoly”.
David, I think you ascribe too many magical powers to a multiparty system. I’ve studied a lot of multiparty systems in Europe and Israel. I’ve seen nothing that indicates they are immune to the political dysfunctions that plague the American “duopoly”.
Greece is a multiparty parliamentary system.
So if you are nominally a Rep, but support freedom of choice (what a term), gun control, etc., and if you are nominally a Dem and support streamlined government, a strong military, and lower fairer (ha) taxes, you are are not a centrist, but are you a waffleist, swithchist, dis-loyalist to our party, what? Looking for a cute term like centrist so we can be pigeonholed.
Multi-party systems with their constant coalition-forming and of course -changing are quickly derided by shallower critics as being “unstable.”
But what ought to be reality? 4-6+ parties, in no small part arising from the overdue fracturing of the Democratic and Republican parties.
“And whenever either of them is confronted by a REAL centrist who disagrees with the extremists on both sides”
You know of any?
I suggest James Fallows.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/five-reasons-the-house-gop-is-to-blame/242673/
“David, I think you ascribe too many magical powers to a multiparty system. I’ve studied a lot of multiparty systems in Europe and Israel. I’ve seen nothing that indicates they are immune to the political dysfunctions that plague the American “duopoly”.
Greece is a multiparty parliamentary system.”
I agree that multiparty systems have their own problems. (Though, for the record, I actually would like to weaken parties in general, I think with modern communications, politicians don’t need to lump themselves into prepackaged platforms so that voters can know what they stand for).
Until maybe 10-20 years ago, I liked the two party system as a means of promoting consensus and action. However, reforms and technology have hardened the parties into rigid partisan bodies that have to have a crisis to not avoid actively making the economy worse. I think the two party system has run its course and has become the root of a lot of what is wrong with the country.
Change the voting system won’t make people not put self-interest first and won’t keep them from just believing what they want to. But it will remove the problems that partisans throws up and let people advocate more than just two possible solutions to problems.
What utter nonsense. Parsing centrism and moderation is something that Dionne – a dyed in the wool liberal – could never understand.
And this article is example number one of why moderates are just as fed up with liberals as they are with conservatives.
Because BOTH sides insist on dismissing us.
Whoopee, Zippee.