Obama's Centrist Problem

Nothing fires off a cascade of electrical impulses throughout the brain like a shot of self-righteous indignation! We won the election damn it! And it's time we started acting like the winners! But we're not: So goes the chatter of criticism directed at the incoming Obama Administration. And it goes something like this; Obama's disavowed himself from any overt partisan trumpeting announcing his overwhelming election victory that established a mandate to exercise his political will. He shies away from mentioning the Democrats' superior numbers in Congress and seeks solid Republican support for his economic stimulus plan and declares that "post-partisan" politics will define his presidency. He has dinner at George Will's home and breaks bread with a who's who gathering of conservative media types. He has meetings with Republican Congressional leaders. He fills his "cabinet with relics of the centrist Clinton years." He meets with evangelical leaders and installs one of their leading voices, "pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration." In other words; Obama regularly disappoints the liberal/progressive wing of his party by looking beyond their agenda and instead navigating by a centrist course that confounds his partisan base to wonder whether he is a brilliant tactician or just a run-of-the-mill cow towing Democrat who lacks the fortitude to act tough and command control of the federal government! Making observations on Obama, Thomas Frank comments on the emerging character of Obama's initial political decisions in the Wall Street Journal to note: "Audacity they ain't, though. There is no branch of American political expression more trite, more smug, more hollow than centrism." Frank echoes Mark Leibovich's point made in last Sunday's New York Times that being nice in Washington has been tried many times before and always ends disastrously for the user after a short shelf life. Frank argues that: "transcending faction has been the filler-talk of inaugural addresses going back at least to Zachary Taylor's in 1849. When you hear it today -- bemoaning as it always does "the extremes of both parties" or "the divisive politics of the past" -- it is virtually a foolproof indicator that you are in the presence of a well-funded, much-televised Beltway hack." Frank explains that: "Centrism is something of a cult here in Washington, D.C., and a more specious superstition you never saw. Its adherents pretend to worship at the altar of the great American middle, but in fact they stick closely to a very particular view of events regardless of what the public says it wants. And through it all, centrism bills itself as the most transgressive sort of exercise imaginable. Its partisans are "New Democrats," "Radical Centrists," clear-eyed believers in a "Third Way." The red-hot tepids, we might call them -- the jellybeans of steel," Frank concludes. And Frank goes on to elaborate on his own theory behind the great interest garnered by centrism: "The reason centrism finds an enthusiastic audience in Washington, I think, is because it appeals naturally to the Beltway journalistic mindset, with its professional prohibition against coming down solidly on one side or the other of any question. Splitting the difference is a way of life in this cynical town. To hear politicians insist that it is also the way of the statesman, I suspect, gives journalists a secret thrill. Yet" that thrill is "what the Beltway centrist characteristically longs" adds Frank "for is not so much to transcend politics but to close off debate on the grounds that he -- and the vast silent middle for which he stands -- knows beyond question what is to be done." Frank disdainfully points to "centrist Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby" to strike home his point when he relates that Mallaby: "writing last October on the debate then raging over the role of deregulation in precipitating the financial crisis: "So blaming deregulation for the financial mess is misguided. But it is dangerous, too, because one of the big challenges for the next president will be to defend markets against the inevitable backlash that follows this crisis." Frank has identified the bewildering failure of centrists to take a principled stand because for Mallaby: "Criticizing deregulation is not merely wrong but "dangerous," virtually impermissible, since it problematizes the politics that everyone knows president 44 will ultimately embrace." Frank targets the purpose of centrism as not a tactic that carries out a "high-minded war against "both extremes" but to fight specifically against the economic and foreign policies of liberalism. Centrism's institutional triumphs have been won mainly if not entirely within the Democratic Party." Frank points to: "Its greatest exponent," President Bill Clinton,who "persistently used his own movement as a foil in his great game of triangulation." And what does centrism have to proclaim as its greatest achievements, Frank asks?: "Well, there's Nafta, which proved Democrats could stand up to labor. There's the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. There's the Iraq war resolution, approved by numerous Democrats in brave defiance of their party's left. Triumphs all." Centrism occupies liberalism's attempts for achievements which has allowed conservatism to freely grow and gain strength emphasizing it as a movement whose "adherence to principle," according to Frank is allowed to take place "regardless of changing public attitudes. Conservatives pressed laissez-faire through good times and bad, soldiering on even in years when suggesting that America was a "center-right nation" would have made one an instant laughingstock." Frank makes a very convincing argument regarding the machinations of the American political system by adding this rejoinder: "And what happens when a strong-minded movement encounters a politician who acts as though the truth always lies halfway between his own followers and the other side? The dolorous annals of Clinton suggest an answer, in particular the chapters on Government Shutdown and Impeachment." As Frank explains: "That's why it is so obviously preferable to be part of the movement that doesn't compromise easily than to depend on the one that has developed a cult of the almighty center. Even a conservative as ham-handed as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay seems to understand this." And as" Delay "recounted in his 2007 memoirs, Republicans under his leadership learned "to start every policy initiative from as far to the political right as we could." The effect was to "move the center farther to the right," drawing the triangulating Clinton along with it." Brilliant strategy for Delay to recognize when a conservative has only to deal with opposition posed by a centrist. So what does this reading of American Politics 101 hold for Obama's "post-partisan" strategy? Frank hopes: "President-elect Obama can learn something from Mr. DeLay's confession: Centrism is a chump's game. Democrats have massive majorities these days not because they waffle hither and yon but because their historic principles have been vindicated by events. This is their moment. Let the other side do the triangulating."