Obama and the Political Center

The noise in recent months made by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, the birthers and others on the far right as well as the bizarre accusations and claims that they make has obscured the more interesting story of the failure of any of these people or movements to get any traction outside of the right wing base. While this right wing base may have grown in recent years, and has certainly become louder during that period, it has made no real inroads into mainstream political life.

Claims that President Obama is a socialist, or not an American, that his administration is seeking to set up reeducation camps or shut down unfriendly media outlets draw a lot of attention on Fox News and the right wing blogosphere, but these assertions are in no way part of the political dialog or debate that matters in Washington. The political center in the US has again proven itself to be surprisingly strong and resilient.

Even when these right wing fringe tactics have seeped into the political mainstream, they have not been successful and have stopped quickly. For example, during the health care debate, opponents of health care reform have sought to introduce the rumor and fear mongering of the far right as well as their bullying tactics into the debate by accusing the administration of wanting to set up death panels, shouting down Democratic members of congress at town hall meetings and, predictably, calling Obama a socialist. None of this should have been surprising, but the speed with which these tactics were abandoned, presumably because they accomplished nothing and tarred all opponents of health care with the same radical and nutty brush, was noteworthy.

While progressives can take some comfort in the failure of the right wing fringe to develop a broader appeal, the strength of the center has not been an entirely positive development for progressives. Some of the disappointment many progressives feel in the Obama presidency is because the Obama administration, in spite of its roots in progressive politics, has largely governed from the center.

Obama's transition from the candidate of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to being broadly appealing to the American center began during the campaign. Correspondingly, the general election campaign of 2008 may have been the beginning of the resurgence of the American center. The two national elections preceding 2008 had been extremely close and extremely divisive. These elections contributed to an eight year period of intense partisan fighting and an evenly and intensely divided electorate. In 2008 this changed. During this time, partisan rhetoric on the extreme left, while not as nasty, outrageous or dangerous as what the right wing has said during the last year or so, was strong and viciously critical of President Bush, his policies and those around him.

The 2008 election was different because the middle had quietly reasserted itself back into politics. The winner of that election was the candidate not who appealed most to his party's base, but who could speak most effectively to the ideological center. Republican candidate John McCain did not see this coming, so his effort to run a Bush era divisive and ideological campaign was almost completely unsuccessful, leaving him with very little support outside of his party's base. Obama, of course, sought to, and succeeded in, positioning himself as a centrist. The failure of McCain's divisive message to resonate beyond the base should have alerted Republican leaders to the resurgence of the center, but they seemed to have missed this clue.

The inability of the right wing to make their message appeal to the ideological center and the unwillingness of Republican strategists to seek to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate combine to ensure that Obama will remain relatively popular and, if these trends continue, win reelection in 2012. To make his presidency truly successful, however, Obama has to leverage his appeal to the political center to pass progressive legislation. For example, passing health care reform, under any circumstances will be an impressive accomplishment, but passing meaningful health care legislation while being viewed as governing from the center will be a paradigm shifting accomplishment.

The Republican Party has ceded the center to the Democrats and President Obama precisely when centrist politics are becoming more relevant than they have in years. The ideological center, in 2009, however, is defined more by disdain for the rhetoric and tactics of the right or the left than by a cohesive set of policy preferences. This provides Obama, who has successfully transitioned to a politician of the center, an historic opportunity to help redefine the center. For Obama to be a truly transformative president, he must govern as a progressive, but from the center, passing progressive legislation while maintaining a style and temperament that is moderate and calm.

Comments

[Car84]

The fact of the matter is that moderate politicians will rarely, if ever, be elected to a major public office. Moderates have no fire. Moderates attract little attention. Moderates cause no buzz. Moderates therefore are losers. The trick is to be hold onto your non-moderate base and be more successful than your opponent in appealing to the dopes in the middle who have the core principles of a weather vane.

Slippery McCain had no non-moderate base. All he had was a media that loved him because he was a moderate - the same media that threw him overboard right after they threw Hillary Clinton overboard the instant they realized they weren't obligated to drool over the Clintons for another 4 or 8 years, and should instead drink the Obama Kool-Aid - the same media that is now realizing Obama combines the incompetence of Jimmy Carter and the paranoia of Richard Nixon.

Republicans should go with non-moderates. Are there Democratic equivalents to Sens. Snowe and Collins? No. They get culled out because the Dems can't stand moderates, but love those who pretend at election time to be one.

[themodernleader]

So many of my writing colleagues cheer about governing from the Center without defining the Center. FDR did not govern from any center; however, he governed for the center. And the American people responded with their suppport and votes. Please educate me on your definition of the Center that the wise Obama is governing from. Also, Associate Professor Lincoln might be more convincing if he defined the terms he is using. What is left, right and center?

[Sportster2005]

The political center is not in sight. It is a figment of your imagination. It doesn't exist.

[Cosatjockomo]

Don't agree with you, but certainly neither political party is representing that group.

[SocialDemocracy]

"For Obama to be a truly transformative president, he must govern as a progressive, but from the center, passing progressive legislation while maintaining a style and temperament that is moderate and calm."

I suppose, but I see no evidence that Obama is a progressive. His administration is full of Wall St. hacks and free traders. He let the EFCA die in the Senate, if he gets everything he wants on health care, Americans will be required to pay premiums to private insurance companie, capping Wall St. bonuses is a gimmick, not regulation ...

We need a left political agenda now more than ever, including free universal health care, day care, and higher education, a month of paid vacation for every worker, paid sick leave ,paid maternity leave, closure of cold war era military bases around the world and an aggressive environmental policy.

However, all of the hope in the world won't change the fact that the Democratic Party will not pursue such an agenda. Obama is a centrist surrounded by center-right Democrats posing as something they are not.

[themodernleader]

This right wing--left wing dichotomy does not exist in nature. Americans who call themselves conservative want essentially the same government services as so called left wingers call for. The differences are excaberated by speical interests who want to preserve the status quo of plutocracy and aristocracy. The key unifying principle of all Americans is leavened opportunity that gives every American a shot at the American dream.
The purpose of leadership is to pull down the barriers to self realization, limitations on initiative, knowledge and skill. The meaning of democracy are the rules that favor the many rather than the domination by the few. All great leaders strive for those values or goals. "The [American] purpose is to enable the individual to attain the freedom {opportunity} and dignity, the fullness of life...." The traditional view is that status is the governing factor in life, that every person is born into the world in a position, determined at birth----Secretary of State Dean Acheson's press conference, January 26, 1949.

[jeanrenoir]

This post is totally on target. FDR governed from the center during the Depression, and was wildly popular as a result, because the center was made progressive by the outrages and excesses of the Republican Roaring Twenties, which nearly destroyed American capitalism, exactly as the outrages of Wall St. banks have nearly destroyed it again in the past year. "Progressives" need to get real and realize that the center is where it's at. "Progressives" should simply help Obama solidify a moderately progressive consensus in the center, instead of continually sniping at Obama from the left. Obama's doing a brilliant job of educating the center during the worst multi-level crisis America has faced since the era of World War II. Obama shrewdly understands that Americans will always applaud successful results, regardless of all the criticisms leveled at the proposals that led to the results. The healthcare debate will be totally forgotten if we get a decent healthcare system with a good public option. Ditto all our other current controversies, if Obama's results are good.

[FearlessFreep]

Was the National Recovery Administration "centrist"?

[Rick Bayan]

Desperate times require radical solutions, but those solutions can still come from the center. I consider myself a "radical moderate," meaning that I'd favor any legislation designed to benefit the greatest number of people (as opposed to favoring Wall Street plutocrats or poor people at everyone else's expense). If we want this Union of ours to survive, we have to start thinking like a nation rather than as a patchwork of special interests. Obama gets it. I give him credit for risking his "street cred" and the ire of his progressive base to govern from the center in a time of crisis. Maybe Obama will emerge as a "radical moderate."

Rick Bayan

[DocTwain]

Lies. FDR did not govern from the "center," because the "center" is a mythical triangulation that does not exist.

When you have a problem, you try to find the best, most cost effective, most logical solution.
Our problem is rampant plutocratic corruption that is strangling the middle class.
The solution is to fight the cartels.
Obama's response is to further entrench their power.

Centrist health care or banking bills that simply enshrine plutocratic graft and cartelist price-fixing and market gaming are not solutions, but insults to the People.

Obama is shrewd, all right, but on behalf of AHIP and Goldman Sachs and pharma. He has done a terrible job educating the people. He has deliberately obfuscated and destroyed the real, cost effective solutions that will eradicate our problems--Medicare for All, and breaking up the big banks under a regime of aggressive, consumer-oriented regulation.

Obama is not a real Democrat.
Go puff your sellout Centrist somewhere else.

[themodernleader]

Dr. Mitchell: The persistent fitting of Americans into a procrustean bed of some specious ideological continuum leads only to distrust, misunderstanding and flawed scholarship and leadership. You should consider another theoretical construct for explaining the declining momentum of this Republic.
By your definitions within the continuum, Obama is not of the center of American politics. Ordinary Americans call for increased opportunity and economic justice incuding a fair competitive business environment and fairer taxation. Obama is to the right of these values-goals of the middle class within your non-existent continuum. (Please entertain these comments as constructive criticisms, not in any other way. There are other constructs that could be much more predictable and valid.)

[treat2day]

---I still disagree with people labeling Obama as a progressive! None of his writings or speeches indicate a progressive ideology.

Blacks would stand beside Hispanics and vote conservative if it were not for human right issues democrats dominate in ideology.

This progressive chant came from the right wing during the campaign and if GOP say something often enough--the public caves to the idea. Progressives fight with Obama as a result of this belief that he has stopped being one of them.

Besides he is there to govern not campaign.

[AngelaQuattrano]

Here's my view:

I am a progressive. Obama is a conservative. Republicans are fascists.

[anthonyve]

That's a pretty good liine up.
And notice, it puts the Prsesident right in the centre.
The progressives are a minority towards the left end of the political spectrum. No President, or any mordern democratic leader anywhere for that matter, can govern from the ends of the spectrum - neither end.
All modern leaders have to givern from the centre, and their policies must favor the middle class, because, ultimately, that's where the ballot box power is and always will be.
It's a relevent truism that in any debate that cannot be resolved empirically, the truth alway lies somewhere near the middle.

[Schaef]

The notion that Obama is governing from the center is ridiculous. The only centrist aspect of it is inasmuch as Republicans have tied themselves more and more to the idea of big expensive government.

Obama's legacy to date can be categorized in two ways: liberal agendas he has enacted and liberal agendas he has neglected. His centrism has existed only in his branding, which is now being further promoted in articles like this.

[hangdogit]

"His centrism has existed only in his branding..."

I suspect that the additional troops long-since deployed to Afghanistan may respectfully disagree.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/obama-and-the-political-c_b_329763.html"

[jeanrenoir]

Do your best to get real. Your "progressivism" would have been crushed in the last election. Do you want to be holy and "pure" or in power with the possibility of moving things slowly but surely in a relatively progressive direction, as Obama is doing in the ruins left by Bush's far-right agenda? No one but a pragmatist like FDR (NOT Eugene Debs!!) or Obama can succeed in American politics.

[SocialDemocracy]

Don't dis Debs.

More importantly, Roosevelt was a polarizing figure who regulary and viciously castigated the wealthy, the banks, Wall St. and manufacturing capital. In fact, he invited their ire. His political genius was to appeal to the anger of the working class and poor by talking left while governing from the enter. Unlike Obama, however, he unabashedly sought working class support and intentionally alienated economic elites.

It may have been a good deal during the New Deal, but the American working class, unlike the working class of western Europe who made alliances with socialist and social democratic parties in the 19th and 20th centuries, is paying many times over for making their bed with the corporatist Democratic Party.

No universal health care, no universal day care, no system of free or virtually free higher education, no paid sick leave, no paid vacation, labor laws undermine collective bargaining, and the list goes on ...

[NordicSci]

There is a profound difference in how this administration is governing compared to the last. But if all you pay attention to is the headlines you will miss it. The difference is in the day-to-day operation of the various agencies and departments. This matters a great deal, particularly in environmental and social policies and how the existing laws and regulations are administered -- they are actually being administered! You can complain perhaps that on the high profile issues (most of which involve getting legislation through Congress) Obama seems too centrist for many progressives, but this is in large part because legislative action requires the cooperation and support of large coalitions of interests to get it done. You won't accomplish much in that arena by appealing exclusively to the left wing.

[anthonyve]

I totally agree. This is a very precise summation of the current reality.
Well said.

[chrisincalif]

It seems to me that Clinton already redefined the center - dismally to the right. He cut the social safety net, and worse, brought us NAFTA, which shipped our manufacturing base to Asia.

There's only one thing the vast majority of our people need more than anything else: PUBLICLY FINANCED ELECTIONS. Demand it.

[SocialDemocracy]

Clinton destroyed what was left of the appearance of a liberal Democratic Party.

[DocTwain]

Clinton was a thief and friend of usurers and smiling Wall Street criminals sharpening their knives and ponzi schemes and plans of pillage and extortion to harvest the shrinking wealth of the suffering workers of America

[Cosatjockomo]

If we go with publicly financed elections we have to put limits on spending. (the Sup Ct will strike that down without a const. amendment). We'll need to condition the issuance of broadcast licenses on providing free political advertisements. The biggest issue will be who gets the public money. Only dems and reps? Most legislation like this ties funding not to the current candidate's popularity, but on how a political party did in the previous election. This leaves any developing political movement out in the cold for ever. It's really only necessary to limit the amounts contributed by individuals (which we already do) and then eliminate the PAC exceptions, ban all corporate communication with elected representatives (their employees and managers are still free to act as individuals)(a wrongly decided SupCt decision says corps have same free speech rights as humans), and ban professional lobbyists.

[jgzeger]

Agreed. For all the pre-election rhetoric of "change you can believe in," Obama has governed from the political center which is no different than what Hillary Clinton would have done.

[Knowitall]

The change involved moving from right of center to left of center. There IS a difference.

[ldmason45]

I think Obama and the extreme left are totally clueless as to what most center Americans want and need. We have had to endure 8 yrs of repubs extreme right hate spewing only to elect the far left hate spewing dems to replace them. I was a dem all my life and registered as an Independent after the 2008 elections. I regret having ever voted for and supporting Obama. I was dumb enough to believe his promises of "change". I would love to elect someone who cared more about the citizens they are suppose to serve, rather than how they can use their political clout to make sure they have a cushy future. We just traded Haliburton for GE. The names have changed but their games are the same. We lose.

[Brendan H]

Trying to tie Obama to the "extreme left" is really laughable. He is about as moderate as humanly possible.

[SocialDemocracy]

Who or what is the "extreme" left?

[petalsoft]

Great read Lincoln! I have to agree...it's now about getting people to understand the importance of government in their lives. Hopefully when the Health care bill passes with a public option we will see a great transition into a new Central Progressive movement

[WilliamBradford]

Get everyone a red flag and start marching in really straight lines.

When a majority of the people wake each day to appreciate the importance of the federal government in their lives, it will be time to shutter up the monuments, turn the Congress into a waterpark and just become a state of China.

At least I like the food...

[Handyman2]

Your response confirms for me the fact that you know little, if anything, about history or political science. Before following your lemming (right winger) bretheran over the cliff, you might take a little time and learn something about the subject matter. Otherwise, you will spend the nights trembling in your bed awaiting the arrival of the boogey man who lurks beneath your mattress. You know not whereof you speak!

[Garybot]

It's like being in a nightmare that never ends.

Who would have imagined that so many were hoping to destroy the greatest country the world has ever seen? Who would have imagined that all we have been through, and all the brave lives that have been given for our freedom would be given no value, and thrown away like garbage?

The children who have been given everything and been told that they are everything have grown up, and now cannot exist without the nanny state. The future looks very dark.

[Polly]

I'm sorry the center is wishy - washy they vote one way one time and vote another way the next time.
These voters have no core, no real beliefs. The base of the right is fringe and the base of the left is working hard for the middle class - this is the difference! The left can be considered the center only because it must continue to foster Bills that help the working American.

[Rick Bayan]

So moderates vote one way one time and another way another time? Maybe that means 1) we like to contemplate individual issues rather than think like ideologues, and 2) we don't have a party of our own, so naturally we have to turn to whichever party better represents our viewpoint at the moment. I should have said, "We don't have our own party YET." (I'm working on it.)

As for moderates being "wishy-washy," let me disabuse you. (Good song title there.) It takes twice the courage to formulate ideas and policies that draw fire from BOTH ideological camps. We moderates live in the crossfire, but I've begun to like the sound of bullets whooshing by. FYI, moderates don't have to be spineless or noncommittal. Ben Franklin is a good example of a moderate who was also a revolutionary. And the way Congress has been selling itself to lobbyists from both the right and the left, I'm turning into a revolutionary moderate myself.

Anyway, you "progressives" and conservatives need to gain a little respect for your more nuanced and unbiased counterparts in the great underrepresented middle.

Rick Bayan
http://newmoderate.com