Where Is The Center?
Ever since Barack Obama's election in 2008 there has been an ongoing discussion of where the political center is in America. Conservatives and Republican leaders have made the contention that this is a Center-Right country and that the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's permanently shifted the political center of gravity to the right. I think this is a misreading of the current mood and strangely enough, conservative pundit David Brooks helps make my argument this morning in describing the politics of our President.
The fact is, Obama is as he always has been, a center-left pragmatic reformer. Every time he tries to articulate a grand philosophy -- from his book "The Audacity of Hope" to his joint-session health care speech last September -- he always describes a moderately activist government restrained by a sense of trade-offs...He has tried to find this balance in a town without an organized center -- in a town in which liberals chair the main committees and small-government conservatives lead the opposition. He has tried to do it in a context maximally inhospitable to his aims.
So let me take two issues to elucidate why I think the majority wants a "moderately activist government"--a center-left coalition.
Financial Reform-The revelation this morning that Lehman Brothers was cooking the books before its fall is such a clear sign that the banking sector needs aggressive regulation, that I'm not sure how the Republican's can fight Chris Dodd's bill in the next few months.
According to the report, Lehman used what amounted to financial engineering to temporarily shuffle $50 billion of troubled assets off its books in the months before its collapse in September 2008 to conceal its dependence on leverage, or borrowed money. Senior Lehman executives, as well as the bank's accountants at Ernst & Young, were aware of the moves, according to Mr. Valukas, the chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block and a former federal prosecutor, who filed the report in connection with Lehman's bankruptcy case.
This is essentially the same trick that Enron used to disguise its shaky financial condition and it makes clear that the New York Federal Reserve Bank, an entity owned by the Big Banks themselves, should not be left with the oversight of those very same banks.
Health Care Reform-The Big Lie of Mitch McConnell and the Republicans is that the majority of Americans "overwhelmingly" do not want Obama's Health Care reform passed. But a new poll from The Economist says that's not true.
Barack Obama's effort to breathe new life into the health care reform debate by hosting a bipartisan summit of Congressional leaders last week may have been modestly successful. There is a small margin of support for the health care reform proposals put forth by the Obama Administration, with 53% supporting them and 47% opposing.
As most of you know, I believe (like my mentor John Seely Brown) that innovation happens at the edge. Since early 2008, we have been discussing ways to allow our Federalist system of government to encourage innovation:in education, alternative energy, transportation and health care--all under the rubric of New Federalism. But we also are aware that $200 Billion corporations like J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs operate at a global scale and need to be regulated by a strong Federal government independent of the regulatory capture of the Reagan-Bush eras.
The same is true for health care. The Stock of Wellpoint, the nations largest health insurance provider (Blue Cross parent) has more than doubled in a year as the hopes for Health Care Reform faded.
Like the Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs, Wellpoint owners think they have Washington wired in a way to defeat any reform. Even if Obama pushes through the Senate Bill, their lobbyists have inserted language that would prevent an individual state in setting up a Single Payer system to compete with them.
Somehow progressives have to reconcile these two themes of a strong Federal regulatory authority over Big Business, combined with a desire to allow individual states and cities to come up with innovative solutions at the edge to the pressing problems of educating our kids, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and providing a just health care system for all of their citizens. This balancing act is not easy for many in Congress who think they know best what is right for the regions. But it is the essence of the new Center-Left coalition.
Jon,
Part of the problem is illuminated in a snippet of your quote from the Brooks column:
There are very few liberals in Congress, and vanishingly few of them are in charge of the main committees.
Let's don't continue to let Brooks and his ilk set the parameters of the debate.
March 12, 2010 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Curious. How is a 'political center' in America determined given that the majority of Americans are a-political?
March 12, 2010 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent question!
March 12, 2010 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
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February 21, 2011 2:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
That is the center!
March 15, 2010 7:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
lol, it makes a lot of sense. In a country run by salesmen and not statesmen, where can we find them? In the centre?! lol. I love what you said, but on a serious note and entertainment aside, we all have to see that this is actually becming a serious concern, because the politicians are becoming rather too attached to their own centres!
October 11, 2010 7:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
In a nation run by salesmen instead of statesmen the center and the lowest common denominator are one and the same.
Our political system is like a very old mattress and our two houses of representatives like a very overweight couple.
You will always find them in the center. They can no longer crawl their way out.
March 12, 2010 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really good point. When did the classification 'statesman' disappear from our very language. Rather than working for the good of the state, American politicians now work only for themselves.
March 12, 2010 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope some time is taken to debate Phelicity's point because it's an excellent one. A whole big bunch of Americans don't even vote. Of the ones who do most have a passing interest in politics. Hey, life's short. It probably makes sense for people to be more interested in arts or sports or science.
Rather than ask if we're a right or left country we need to ask the real question: are people being properly rewarded for their work with improving living standards? In the end, this is all that should matter. Provide people with improving living standards and you will win their loyalty. I happen to agree with J-Tap on some ways of getting there. The problem is proving it to some very skeptical people.
March 12, 2010 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, let us ask the goverment.
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January 10, 2011 4:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is no "center" any more in American politics, because the so-called "left-right spectrum" has been an increasingly irrelevant anachronism for decades. Nixon, Reagan, the Clintons and Bushes all understood this. Obama articulates it probably as well as any of them. Americans don't want a government "from the left" or "from the right"; they want a government that functions effectively. Hidebound and lazy-as-hell journalists, on the other hand, shovel out the same old lines, regardless of circumstance or situation, endlessly recycling worn-out and obsolete cliches from the past.
March 12, 2010 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where is Mort Sahl, now that we really need him?
March 12, 2010 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the telephone?
March 13, 2010 2:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess. Talking to Bob Newhart?
March 13, 2010 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with the 'center' is the same problem with 'compromise', a politician pursuing either course:
(1) does not get the left or right wing base fired up to vote or donate. This is why Republicans love to get some anti-gay or anti-choice referendum on an election year ballot to fire up their bigoted base and give them a reason to show up and vent their hate at the polls. Extreme positions get face time and exposure on TeeVee. Compromise is surrender.
(2) compromisers and problem solvers shake up the status quo. This threatens donations from increasingly very non-center, usually right wing/corporate, big money lobbyists who want no change to a system that favors them.
March 12, 2010 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
You got it. The more provocative the story, the wider (and the longer milking) the coverage gets. (I particularly get sick to my stomach when a spam-head literally drools, slurping in anticipation of a human tragedy to develop while she awaits the hopefully prurient outcome of a car chase, a murder, a missing child...)
March 13, 2010 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jon, I didn't read your post. I am boycotting TPM Cafe posts about David Brooks. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.
March 12, 2010 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
ROTFLMAO!
March 13, 2010 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
apropos the general drift of this discussion and the current concern about health care reform one hears the mantra "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". Whenever someone like Ed Schultz (one of my heroes) gets upset at someone like Nancy Pelosi (for rejecting the reintroduction of the public option into the House version of the bill) the guests typically say "well Ed don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good", and poor Ed, shrugs and does not have a good answer to that insipid formulaic retort. Well here is the answer that everyone should give to that nonsense: "I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Nobody is asking for perfection. Even a single payer system would not be perfection. What we want is the Good to be the enemy of the worse
March 12, 2010 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's quite good.
March 13, 2010 5:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please! If you are useing new poll to suppliment your craveing for conforation of your moderately activist government, you are on a very slippery deck in windtips.
Your amature President has the same crew that lead Goldman Sachs working for him.
How can you rationalize another simtulus when the first 700 Billion is still not spent?
When is enough, enough?
Maybe when your freinds have no where else to hide the money?
March 13, 2010 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Your amateur President has the same crew that lead Goldman Sachs working for them"
According to your party, that is a good thing! Failed or not! Isn't that how we got Bush?
I bet you can never answer this question.
When was the last year a Republican ever submitted a balanced budget?
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I agree with you that progressives have to reconcile these two themes of a strong Federal regulatory authority over Big Business, combined with a desire to allow individual states and cities to come up with innovative solutions at the edge to the pressing problems of educating our kids, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and providing a just health care system for all of their citizens. This balancing act is not easy for many in Congress who think they know best what is right for the regions. But it is the essence of the new Center-Left coalition.
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Really good point. When did the classification 'statesman' disappear from our very language. Rather than working for the good of the state, American politicians now work only for themselves.
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