The Anti-Broder Center
Mark: Something I’ve been noticing lately is that the perjorative “centrist” has been getting applied with increasing regularity to an entirely new group of people by both left and right. Historically, it’s been a term that referred to establishment elites who, while having any number of letters after their name (D, R, Ind.) ultimately have a fairly unified ideology. I’m thinking here of people like David Broder, Joe Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, and Ben Nelson. Beyond that, to the extent this group practices journalism, it is most often criticized for instituting a sort of faux-neutrality under the guise of objectivity. Recently, though, the term has been flying fast and furious at people – often dissident conservatives and libertarians – who have next to nothing in common with this group beyond an equal distaste for the most vocal elements of movement conservatism and movement liberalism. Indeed, on the political map, this group of so-called “centrists” is almost the polar opposite of the Broderites: where Broderites tend to be in favor of restrictions on any number of social issues (e.g., the War on Drugs, smoking bans, video game ratings, etc.), the other “centrists” are mostly radical libertarians on these issues; where Broderites tend to be hawkish advocates of American exceptionalism, the other “centrists” are largely non-interventionists. On the welfare state, the Broderites are incrementalists – always willing to support “reforms,” but only as long as the reforms are small and unambitious; by contrast these other “centrists” (at least to the minimal extent you and I are representative) are willing to support reforms, but only if those reforms are significant and structural, while also fiscally responsible.
If the “centrist” perjorative is going to be thrown this way, it seems worth asking whether (and how) this new group of so-called centrists can claim the mantle of “makers of conventional wisdom” from the Broders and Liebermans of the world and eventually create a new conventional wisdom.
Erik:That’s an interesting thought – “a new conventional wisdom.” I wouldn’t have thought of it that way because that’s often not how a political fight is viewed, but it’s a very good way to frame this issue nonetheless.
I have noticed that more and more positions that are not in line with either the conservative or liberal movement are derided as “centrist.” But even beyond the movement this can be the case. You have non-movement conservatives who are very socially conservative who will use that label against more liberal conservatives like myself. The same thing goes on in the left.
I think part of the problem here is that people latch on to an ideology and then don’t allow their thinking to run its course to the natural implications of that ideology. So you want more than just limited government, you want almost every shred of the state removed from our daily lives – fine, but how will that actually play out beyond the theoretical system? So-called centrists are labeled as such because they admit that there is no viable means to achieving the sort of minimalist state envisioned by many on the right, and also because they quite fairly observe that leadership on the right has never made much of an effort to actually implement small-government reforms to begin with.
When you actually look at the system we have, and then try to draw a policy roadmap toward the system you want, you start to realize that it’s much more complicated than simply calling for less statism. Especially in matters such as healthcare, where I find many of the free market arguments lacking in terms of practicality. They are very theoretically sensible, but when it all comes down to it, a better way in my opinion is implementing as many market-friendly reforms as possible (competition, interstate sale of insurance, possibly health-status insurance, etc.) while still having the state involved in one form or another, either as a reinsurer or as a provider of a strong safety net for the less fortunate.
But even mentioning that the private market and the government can actually work together to provide a good system for Americans is a surefire way to be labeled a centrist and written off. It either has to be all free market all the time or something approaching single-payer.
Mark: Or at least in the direction of single-payer.
I think a lot of this problem stems from the fact that we continue to insist on viewing the political spectrum as necessarily linear, with Broderism defining the center, Limbaugh-ism defining the right, and Michael Moore-ism defining the Left. The result of this warped view is that anyone who isn’t easily pegged as Left or Right is immediately decried as a Broderite centrist. Of course, in terms of national politicians, this linear view tends to have quite a bit going for it, as Paul Krugman pointed out a few months back.
But in terms of how individual Americans outside of the beltway act, I’m not at all certain that things are so linear. Sure, there are no doubt a fair share of Broder-types outside the beltway (someone’s electing Joe Lieberman, after all), but in a nation of more than 300 million people, it’s difficult to believe that there isn’t a very significant contingent of people who don’t fit particularly well in either political coalition, but who also aren’t terribly big fans of what passes for centrism in the linear view of politics. This contingent is virtually ignored in large-scale politics, and winds up with little to no representation. But it’s a significant contingent nonetheless, and every so often, a third party candidate seems to emerge who tries to mobilize it: John Anderson, Ross Perot, and this year in New Jersey, my candidate of choice, Chris Daggett. These candidates, when they emerge, typically peak around 15-20 percent in the polls, although their final vote tallies often dwindle on election day (thanks in part, I suspect, to their lack of the infrastructure necessary for a good “ground game” on election day). So while this group of voters is not remotely large enough to win elections on its own, it is probably almost as large (if not as large) as centrists of the Broder variety.
What is so strange to me is that the Broder-type centrists have had ample representation in one or (usually) both of the major political parties for quite some time, while these other so-called centrists wind up having to rely on third party candidates who could no longer get the time of day in either major party. Joe Lieberman gets to stay in the Democratic Party; Arlen Specter got to stay in the GOP for decades, and then had no qualms putting a (D) next to his name; but folks like Anderson, Daggett, and for that matter Bob Barr felt compelled to abandon both major parties before engaging in their respective runs.
Stranger still is that I suspect partisans on both sides would much rather have people like Anderson, Perot, and Daggett in their coalition than people like Lieberman, Specter, and Snowe. Yet it’s the former group that feels least comfortable in coalition politics, while the latter group always has a sizable representation in one or both parties and, as the swing votes on any given issue, effectively dictates the way the country is run.
It seems that a big chunk of the problem in American politics isn’t, as partisans seem to think, that the American center needs to be moved left or right, East or West, but instead that the center needs to be moved North. By focusing on the East-West battle, however, partisans simply assure that the all-too-critical center of American politics stays in the (figurative) South.
Erik: So do you think that this is all a matter of misunderstanding? That partisans on the left and the right both make accusations of centrism for the wrong reasons? It seems to me that when someone on the left criticizes someone on the right of centrism they tend to tack on a perjorative like “cowardly.” This despite the fact that they probably hold more in common with those people than with hardcore right-wingers. This accusation of cowardice seems misguided if what you’re saying is true.
Mark: I don’t know that it’s necessarily a misunderstanding. The cowardice line of attack (and the related “the only thing in the middle of the road are….” line of attack) is usually lazy, but it’s also easy to see where it comes from. Certainly, from the perspective of the partisan true believer who sincerely thinks that the purported philosophy underlying his movement is perfectly consistent with every position his movement advocates, anyone who finds themselves on a different side of the issue from both movements would look like a squishy centrist without any ideological mooring. And let’s be honest, the establishment centrists (as opposed to the group of outsider centrists) don’t often seem to have any kind of principled mooring beyond “let’s split the difference between the two movements.” Still, at some point, the centrism that now defines the political establishment probably had some clearly principled moorings, or at least consisted of pundits and politicians who individually had some clearly principled moorings.
Mike at the Big Stick has made the point on a number of occasions that he hates the word “centrist” because it’s usually inaccurate, and that he’d prefer people say that Person A is “conservative on Issue X and liberal on Issue Y.” I have some objections to this formulation, but I think it also makes an important point about the nature of the unrepresented centrists. Where the Broderite centrists are centrists in the sense that on almost every issue, they will agree 50% with the movement liberals and 50% with the movement conservatives, the unrepresented centrists are centrists only in the sense that they will agree with liberal on about 1/3 of the issues, with conservatives on about another 1/3, and on the remaining 1/3 will agree with neither. Neither our discourse nor our political representation recognizes this distinction.
Erik: Very true. How much of this is also simply about wars within the parties themselves? I just wrote a post about coalitions which got me thinking that the centrist claim is, often as not, a way to simply undermine an opposing coalition within the larger party. Of course other terms like “RINO” are used even more often, but in the same context.
Mark: Quite a bit of it, I’m sure. But it’s pretty easy to sympathize with the movement-types in those battles, given that, as the Krugman piece I linked to previously notes, the way in which these factions line up in our current politics turns out to be very linear. So a Collins or a Snowe really is virtually indistinguishable from a Lieberman or a Baucus; in some cases, the (D) may even be more conservative than the (R) on just about all issues….at that point, the term RINO seems quite appropriate. The trouble is that there is this whole group of untapped so-called centrists who are virtually unrepresented in politics, and who don’t fit on that linear view of American politics. Perhaps they are ill-suited for coalition politics, whereas Broderite centrists, with their flexibility across issues, can form a necessary but untrustworthy element of any given political coalition. A few weeks ago, the RNC proposed a sort of litmus test for its candidates requiring that they abide by 7 out of 10 vague principles; it’s not difficult to see the DNC doing something similar. Because of the vagaries of these principles, it would not be difficult for a given Broderite to fit within 70% of each parties hypothetical litmus tests. It would, however, be impossible for many of these other so-called “centrists” to fit within 70% of either party’s principles, no matter how vague.
Erik: Then I think the question becomes, where do these unrepresented centrists/independents turn?
Mark: I’m not sure there’s many places for them to turn. This group is too disorganized to ever mount any kind of sustained third party effort, although you will continue to get the occasional politician who can make a decent independent showing on the strength of their ability to appeal to this group. Certainly, it would help if more members of this group could rise to influential positions within the beltway media, although I have no idea how they might succeed in doing that. I suspect the real answer is that the best that can be done is to get involved in grassroots and direct lobbying efforts on single issues or limited sets of issues. This may in fact be this group’s biggest advantage over the establishment centrists, in that the establishment centrists are ill-equipped for activism, while the outsider “centrists,” with their support for maximalist or near-maximalist positions on any given issue, are quite well-suited for activism on multiple fronts.
Here is my problem with “centrism”.
It’s 1770. What is the centrist position on Revolution against the British?
It’s 1850. What is the centrist position on slavery?
It’s 1900. What is the centrist position on women’s suffrage?
It’s 1930. What is the centrist position on desegregation?
It’s 1985. What is the centrist position on gay marriage?
It’s 2002. What is the centrist position on Operation Iraqi Freedom?
It’s 2010. What is the centrist position on the War in Afghanistan?Report
Right. Which is why I think it’s appropriate to use it as a perjorative – but only when it’s being used to describe someone who has little to say on a given issue beyond “let’s do it, but let’s do it half-assed.” That the term is getting thrown around to describe people who take rather strong positions on any given issue but whose overall preferences don’t fit well within either of the two main camps is, well, bizarre. But given that the former group of centrists seem to have an abnormal amount of influence over the direction of the country, and there seems to be this tendency to throw the perjorative out at anyone who doesn’t easily fit on the linear conception of politics, maybe everyone would be better served if the latter group somehow managed to redefine what the “center” means.Report
This may be where I am completely out of the loop but I have never seen “centrist” used as anything but a term that one uses for a moderate that one is fond of.
A “moderate” is, of course, what you call a moderate that you aren’t fond of.Report
It may depend on the circles in which one is travelling. I’ve seen the two words used more or less interchangeably. When the media talks about Republicans that the establishment likes, they use the word “moderate Republicans.” Meanwhile, when liberals used to go after Lieberman, they were pretty fond of “centrist” as a perjorative, and I’ve definitely been seeing it being thrown (by both sides) at just about anyone who is not a die-hard, Tea Partier or a proud liberal of late (although that may just be perceptions).
But to me, the term has always implied a sort of crass triangulation that is unhinged from any underlying philosophy beyond figuring out the middle position on every given issue.Report
That depends on the person. I’m certain some are just wishy-washy, while others fit the liberal/conservative label depending on the issue. However, I would guess that most are just people who wish that others would seriously get over all their ideological bull and and start looking for a solution that works instead of one that fits the party line. Sometimes the best solution is to take a bit from the right, and a bit from the left, and combine them into a solution that no one is ideologically happy with, but that works.Report
“However, I would guess that most are just people who wish that others would seriously get over all their ideological bull and and start looking for a solution that works instead of one that fits the party line.”
The problem is that there are also folks out there that claim that the solution that was attempted that the other people are saying failed only did not “work” because it had insuffient support.
We needed more funding.
We needed more volunteers.
We needed fewer selfish people.
So on and so forth. This solution *WOULD* have worked if only people like you weren’t WRECKING EVERYTHING.
When you are working with people who refuse to acknowledge any level of funding/volunteerism or any lack of selfish folks that would result in a statement like “well, okay, maybe my fundamental assumptions were flawed”, this can manifest itself into a problem very much like the one we face today.Report
Very good post, Jaybird.
There is the old saying, “the center will not hold.” The Bible also notes that the lukewarm will be spit out. Sometimes the “centrist” approach will not work.Report
Hrm…Curious about your thought on the main point of the dialogue, which is that there is a group of more or less unrepresented people who are deemed “centrists” but who are not “centrist” on any given issue.Report
I’m curious, too.
Mike’s list of conservative voices:
that weren’t ‘wacko’ also strikes me as a list of centrists, or people who have the potential to frame a ‘centrist’ position. I’d add others, including Sullivan and many of the bloggers here.Report
“Where the Broderite centrists are centrists in the sense that on almost every issue, they will agree 50% with the movement liberals and 50% with the movement conservatives, the unrepresented centrists are centrists only in the sense that they will agree with liberal on about 1/3 of the issues, with conservatives on about another 1/3, and on the remaining 1/3 will agree with neither.”
I would say that the above quote is ‘central” to my reaction. Obviously no one (or practically no one) will ever agree with another 100%. But those whose political beliefs cause them to agree with one fairly consistent “side” 50% or 33% of the time are bound to alienate those bases. Such a tendency can only induce disdain among the more cohesive “right” and “left” members. The fact is that anyone who expresses just a single political opinion that is anathema to someone else can earn their lasting disapproval even if the two might agree on just about every other major issue. Case in point: Lou Dobbs apparently just changed his mind on how to treat illegal immigration. Many of his previous supporters will now probably turn away even though he may be unchanged in his other beliefs. When a pundit or a politician is on “the opposite side” on some key issues, he will likely not be trusted by people on the other side even though he may share opinions with them too.
As for centrists being unrepresented, perhaps that’s the nature of the beast because they swivel from side to side without uniformity and therefore cannot coalesce with each other? On the other hand, there is a recognition of the centrist/moderate “position” as a general category anyway….Report
Just to add on a slightly different tack: when discussing the electorate that is “centrist” and therefore may consider itself unrepresented by the political platforms or the actual politicians in either major party, I would say they are in the same position as those on the fringes who also consider themselves unrepresented. What is happening in Washington is that both Republicans and Democrats in power are becoming a megaparty that rolls along, servicing the huge government (and globalist corporate) structures. Oh, of course there are differences and votes sometimes split along party lines, but no matter who is in elected power, the department, agencies, bureaus, and moneymen, etc. have a continuity and influence that trumps elections. The government is like King Kong — so big that politicians are are afraid not to feed it. It has a life of its own. It will resist at all costs being downsized. So, I’m not sure that centrists are any more deprived of political power than others. The megaparty is the servant of the the monster it created and continues to expand. That doesn’t leave a lot of space for listening to John and Jane Q. Public back home.
Nevertheless, I would prefer that the Republican party returned to conservative values and left so-called liberal or progressive values to the Democrats. Then there would be clear difference and we could vote accordingly. Those who prefer to pick and choose form a smorgasboard from each side would eiher have to hold their nose and choose the side with which they feel most aligned or would have to see if they could field a third-party candidate who could differentiate him or herself enough from the tendency for any candidate to go to the center in the general election. It would be great if we could have three serious candidates who would represent right, middle, and left with integrity.Report
Well I think you guys touched on it, but the biggest problem I have with these “centrists” is that they are far more establishment figures who pretend to be above the fray because of “faux neutrality” who try to find a position in between L’s and C’s. Broder especially can’t ever seem to bring himself to say one side may have more facts on their side. It is the attachment to their place in the establishment that leads Broder types to view everything as a political game and threw a tiny window of their self-defined conventional wisdom.Report
Exactly. Broder has written, more than once, that a piece of legislation has to be good because people on both the right and left are unhappy about it. To me, this is the height of stupidity. The issue is what legislation will accomplish what it’s supposed to do for the betterment of the country, not compromise just for the hell of it, or to slap one or both bases down.Report
Yes. When one’s political philosophy is predicated upon the answer to the question “Before I answer your question, what is everybody else saying?”, one can reasonably be expected to have nothing useful to say.Report
I hate to say so, but Jaybird nails it is fifty words or less: words like radical, , centrist, pragmatic, and even right and left are more useful for political demagoguery than political analysis. Example: Obama was know as a pragmatic , centrist during his campaign.Report
Perhaps the meaning of ‘centrist’ is changing into an alternative to ‘conservative,’ rapidly becoming a pejorative. The same happened to ‘progressive’ when ‘liberal’ also became a smear word.
Politically, ‘centrist’ used to be pejorative, or so it seems to my feel of its use. But it also represented someone who voted bi-partisan; who’d abandon ship (yes, that’s bad) and vote with the other party. Maybe the second part, the ‘vote with the other party’ part has become more important. Politically, our nation needs to become less bi-polar and more bi-partisan. Politics is an analog art, like film and tape recording, not an on/off binary system. We forget that because there are only two ‘real’ political parties in this country and we vote things up or down. A spectrum of political philosophy, from Liberal to Progressive to Centrist to Conservative is okay by me.
Language evolves to fit the need. I’m sure there’s a fancy word for this phenomena that now escapes me; I’d welcome it.Report
If I may make a callback here…
Remember this summer when you invited Dan Riehl to take part in a debate about the future of American conservatism? I reacted to that news with a post that you may really REALLY want to re-think that invitation because Riehl is, to put it charitably, not a good person. My comment of warning got deleted, with Scott Payne declaring he was going to be extra-vigilant of ad hominem attacks.
Well, we know how the debate went and where the “unfortunate fallout” – Scott’s words – fell. (Has Robert S. McCain ever issued a correction for saying Conor F. attended Columbia?)
Well, the man LOOG invited over, let’s take a look at what he’s thinking: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/12/sullivan-stfu.html
My warning was not an ad hominem attack – sometimes a bad person really is a bad person.Report
“it’s difficult to believe that there isn’t a very significant contingent of people who don’t fit particularly well in either political coalition, but who also aren’t terribly big fans of what passes for centrism in the linear view of politics. This contingent is virtually ignored in large-scale politics, and winds up with little to no representation.”
As a member of said contingent, I agree with most of your points here: it’s a larger group than political discussions give credit for, it’s almost completely unrepresented in national politics, and the political system would produce better outcomes if it recognized these things. As a (former) poli sci grad student, I would suggest that such a disenfranchised segment is inevitable in a stable two-party system, and I don’t think there is much we can do about that. The nature of ideology is that it will (for most political practitioners) substitute for thought rather than supplement thought; and the unthinking adherence to group partisanship, coupled with a bipolar ideological environment, will inevitably leave a significant (but usually powerless) “thoughtful” minority out in the cold.
When the commentariat discussed Obama’s strong draw among “moderates”, what they generally failed to identify was Obama’s particular appeal to this disenfranchised group. I voted for him, despite my disagreements with his mainstream-liberal philosophies, because for once I was looking at a presidential candidate who wasn’t talking down to me, wasn’t spouting ideological bullshit like Old Faithful, and wasn’t captive to his party echo chamber. That was the first time I cast a vote for president. I’m 39 years old, well-educated, and politically aware. It took twenty goddamned years for the system to put a candidate out there who wasn’t a horrific lesser-of-two-weevils option.
People ask me, “How can you not vote? One side must be better than the other.” It’s hard to get them to understand that, despite my political views being very non-radical, neither party is within 50 billion miles of promoting the policies and governance I could actually support, and neither party gives a good goddamn about my perspectives. I have no leverage, I have no voice, they don’t care, and I can’t be motivated to get out there and actually make a statement of support for an ideological asshole *every time* I go to the polls. So here we sit. Good luck finding a solution. I sure haven’t.Report
Mind if I ask what some of your political viewpoints are? In other words, how do you fit into the centrist camp? Just curious about what kind of policies would rev up your political enthusiasm.
I voted for the libertarian candidate last time, although he didn’t entirely match my own views. But I was not about to vote for either McCain or Obama. Generally few candidates excite me either, but I have voted in every election since I turned eighteen. Given that there are rarely candidates I can totally support, I usually select the candidate I think would do the least harm.Report
But you did vote down-ticket, I hope? Even if it’s for third-party candidates (who often can have a real chance at the municipal level) or only in nonpartisan races, I really consider this far more important than voting for President.
As someone active in local and state politics, I feel like we’re all way to focused on national politics, ignoring the fact that the county commission, state attorney, etc. have more influence over our day-to-day lives than Congress or the President. Unless you are in the military, anyway.Report
I love these discussions you guys have periodically. Would it be too much to ask for you to tag them separately than normal posts so readers can find them more easily?Report
I tend towards the Broderite centrists, and really take offense of how some conservatives or libertarians tend to view us with distaste. I think Broder gets looked on as some sad sack journalist of a bygone era, but it was under that era that things like civil rights and environmental protection were passed with bipartisan support.
What I’ve appreciated about people like Snowe and Nelson is their approach to governing. Much the problem today is that we are stuck on ideology. They will not work with so-and-so because they are on the other side. I think people like Snowe, Collins and Nelson do have partisan beliefs, but are also willing to work with others to make legislation happen. It’s not as showy as being driven soley by partisan ideas, but I think it got a lot of things done.Report
But bipartisanship and centrism aren’t the same thing. Bipartisan coalitions came together to pass civil rights legislation, but those laws were unequivocally liberal ideas that were also moral and just. IMO, centrism is just finding an arbitrary middle position on an issue just so politicians can straddle both sides of the fence, whether or not the so-called middle position is the one that will provide the best result.
The case in point is the stimulus bill. Madame Centrist from Maine insisted on larger tax cuts when more direct aid to state governments wold have had a more stimulative effect. I’m not inclined to respect somebody for taking a half-assed approach to fixing a serious problem because their position was “centrist.”Report