Centrists and the 2008 Campaign

I've got a post up at PoliGazette about the 2008 race and how it pertains to centrists. It's mainly an explanation as to why some centrists are supporting Obama, but I pull off a nice trick: linking to no fewer than 7 of my own posts. That has to be some kind of self-referential record.

RIP Unity '08

Just received an email from Unity '08. They are ceasing their efforts to get a bi-partisan ticket on the ballots of all 50 states. They site a lack of money and members as the problem.

They also just lost two board members who've apparently gone to work with Michael Bloomberg. The email is long and I won't bore you with a long quote, but after kinda-sorta taking credit for Barack Obama, they had this to say:

The past year has taught us that it's tough to rally millions for a process without a candidate or an issue...Motivating people to fix a broken system that drives candidates to the extremes by creating something more inclusive and sensible has proven to be a lot harder than we expected.

Yeah, coulda told them that. I've been involved in a similar, albeit much smaller effort. We couldn't get about eight self-proclaimed centrists to agree on much of anything. Unity '08 was trying to rally a whole nation.

Hey, centrism, moderation, independent-mindedness (whatever you want to call it) is not dead. It's just not possible to organize in any large or meaningful way. That's what makes those of us non-partisans so important to the process. We're unpredictable. You can't win the independents with the same song-and-dance in each election. You gotta keep evolving.

Unity '08 says they're evolving too. But, really, it's over for them. But it may just be beginning independents.

Blogging a Blogtastic Blogoversary

A few weeks ago, I hit my second blogoversary. And I’ve only quit once during that time. That’s a good record for a person of my predilections.

Most moderate/centrist/middle-of-the-road blogs last a very short time. Blog readers, like cultists, prefer absolutes. Moderates and centrists provide lots of grey. The result is poor readership numbers and too much hate mail from the roving packs of nimwits who demand conformity to their narrow worldviews.

There just aren’t a lot of readers who want analysis outside the left/right chambers of discourse. And those readers who would appreciate such blogs never find them because media accounts of blogs focus solely on the partisan fearmongers whose hubris is matched only by their idiocy.

So most of us here in the center and quasi-center toil in our own little world, referencing one-another, commenting on each other’s blogs and sustaining a community of people who agree on little more than the innate fallibility and potential wisdom of both left and right.

We’re not any more or less prescient or intelligent than our more-partisan brethren. Indeed, we talk out of our asses with the best of them. We can be shallow, crude, stupid and startlingly wrong. But what we don’t do is preach orthodoxy. We have no dominant ideology. No tenants. We each individually have our own worldviews and adhere to them with varying degrees of passion. But, as a group, we suffer no structure more rigid than a mutual tolerance for/mutual disdain of traditional liberal and conservative mindsets.

That makes us outsiders. That results in low readerships. But it ain’t a bad place to call home. I’d rather have 100 readers and preserve my integrity than have 100,000 and be a sycophant.

So on this second blogoversary I make only one promise: I’ll keep writing what I think, regardless of how few even know I’m here.

Approaching the Radical Middle from the Right

In Mark Satin’s latest edition of the Radical Middle on-line newsletter, Stain asks the question: are the best conservative thinkers becoming radical middle?.

Satin notes that, up until recently, most radical middle writers and thinkers (I’ve called them dynamic centrists) have hailed from the left. This is because, in Satin’s view, Democratic big-government thinking burned out in the 90s. Now, as Republican small-government thinking appears to be running out of gas as well, a number of thinkers from the right are moving towards the radical middle.

And what does the radical middle from a right-leaning perspective look like? It eschews both small government and big government in favor of strong government – or, as I would put it, effective government.

Satin references David Brooks’ assertion that there has always been a third strain in American politics extending from Alexander Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt. That “progressive conservatism” strain is now dormant but should be, in Brooks’ and Satin’s views, resurrected for our time.

To get a full flavor of what this progressive-conservative form of the radical middle looks like, read Satin’s whole article. In fact, read Satin’s enlightening book Radical Middle which offers many of the same policy suggestions now being expressed by the new breed of conservative centrists.

Without getting into the important details, the gist of this viewpoint is: to use the powers of government to promote the betterment of citizens by removing unfair barriers and creating opportunities rather than entitlements. That’s a broad description. Here’s an even broader one: it’s about promoting the responsibility of the individual to society AND promoting the responsibility of the government to the individual.

I find the radical middle extraordinarily compelling. Any politician who can capture this mode of thinking and not just give lip-service to it will win my vote.

That’s why I always like to read Mark Satin. He reminds me that there really are new ideas out there and not all of today’s writers and thinkers are trapped in the either/or form of liberal vs. conservative. I hope some of our better leaders are paying attention.

Mommy, What's a Centrist?

In a moment when centrism is all the rage, Callimachus declares he’s not a centrist. He explains why:

If you're a "centrist" all you have to do is say, "you're both partially right," and without even necessarily knowing whether that's true, you're probably one step up the evolutionary ladder from both of the sides. Because chances are they're both partly right.

But you still haven't really broken out of the dualism just because you've connected two points and made a line…

The position I'm looking for is one that considers what both sides say, but then goes down to the cellars of their arguments and swings a sledgehammer at the foundation to see if it holds up. Follow the references, check the footnotes, and go gather some research on your own. Put everything to the baloney test: Does it fit the known facts? Is it internally consistent? Ideally, ignore the stated positions and come to a conclusion entirely on your own. Definitely ignore the personalities on either side.

Callimachus acknowledges the high-level of difficulty in his approach but clearly views it as superior to the usual centrist thinking. Without question, independent thought is preferable to simply measuring out the middle on any given position. But is Callimachus right in thinking his mode of thought is not part of centrism?

Yes and no. And maybe. As I have noted, there is no centrist ideology to which the so-called vital center subscribes. The center is vital not because it has policies or even a political methodology but because it has numbers. A significant number of us voters hold fast to our independence, suspicious of party orthodoxy and critical of partisan games. We cannot be easily organized but we can be powerful, serving as the ultimate check against political excess and ineffectiveness.

Fundamentally, centrism is the absence of party loyalty. For some, that means rejecting the positions of both parties and looking for the answer somewhere in between the two dominant views. But for others, being centrist is about finding an entirely new axis. “Centrist” is the label because it represents the willingness to look both left and right for answers. But it’s not quite accurate because it fails to convey the willingness to look up and down as well.

Those with Callimachus’ level of curiosity and independence look up and down and side-to-side and under rocks and on top of cupboards too. Their opinions are not a balancing act but the result of intellectual investigation and discovery. That type of person is not what the big boy pundits mean when they say centrist (they tend to use the word as a euphemism for swing-voter and moderate). But that type can still be a part of centrism.

If centrists are never more than just a moderating force, we’ll still perform an invaluable service. But if at least some centrists can embrace the level of critical thinking Callimachus describes (as many of those I list in my blogroll already have), then centrism could mature and begin advancing not just balanced positions but whole new ideas devoid of the old assumptions. At that point we might have to call it something other than “centrism,” but the centrist label works for now.

Red vs. Blue Divide Not as Clear as Many Think

One of the reasons Democrats lost power in 1994 was that they lost the South. Now it appears that Republicans have just as completely lost New England. You would think that in a very mobile, highly connected society such as modern America, regional political divides would not be so sharp. And, you know what? They aren’t. It’s a mirage.

If you actually look at the maps and data from this election you’ll see a lot of red and blue mingling. If there’s any clear divide, it’s between urban areas and rural areas. But even that division is misleading. Delve into the specific votes from state-to-state and county-to-county and even the bluest blue states and the redest red states reveal there is much less than 100% unanimity. In fact, in even the least competitive districts, it’s unusual for a candidate to win with more than 70-75% of the vote. That’s a huge advantage to be sure, but 25% dissent is still very meaningful.

Furthermore, if you look at the key competitive races this year, the winners very rarely tallied more than 55%-60% of the vote. Clearly, the sharp divisions we think we see are actually statistical illusions created by our winner-takes-all, two-party system.

The media latches onto the simplistic analysis of blue vs. red because, well, the media trades in the unsophisticated and feeds on conflict. Politicians in turn exploit the blue vs. red because it provides them an easy us vs. them narrative. And we the people buy into it because we’re human and have a natural attraction to easy-to-understand patterns with clear divides.

I know I’m not making a new observation here—but I think it’s one that needs to be reinforced after the recent election. We shifted from a Republican Congress to a Democratic Congress not because of a tidal shift in public opinion but because just about 10-15% of us changed our minds. That’s a small percentage of the populous and Democrats should not mistake their win as anything more than a very cautious, narrow mandate – the identical kind of cautious, narrow mandate President Bush mistook for a sweeping validation of his agenda. And you see where Bush’s misreading of the electorate has gotten him.

Both parties and all us pundits (amateur and overpaid alike) should try harder to recognize the complexity within American political opinion. We need to avoid such simplistic storylines as “Democrats own New England” or “Republicans own the South.” Even if those analyses appear true, they’re actually quite inaccurate. The political divides in this nation are far more complex and individualistic than they once were and it’s unhelpful to pretend otherwise.