Of “Centrists” And Moderates
Ross discusses Specter’s defection, describes the moderate and conservative reactions to it and then says:
This doesn’t mean that Republicans should be happy that their tent is shrinking toward political irrelevance. But more Lincoln Chafees and Olympia Snowes aren’t the answer. What’s required instead is a better sort of centrist. The Reagan-era wave of Republican policy innovation — embodied, among others, by the late Jack Kemp — has calcified in much the same way that liberalism calcified a generation ago. And so in place of hacks and deal-makers, the Republican Party needs its own version of the neoliberals and New Democrats — reform-minded politicians like Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, who helped the Democratic Party recover from the Reagan era, instead of just surviving it.
Hart, Clinton and their peers were critical of their own side’s orthodoxies, but you couldn’t imagine them jumping ship to join the Republicans. They were deeply rooted in liberal politics, but they had definite ideas for how the Democratic Party could learn from its mistakes, and from its opponents, in order to further liberalism’s deeper goals.
Ross is right that there is not really any comparable group in the GOP, but then it’s not clear what the agenda of such “centrists” would be and it isn’t at all likely that their interpretation of conservatism’s “deeper goals” would be seen as another way to pursue conservative ends. After all, are the main “deeper goals” of conservatism community and order with their related goods of social solidarity and broad, equitable distribution of wealth, or are they primarily individual autonomy and “growth,” or something else? How you prioritize these goals will inevitably define the agenda and reveal what you think conservatism means. It is likely that advocates of the first set of goals will tend to see advocates of the second set as badly misguided, if not actually something other than conservative, and vice versa.
Would a center-right equivalent of the neoliberals call for reform of the warfare state as the neoliberals did with the welfare state? After all, it is the foreign policy and national security elements of center-right policy thinking that are some of the most calcified, reflexive and tied to entrenched interests. They are also among the least popular in large swathes of the country–the same swathes where Republicans are dwindling in number. There is a growing number of domestic policy reform thinkers on the right, but to the extent that there are any who are interested in significantly changing and reducing the size of the warfare state it is typical that they are libertarians or hard-right conservatives, the very opposite of the supposedly reasonable and appealing “centrist.” The present “centrists” are the ones most wedded to the status quo on the size and use of the military and the U.S. role in the world. We certainly need a better sort of “centrist,” assuming such a thing is possible.
It is debatable whether any “centrism” is possible that does not end up in practice as a form of triangulation or a split-the-difference, worst-of-both-worlds muddle. As a rule, someone earns the name “centrist” in our political discourse by simply endorsing a major goal of the other party: McCain was granted this description by a once-fawning press corps because he backed campaign finance reform and later backed amnesty, and Lieberman’s hawkishness has earned him this title despite his otherwise left-liberal voting record. This occsasional, sometimes single-issue “centrism” is not really all that different from what the Northeastern moderates have done for decades, except that it is less frequent and therefore somehow more “principled” than the relatively more ideologically consistent moderate and liberal Republicans who are less reliable partisans. In effect, the “centrist” is someone who betrays the party on key issues, but votes with them the rest of the time, while the hated, “unprincipled” moderate is a less reliable vote for what might actually be more coherent reasons.
In practice, what pundits and journalists usually describe as “centrism” is capitulation to the other side on high-profile pieces of legislation by going against the grain of one’s own party in a melodramatic way and usually by backing the position that had won the approval of political establishment figures. What distinguishes a moderate Republican such as Specter from this kind of “centrist” is that Specter seems to have been largely unreliable on a number of issues, while a McCain was a reliable partisan on most things but would occasionally engage in his ad hoc bipartisan, self-serving troublemaking. The differences between Specter and McCain can probably best be explained by the different constituencies in Pennsylvania and Arizona: organized labor for some, defense contractors for others. Somehow McCain has been idolized as a man of high principle (and not just by friendly journalists but also by quite a few Republicans), when he was mostly a man of great ambition, and Specter is mostly treated as an unprincipled worm (and not just by hostile conservatives). It seems to me that both of them are something between those two, and the different reactions to them on the national stage are instructive in how arbitrary the line between principled “centrist” and unprincipled “moderate” is.
It is important to remember that “centrist” is a designation that refers to someone’s position within a party, which in effect means that on most things the “centrist” in one party is likely to have more in common with “centrists” in the other, at least on certain issues, and it is not very long before you are back in the world of “hacks and deal-makers,” because the “centrists” are in the best position to make the deals with relatively like-minded colleagues on the other side of the aisle. What kind of “centrist” do we imagine we will have in the future that will not fall into similar patterns? Indeed, isn’t the pattern of deal-making and bipartisan cooperation supposed to be one of the things that makes “centrists” desirable in a political coalition?
It seems to me that there is a very thin line between the “hacks and deal-makers” who are supposed to be despised and the serious “centrists” who would never permanently cross party lines for their own political ambition. However, as we know, out of little more than personal pique two of the most famous “centrists”–Joe Lieberman and John McCain–either broke with their party when denied re-nomination or seriously contemplated switching sides after being denied presidential nomination. In the end, long-term ambition prompted reconciliation with their respective parties, whereas in Specter’s case ambition dictated that he jump ship. Beyond that, the differences are minimal, which raises the question: is there such a thing as a principled “centrist” and what would such a creature look like?
8 Responses to “Of “Centrists” And Moderates”
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Ross’ examples are also kind of odd; afterall, Clinton is the man most notorious for being a “triangulator” and for killing AFDC and replacing it with TANF, amongst other things. It’s also hard to argue that Clinton oversaw a true “re-birth” of Democrats as he never saw his party take back control of Congress and that most of the people who oversaw the wave are more reliably liberal than he ever was. Certainly Obama is also probably the most reliably old-guard, city-ward Democrat to be elected since FDR, so its hard to suggest that “moderate” Democrats, of one’s that come from purple states, are necessary.
But like you said, figuring out conservatisms “deeper goals” is going to be hard. Most of what people talk about is procedural issues and the process (government involvement, government control, federal supremacy) and to a certain extent how this might yield more reliably conservative policies, but there is little substantive discussion of how government policy, or the absence of such, would foster these things. One can disagree with the left’s goals, and how they intend to achieve them, but there is no doubt that they have a plan to get from point A to point B. There seems to be no exact plan how the process oriented things I mentioned above will yield what conservatives desire; the presumption is they will, but thats certainly no guarantee, and the reflexive equivalence between the procedural stuff and policy outcomes is a tad simplistic.
Very insightful and spot on. Politics is full of people playing the responsible statesman game as a cloak of their extreme flexibility of principles. In the cases of both Specter and Lieberman, the role of the indispensable vote is also a big factor. They both hope that their swing votes will give them power to extract favors and broker deals.
Maybe that’s why he was hired at the Times, but I wish he’d talk less about the Republican party and more about conservatism. (Or his conservative principles.)
I would agree that ‘Centrism’ is perhaps incorrectly used to describe someone like Lieberman who is mostly liberal and occasionally conservative. Likewise for McCain (in reverse). I think we call them Centrist in an effort to be polite, when certain members of their own party would prefer the word ‘traitor’.
I think ideally Centrism would represent the default compromise position on most issues. Some would say that represents a certain squishiness that symbolizes a lack of dedication to principles. I disagree. Going against the party machine for no-selfish reasons is extremely principled…or at least pretty darn brave. You raise a good point though which is that the very nature of so-called Centrists as the ‘deal-makers’ also leaves them inclined to using that as a weapon and/or a position of power.
As for ‘moderates’….inaction seems to best describe the moderate politician. Martin Luther King had this to say about ‘moderates’:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I can forgive a Centrist who attempts to act, even if it means crossing the aisle. I cannot forgive the moderate who does nothing in an attempt to avoid rocking the boat.
what pundits and journalists usually describe as “centrism†is capitulation to the other side on high-profile pieces of legislation by going against the grain of one’s own party in a melodramatic way and usually by backing the position that had won the approval of political establishment figures.
This is why a *lot* of us wanted you to get a Times/Post slot. Still want — surely they can swap out Krauthammer, now that he has re-defined “bottom of the moral barrel”?
While calling for the right to enter into a period of self-reflecting criticism of their own ideas and policies seems like a good idea on the surface, it’s simply not in the nature of modern conservative Republicans to do any such thing. In fact, it is counter to their core ideology to even think such a thing would be a good idea. These are people who believe in absolute moral and economic values, and they believe that they are right in absolute terms about almost everything. Such people are completely opposed to the idea of self-reflecting self-criticsm, except of the fundamentalist variety that roots out any notion of reform or evolution of thought, and instead continually returns to its “core values”, regardless of whether that works or not. So they are reduced to coming up with new and innovative ways of selling the same old ideas, rather than new ideas that might replace old ideas and succeed better. One can see this in the constant bellyaching of Limbaugh and others like him over any attempt to “reform” the party. It simply isn’t going to happen, because it isn’t in the GOP’s DNA to do this. One has to come to the recognition that not all poltical movements or parties last forever. Some succeed for a while, then lose the ability to adapt, and die out. It would appear the GOP is content to suffer extinction rather than change. Now, maybe they’ll get lucky and political conditions will change such that their party returns to some kind of viable status. But it won’t be because the GOP changed. That simply won’t happen. They’re going to keep on doing the same thing with at best cosmetic changes until conditions favor them, and if that never happens, they will dwindle away into extinction.
The economy was far better for the average person under Clinton then under Bush. I think that should make the GOP rethink it’s economic agenda.
I don’t think all of the difference between the two periods is because of the policy differences of Bush and Clinton but I do think it demonstrates the failure of the supply side faith. If you followed the WSJ op-ed page you would believe that the economy pivots around changes in the capital gains tax – which was lowered in 2008 to the lowest rate in decades.
Anyone that believes that either of these parties are political or moral absolutes is a fool sir.
Remember that.
-Pat