But what is meant by "the center" in American politics? What is the "moderation" that would define the center and who are the "moderates" or "independents" who would push for centrist policies? And why is that center always collapsing? These turn out to be extremely dicey questions, primarily because "centrism" is much more of an ideal than a force in American politics.
THE MEDIA IDEAL OF MODERATION. I would argue that the "center" has two main constituencies for whom "moderation" is a governing ideal. The more active and commanding of these constituencies is the mainstream media of the television networks (outside Fox), the major newspapers, and newsmagazines. For the media, moderation is an ideal point between the two "extremes" of conservative and liberal activists. It is important to emphasize that the media follows the Aristotelian principle of believing moderation to be good in itself and the extremes to be morally questionable. In practice, the media ideal is so flexible that it allows for enormous contradiction. Somebody like Colin Powell is generally seen as a moderate because he frequently disagrees with the "extremists" or "ideologues" in the Bush administration. Powell's pitch today on Meet the Press for closing Guantamo can be seen as moderate in this way. The problem with viewing Powell as a moderate though is that war opponents are viewed as "extreme" when they argue for the same thing.
The shifting sands of moderation can be further illustrated by Joe Lieberman. Lieberman has long been viewed as a "centrist" because he has been a Democrat who often disagrees with liberals and leftists. This is still the case even though Joe Lieberman has emerged as a major neo-conservative foreign policy spokesman and he called for an attack on Iran today. Ironically, the treatment of moderation as a point between extremes means that Powell and Lieberman can both be viewed as moderates although they disagree strongly.
POPULAR MODERATION. Popular moderation is like media moderation in that it's pitched against both "extremes." But what popular moderation opposes the "extremism" of political activism more than any particular view. Popular moderation is suspicious of both big business and the unions, consumer groups, and environmental groups that oppose big business, the Bush administration's war in Iraq and those who protest the war, NAFTA and protests against NAFTA, intelligent design theorists and the mainstream scientists who advocate evolution. Popular moderation is also suspicious of the mainstream media for accentuating conflict.
Popular moderation strongly disapproves of the negative tone of politics, especially attack ads. At the same time, the basic negativity of moderates makes them a primary target for attack ads. One of the main goals of negative advertising is to convince moderates, swing voters, and indepedents to dislike your candidate's opponent more than they dislike your candidate. Republicans have become highly skilled at portraying Democratic candidates and proposals as being particularly ridiculous, dangerous, repugnant, and unworkable. It's called "defining your opponent before they can define themselves." Much of moderates hate negative politics, they are one of the main reasons why negative advertising is so pervasive.
Popular moderates have a permanent desire to see a "new" politics that is less partisan, less negative, and less identified with the conflicts of the current system. They want to stress the "person" rather than the party or ideology. That's one of the reasons why many moderate whites are excited about the candidacy of Barack Obama this year and why they were especially interested in a Colin Powell candidacy in 1996. It's also one of the reasons why the Republicans put so much stress on posing their candidates as charismatic or Reaganesque and the Democrats as being personally repulsive.
MAKING DEALS. The third dimension of moderation is the political moderates who are very much a declining force in American politics. On the Republican side, the Bob Michel type of politician who is willing to recognize the validity of the other side's arguments and make compromises is practically gone from the political scene. The only examples of this kind of moderation that I can think of are John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe in the Senate. Perhaps Jon Kyl as well. The Democratic leadership is still far more willing to engage in this kind of compromise (witness the debate over war funding), but Republicans have succeeded in defining Democratic compromises as "liberal" and "extreme" on the one hand and Democratic compromisers as unprincipled, cowardly, being "unwilling to stand up for what they believe in," on the other. After the 2004 campaign, "flip-flopping" has become a cardinal sin in American politics (unless it's being done by Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney).
THE MEDIA AND PRACTICAL BIPARTISANSHIP. The media is in an odd position in relation to political bi-partisanship. Journalists tend to be more liberal than the general population, but they've also accepted Republican definitions of what's personally attractive (Romney's "shoulders you could land a 747 on"), morally principled, and "practical." The media finds Republican personalities to be more attractive than Democratic or liberal personalities and the media tends to identify with Republican business and military interests and is fascinated in an anthropological kind of way by Christian evangelicals. To the contrary, the media finds Democratic interest groups like blacks, hispanics, anti-war activists, consumer groups, and environmentalists to be unattractive and interesting. Though barely on the liberal side themselves, media members view themselves as the farthest edge of legitimate left-wing politics and deeply resent organizations like MoveOn.org, blogs like the Daily Kos, and anti-war activists like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.
As liberal bloggers like Glenn Greenwald point out on a daily basis, the mainstream media accepts a largely Republican script for their analysis of American politics and they are already salivating over the "manliness" of Republican presidential candidates. One of the consequences of their acceptance of the Republican script, however, is that the media acts to discourage the kind of "moderate" political compromises that they idealize.
Moderation is a declining force in American politics. One of the main reasons that moderation is declining is that the peculiar alchemy of the media and moderate voters have acted to discourage the compromise that forms the core of moderate politics.
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