The Lion and Gun

There is an ongoing debate in the wake of last week's election over whether America has become a center-left nation or remains center-right. I can understand the rhetorical value of staking out ground on the one side or the other, but the argument as a whole seems rather silly. As with so many rhetorical distractions, the more arguments on one side or the other become internalized, the more they'll pose an obstacle to good governance and the liberal (or conservative) movement. Allow me, then, to offer a hopefully obvious (if slightly glib) rejoinder:

America is a center-center nation.

This is not an argument, it's an axiom. After all, claiming that America is center-left or center-right begs the question: compared to what? Compared to other nations? If so, what's the sample set? Compared to most other western democracies there's an argument to be made that America is, indeed, center-right -- but the comparison is problematic, if not entirely nonsensical. The left/right dichotomy is destructively reductive in the context of American political discourse; it's far more so when comparing America to other nations. Different governments preside over different societies facing different problems in different ways.

So, for example, America tends to emphasize small government more than most other democracies, and doesn't have some of the flagship government programs (think health care) that are pretty standard in most advanced nations. On the other hand, America was a pioneer in building the welfare state, which remained comparatively expansive and generous until the 1980s. To this day America has a larger bureaucracy than most of its rivals, tighter market regulation, and higher corporate income taxes. On the cultural side, America is in many ways less liberal than European society -- more uptight about sex and gays and drugs and so on. On the other hand, America lacks the deep xenophobia that makes immigrant assimilation very difficult in many European countries. America is less centralized than most democracies, but more centralized than the European Union. And so on.

No, the proper calculus of comparison is, well, America. And by definition the nation as a whole is center-center, in that its ideology is, well, its ideology. The median voter is the median voter. Terms like 'center-left' and 'center-right' only make sense when comparing some discrete person or party or idea or interest group to the American median voter: so a Republican might be to the right of the country as a whole, making him center-right; but if his ideology is identical to national ideology then he is perfectly centrist. It does not make sense to say that the nation is center-right.

This might all seem like semantics. To some degree it is. But I think it's something that ought to be remembered, and not just because it's useful at deconstructing rhetoric. It's about mindset.

As long as the two-party system remains healthy, one of the parties will always be to the left of center and the other to the right. If you want to govern the nation more from the left, you can do one of two things: you can appeal to the center through promises and rhetoric and convince them to allow you to rule from the left; or you can actually try to redefine the center to be more in line with what is currently to the left. The latter is undoubtedly the more durable, if less easy, strategy, and the former can often be a means to it. But if you convince yourself that the results of an election simply confirm that the nation is already where you want it to be -- that America is already 'center-left' -- then you're less likely to bring about the lasting change you desire.

This, I think, was one of the problems with the Bush administration. Presuming that their narrow victories proved that the nation agreed with their policies and gave them a broad mandate, the administration over-reached. They didn't try to shift the center because they seemed to think it already was where it actually wasn't. In short, they governed without leading. After election day they stopped trying to sell the American people on what they had to offer. And they were punished for it.

Let's not make the same mistakes. Let's dispense with assertions of mandate and the fruitless argument about what the nation's ideology is. Let's concentrate instead on what we want it to be. Because the election didn't make America a more progressive nation, nor did it prove that it already is one. If we want America to be progressive, we must go out and make it so: with a well-run Congress, an administration that fulfills people's needs, a President that comforts and inspires, and a grassroots movement that brings more and more Americans along for the ride.