America's Soft Middle: 'Centrists' Cower in Time of Partisanship

The world’s oldest democracy enters this election year in one of the foulest moods on record. Three quarters of Americans tell pollsters the country is going down the tubes. In roughly equal number, they hate the Republicans and the Tea Party, the Democrats and the Occupy [What Have You] movement, Congress, and anyone else in politics. “Get Angry!” the French nonagenarian writer Stephane Hessel urged in his smash-global0hit pamphlet (more than 3 million copies sold). Americans are seemingly as PO’d as any Greek or Spaniard, withouth the proximate cause of epic economic collapse. America’s menu of politicians adds to dissatisfaction. Republicans came up with the “Oops slate,” to adapt Rick Perry’s one immortal contribution to the campaign, when the Texas governor couldn’t remember the third federal department he proposes to close. The party’s brighter stars such as Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan sat out an arguably winnable election. Iowa pig farms in winter make for grim campaigning, yet the gauntlet looked more unpleasant than usual. If you’re not eager to bash Mexican fruit pickers or shamelessly steal President Obama’s get-out-of-Afghanistan-and-Iraq rhetoric about this being the “time to focus on nation building at home,” then you may not be presidentialable Republican material. On that debate stage, there’s plenty of competition for know-littleism.The American left ought to feel no moral or intellectual superiority, though it plainly does. Occupy’s tents, Cuban flags, and clashes with subway commuters are no fresher than Woodstock types now starting to collect Social Security checks. One might generously say President Obama is at least back to doing what he’s proven to be good at—campaigning for office. The job itself doesn’t seem to suit. Looking back at 2011, the implosion of this presidency in the second half of the year was stunning to behold. He gave an inspiring speech after the Tucson shooting in January and got Osama bin Laden on May 1. After that it was the great fadeout, interrupted every few weeks by an attack on do-nothing Republicans in Congress. The country stopped listening to him. Someone noted that the same happened to George W. Bush in 2005 after Katrina. By then Americans had given him a second term. This dead-duck president has to face them in November 2012, and in the spirit of these strange times, the incumbent is considered a slight favorite.We’re left with isolationism, calls for closed borders and national lockdown, populist primal screaming about corporate jets and “millionaires and billionaires.” All of it adds up to what one might call, per the late Allan Bloom, “the Closing of the American Political Mind.” Admittedly not a pretty picture, but then democracy isn’t a beauty pageant.Now the fashion, of course, is to bemoan the polarization and lobotomization of political discourse. It’s easy to make the case too, with some of the candidates on hand. But it’s not as if past campaigns were models of sobriety and intelligent debate. Politics in this country has been dirty and downmarket from the start, as well as uplifting and enlightened—and the better for it. “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” in 1884 Republicans mocked Grover Cleveland, a bachelor with a mistress and a bastard son. He won anyway.A corollary of “avert thy eyes!” is the eulogy, as The Economist put on its cover in early November, for “the missing middle” in American politics. By this reasoning, the Tea Party and Occupy are loud fringes who suck reason out of the room. Never mind that the “middle” is rarely relevant until after the parties pick their candidates. UGG Ultra Short Boots Then the swing, independent voters too busy—thankfully—to obsess about politics become kingmakers in the so-called purple states that decide American presidential elections. And never mind that the longstanding complaint was that the two parties and their policies are indistinguishable. Not so long ago, either. Pop quiz: which president—George W. Bush or Barack Obama—pushed through huge bailouts for banks and industry, spent wildly on entitlements and other federal programs, knocked off Al Qaeda terrorists or kept them locked at Guantánamo, and started and fought wars in Muslim lands? Both, of course.So maybe, for the sake of a healthy break with recent practice, U.S. politics should embrace its spleen and enjoy some ugly division. If not now, when? Americans see their predicament and the world around them. They should be upset and demand answers. While they’re not too happy with the candidates on offer, they’re engaged enough, even at this early point, to take a serious look at them. They’re willing to embrace strong, sometimes wacky and inane, ideological positions; at least that clarifies the choice. As for that venerated middle, it’s fine and proper when the country is coasting along and needs minor adjustments. In this era, let the new pragmatic be the radical, at the very least the radically inspired.