POLITICS SEPTEMBER 9, 2009
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“I think that often where I am is just in the middle. The middle is often the commonsensical place to be. The notion that one side is right and one side is wrong is generally, as one finds in life, not the case.”
--political commentator Cokie Roberts
Roberts has a great point. The sensible position usually does lie halfway between two extremes. Just look at history. In the 1960s, the country was split between extremists who wanted to deny civil rights to African Americans, and extremists who insisted on completely equal rights everywhere. The dispute caused so much strife and anger because no sensible moderates could be found to stake out the middle ground between these equally radical positions--say, desegregating some institutions but not others, or letting black people vote in every other election.
Or consider the nasty contretemps between Galileo and the Catholic Church. Both sides staked out such unyielding positions on whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice versa. A lot of vitriol could have been avoided if each party had agreed to the simple proposition that the two bodies revolve around each other.
OK, so maybe Roberts doesn’t have a great point. But she does have an extremely seductive point. The notion that you can determine a sensible position simply by stopping halfway between the Democratic and Republican stances is one of the enduring fallacies of public life. There are few more sought-after labels in American politics than “moderate” or “centrist.” They signify an independent thinker, unbound by ideological or partisan dogma.
And, to be sure, ideology and partisanship can corrupt your judgment. A classic example is the debate over global warming. Scientific evidence shows very strongly that carbon-
dioxide emissions are raising global temperatures. Yet, because this fact implies the need for some government action to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, many conservatives persist in disbelieving it. Likewise, many liberals dismissed evidence that conditions in Iraq improved toward the end of the Bush administration.
But taking the middle ground between the two parties is not a way of liberating
yourself from dogma. It’s simply a way of lashing your own judgment to the prevailing sentiments of the moment. Fifty years ago, the notion that the federal government should cover the cost of health care for all senior citizens was too liberal for even many mainstream Democrats to swallow. These days, even right-wing Republicans embrace it. Meanwhile, universal health care may be a liberal idea now, but, if enacted, it would quickly become uncontroversial. If it fails, it would remain a utopian fantasy, spurned by centrists. To define the middle as the sensible position is to believe that what’s sensible can change dramatically with the political winds.
A huge proportion of self-styled “centrist” thought simply boils down to surrendering one’s own capacity to make normative judgments about politics and public policy. This tic has been on display throughout the health care debate. Key moderate Democrats have deemed their primary criterion for health care reform to be securing the support of Chuck Grassley, the putatively moderate Republican senator. Meanwhile, Grassley has announced that he won’t support reform unless most Republicans in the Senate agree with him. Grassley has explicitly said that the lack of sufficient GOP support would cause him to abandon a bill that even he, Chuck Grassley, deemed acceptable.
Thus, by the transitive property, key Democrats have hitched their own support for health care to the whims of a large bloc of Republicans who lack any formal or informal criteria of their own. Picture the old Thomas Nast cartoon “ ’Twas Him,” with Boss Tweed and his cronies standing in a circle, each avoiding responsibility by pointing a finger at the man next to him.
Of course, the centrists portray their behavior not as unprincipled buck-
passing but as an elevated form of civic virtue. “Something as big and important
as health care legislation,” Grassley has opined, echoing a view that has been repeated by numerous worthies, “should have broad-based support.” (I’d argue that 60 Democratic senators, representing 64 percent of the population, count as “broad-based.”) Now Grassley is saying that he favors “incremental” reform. But, if it’s not going to be big anymore, then why must it be bipartisan?
Ted Kennedy’s death has spurred a large number of encomiums to the virtues of compromise and deal-making. But this confuses the necessity of compromise with the desirability of compromise. “Half a loaf is better than none” is a good argument to make to liberals who might be disappointed with an imperfect final deal. It’s not a good argument on behalf of centrists who are themselves forcing liberals to take half a loaf. Senator Kent Conrad spent months insisting liberals should abandon a public option because it couldn’t pass. Finally, he admitted that he, too, opposed it.
The fetishization of compromise often overlooks whether such a compromise makes any inherent sense. Not all issues lend themselves to compromise. Joe Lieberman recently piped up that he prefers to take minor steps on health care--such as banning insurance company discrimination against those with preexisting conditions--and forego covering the uninsured.
But, if you forbid insurance companies from discriminating against the sick without bringing healthy people into the risk pool, then healthy people would have no reason to buy insurance. They could just wait until they get sick and take out a policy, and the insurance companies would have to sell them one. Rates would skyrocket, and the whole system would become unaffordable. Some say we should build a bridge across a river. Others say we shouldn’t. Joe Lieberman wants to build a bridge halfway across.
Lieberman explained his rationale by reaching for a historical analogy. “I think great changes in our country often have come in steps,” he said a couple of weeks ago. “The civil rights movement occurred--changes occurred in steps.” Actually, almost all of the civil rights movement’s progress happened in one big bang, after decades of stagnation. It also required the Senate to put the needs of the country ahead of its own customs by circumventing the committee that had traditionally bottled up civil rights legislation. There is a lesson here for the present day, though not the one Senate centrists seem to have absorbed.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor for The New Republic.
7 comments
Hmm... Chait seems to be saying this: As a social psychologist Cokie Roberts will make a great political pundit someday. Just not anytime soon. I find that an odd reaction to this: “I think that often where I am is just in the middle. The middle is often the commonsensical place to be. The notion that one side is right and one side is wrong is generally, as one finds in life, not the case.” Cokie Roberts What makes this something to be dunked condescendingly in irony? I know little or nothing about where Cokie's head is "on the issues". But this point of view is very well stated about political commitments in general. In fact, the very idea of democracy itself is predicated in large part on it. After all, if Right and Wrong can be discerned objectively we would be better off living in a world where philosopher kings handed down the prescriptions and the proscriptions. Why engage in futile and caustic debates about something we can know for certain? JC: The notion that you can determine a sensible position simply by stopping halfway between the Democratic and Republican stances is one of the enduring fallacies of public life. george: Again, maybe this is what Robert means above. I don't really know. But being a moderate and a centrist does not necessarily mean yanking out a slide rule and calculating some hypothetical truth exactly half way between Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh. It simply means that most political "truths" have little or nothing to do with either one of them. Instead, it is the recognition that, regarding the issues that most dearly affect us, ideology and dogma are always the most dangerous props around. So, how far is Chaitt from that? JC: ....many liberals dismissed evidence that conditions in Iraq improved toward the end of the Bush administration. george: Yes, this is true. But that's not what the reactionaries want from them, is it? What they want is for liberals to acknolwedge this AND agree it justifies all that came before it. Is that what a moderate or a centrist must do? JC: A huge proportion of self-styled “centrist” thought simply boils down to surrendering one’s own capacity to make normative judgments about politics and public policy. george: Okay, Chait should choose an issue embedded in both "politics and public policy"; then outline what he construes to be a "normative judgement" that flows necessarily from his own set of moral and political values. Then compare and contrast it to that which he construes to be the tact moderates and centrists take instead. Let's lose the abstractions and bring this all down to earth. JC: Of course, the centrists portray their behavior not as unprincipled buck- passing but as an elevated form of civic virtue. george: Name some. Site specific examples of this. Provide more details regarding actual positions taken on actual issues by actual men and women. I simply have no clue as to what he means by "an elevated form of civic virtue". In philosophy venues something like this is often referred to as a "psychologism". psychologism: in philosophy, the view that problems of epistemology (i.e., of the validity of human knowledge) can be solved satisfactorily by the psychological study of the development of mental processes. In this sense? How does he bind together or cleave apart the crucial relationships between human psychology and the mental processes used to draw conclusions about civic virtues? What is his opinion about the limitations of epistemology and logic here? Mine flow from the philosophy of existentialism. In particular an existentialism that starts with the assumption [and that is all it can be] that God does not exist. How do we resolve moral and political conflicts in a world without an omniscient and omnipotent point of view? Tentively and precariously for starters george walton d/a
- iambiguous
September 9, 2009 at 2:22am
That should read "tentatively and precariously for starters." gw
- iambiguous
September 9, 2009 at 2:30am
Perfectly said. Chait is the man!
- jhildner1
September 9, 2009 at 3:36pm
"A huge proportion of self-styled “centrist” thought simply boils down to surrendering one’s own capacity to make normative judgments about politics and public policy." Sorry, but that is bs. People make compromises on a whole host of issues, take abortion. You can say abortions without restrictions paid for by tax dollars on one end, to no abortions even to save the life of the mother on the other. Few Americans go to these extremes, some, like myself, see no problem with restrictions on abortion past a certain stage, or parental notification of parents (except under extraordinary circumstances), no tax payer funded abortions, etc. You can certainly compromise on this issue, I imagine Chait is for Single payer, hell he might even be for socialized Medicine where everyone in the system works for and is paid for by the government. He is certainly free to push for that argument, and it has merit, but nowhere do I see him advocating that. If not, why not? Maybe he is splitting the baby himself but since he knows there is no chance of single payer passing he does not want to bring it up lest he himself be accused of being willing to split the baby. Lets just admit the road to basic health care for all Americans is going to be built on sand and is going to shift all over the place until we get there.
- blackton
September 9, 2009 at 5:25pm
umm george (or d/a, or whatever schizophrenic personality is writing today), I would not be worried about any spelling mistakes (I only passingly glanced at your correction) since no one reads what you right. honestly, you can do a test and write nothing but gibberish and see if anyone notices. Wait, damn, my mistake that is all you write anyhow.
- blackton
September 9, 2009 at 5:28pm
Blackie, I don't think Chait's point is that it is always wrong to hold a position that could be described as in the middle or that it is always wrong to compromise. In fact, he recognizes the need to compromise. What he's really arguing against is the tendency we have to imbue whatever position could plausibly be labeled as "in the middle" with substantive merit on that basis alone. There's nothing good, in and of itself, about being in the middle. A middle position can be right or wrong, just as non-middle position can be right or wrong. If a middle position is good, it is good for reasons other than its location, and must be defended on its merits. It's middleness is not evidence of its wisdom or a plausible argument in its favor. The middle fetish ignores the fact that the entire *range* of mainstream opinion is itself a moving target and may well be too far in one direction or the other on any given issue. No, we can't use middleness as a shortcut to determining what's sensible. Too many people may not know what they're talking about or hold incorrect or unattractive views. Instead, we have to actually get into the substance of the thing.
- jhildner1
September 10, 2009 at 5:05pm
JC wrote: >Or consider the nasty contretemps between Galileo and the Catholic Church. Both sides staked out such unyielding positions on whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice versa. A lot of vitriol could have been avoided if each party had agreed to the simple proposition that the two bodies revolve around each other. Actually, the moderate in this case is correct: the Sun and Earth each revolve around their common center of gravity. Because the Sun weighs about 300,000 times the Earth, however, said center of gravity is so close to the Sun's center (and so deep beneath its surface) as to be unnoticeable.
- hcunn
September 17, 2009 at 10:34pm