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Monday, May 12, 2008
Obama, McCain in the mushy middle?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Is this presidential election evidence that the nation is determined to move to the middle?
Wall Street Journal reporters Gerald F. Seib and John Harwood speculate that the campaign of ‘08 may yield a new political center, something akin to the alignment that existed two generations past when conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Northeastern Republicans formed a center that constituted “a kind of human bridge between the partisan extremes.”
The premise is that John McCain and Barack Obama are running as candidates who can bridge the partisan divide — something we know to be true of McCain, as evidenced by his participation in the Gang of 14, campaign finance reform and other efforts to chart his own course.
But while Obama talks the talk, there’s no real evidence I’ve seen that the speeches translate into anything more than campaign bromides. He’ll set a firm departure schedule on Iraq, raise taxes on capital gains, create universal health care and, most assuredly, appoint judges in the mold of John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Despite the talk, the policies that emanate from them are pretty much from the “partisan extreme” that’s supposedly to vanish if he’s elected.
The mushy-middle is certainly useful in public office — if, in fact, there’s a strong leader in the White House or in the governor’s office who has a strategic vision. Otherwise, if Obama proposes a fixed pull-out from Iraq in 10 months and the mushy-middle causes him to make it 12 or 15, what’s gained by compromise? Bad policy executed more slowly.
Likewise, If he proposes to raise the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 28 and the mushy-middle settles at 23, we’re still enroute to big government and high taxes, just on a slower train. And if the compromise on judges gets us David Souter, an unknown from the left, rather than Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose leanings were known, the train’s track reaches the same destination.
Rebuilding the middle is a lot like campaign finance reform. It’s usually more appealing in the abstract than in practice. It’s wishy-washiness as a virtue.
If Obama and McCain have distinctly different visions for America and distinctly different ideas about what’s best for the country — and they do — the solution is not to split the difference. One solution often precludes the other.
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