So far, the 2008 American presidential campaign does not make sense. Since 2000, reporters have been warning about the growing polarization between \u201d\u0153red\u201d\u009d and \u201d\u0153blue\u201d\u009d America. After the 2004 election, a map darted around the Internet, showing North America divided into two countries: cosmopolitan \u201d\u0153blue\u201d\u009d America, constitut- ing the Northeast, the West Coast and Canada, renamed \u201d\u0153the United States of Canada\u201d\u009d; and the benighted American Midwest and the Sunbelt, renamed \u201d\u0153Jesusland.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
And yet, in 2007 the leading candidates all seemed to be, in George W. Bush’s now infamous phrase, uniters, not dividers. On the Democratic side, the leading candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton, ran a campaign that was so cautious and centrist she refused to apologize for her vote authorizing the Iraq war even as she sought to lead America’s antiwar party. Her closest rival, Senator Barack Obama, preached about America as a \u201d\u0153purple\u201d\u009d nation, combining the red and the blue, while making history as the first African-American candidate in a country now so accepting that people objected not to the fact that he was black but to the fact that he was green \u201d\u201d too inexperienced. Among the Republicans, the candidate leading in the polls, Rudy Giu- liani, was a pro-life, thrice-married, gay-friendly former mayor of the capital of \u201d\u0153blue\u201d\u009d America, New York, seeking to lead America’s \u201d\u0153red\u201d\u009d party. His two main rivals were Mitt Romney, a flip-flopping Mormon former governor of the state often called \u201d\u0153the People’s Republic of Massachusetts,\u201d\u009d and Senator John McCain, who built a reputation as a straight-talking, cen- trist iconoclast. Could it be that the United States is finding a new centre? Might moderation be George W. Bush’s unin- tended parting gift to his country?<\/p>\n
The contentious presidency of George W. Bush followed Bill Clinton’s roiling tenure, which resulted in the first pres- idential impeachment in nearly a century and a half. Fears spread that America was divided and dysfunctional. Left and right frequently accentuated the differences, feeding the conflict. A great inversion had occurred. Whereas once popular culture and political culture were centripetal, draw- ing Americans toward a common standard, toward com- mon experiences, both became centrifugal, sending Americans careening off in different directions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the \u201d\u0153big three\u201d\u009d networks \u201d\u201d CBS, NBC and ABC \u201d\u201d broadcast similar news shows, which most viewers con- sidered \u201d\u0153objective,\u201d\u009d if somewhat super- ficial, slanted and sensational. In the Fox News era, competing partisans relied on contrasting news sources. Partisan blogs, talk radio shows, think tanks, and magazines intensified the polarization, perpetuating the impres- sion that America had experienced a defining red-blue split \u201d\u201d although the conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, referring to the Civil War, cracked: \u201d\u0153Until you’ve got more than 600,000 American bodies stacked up like cordwood, spare me the \u201d\u02dcmore divided than ever before’ talk.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Bush’s presidency fed fears of an ever- widening chasm. America’s Crossfire<\/em> culture became increasingly shrill. Conservatives and liberals whipped their followers into an Internet-fed frenzy, libelling opponents and lionizing their own in the unfiltered blogosphere’s vir- tual echo chamber. Al Franken became a Democratic icon, with hatchet jobs packaged in book form such as Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them<\/em>, and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot<\/em>. He and others declared Bush the worst president ever, a liar, a boob, a fanatic, a warmonger. Republicans proved equally harsh in demonizing Democrats with screeds such as that claiming \u201d\u0153Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,\u201d\u009d by the aptly named Michael Savage. Bill O’Reilly and Dinesh D’Souza accused liberals of aiding Osama Bin Laden. Modern liberals loved com- plaining about being disenfranchised, shut out of the Fox News orbit, while conservatives complained about being silenced and shunned by the main- stream media, the universities, the establishment. Characteristically myopic, Al Franken lamented \u201d\u0153the loss of civility in public discourse,\u201d\u009d without taking responsibility for contributing to the problem.<\/p>\n The blogosphere increased the tension. Bloggers hoped to revolution- ize politics, undermining the media- party monopoly, mounting insurgent candidacies and, as one progressive study by the New Politics Institute dreamed, building \u201d\u0153communities of activists and generat[ing] new political activity online.\u201d\u009d Even as new business and cultural models emerged on the more collaborative Web 2.0 of Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace, the political Blogosphere failed to deliver.<\/p>\n The blogs were the Internet era’s shrill speakers’ corners. Blogs prized short, punchy, flamboyant interac- tions, and the cheekier, meaner, or loopier the posts, the better. Over 25 million Americans read blogs daily. Blogs became incubators of pungent political commentary, reinforcing the red-blue paradigm. Internet spats spilled over into the mainstream media, generating \u201d\u0153buzz\u201d\u009d and fre- quently upstaging traditional journal- ists. If there was anything politically constructive in the blogosphere, jour- nalists ignored it.<\/p>\n The new and old media’s polariz- ing partisanship further alienated America’s vast army of disengaged citi- zens. America’s postmodern \u201d\u0153whatev- er\u201d\u009d culture was steeped in cynicism and addicted to irony. In the 1990s, Seinfeld<\/em> became popular by creating characters proud of their attachment to nothing, mocking idealists and activists as earnest fools. Jon Stewart applied Seinfeld’s<\/em> delight in life’s daily absurdities to politics. Stewart and his fellow merry prankster Stephen Colbert, born in 1964, joined the baby boomers Jay Leno and David Letterman as the leading court jesters in America’s emerging republic of ridicule. The 1980s concerns about \u201d\u0153infotainment\u201d\u009d blurring news and entertainment now seemed quaint, as the news was delivered wrapped in a punchline. Surveys estimated the aver- age age of The Daily Show<\/em> viewers at 33, almost half the age of nightly news show viewers. Young peo- ple, especially, were mock- ing current events before comprehending them. Given a false choice between shouting and laughing, why not retreat into a world of individual prerogative and indul- gent sensation?<\/p>\n Jon Stewart called himself passion- ate and idealistic, not cynical. Stewart believed in an American centre. When Baghdad fell in 2003, Stewart said, \u201d\u0153If you are incapable of feeling at least a tiny amount of joy at watching ordi- nary Iraqis celebrate this, you are lost to the ideological left.\u201d\u009d But \u201d\u0153if you are incapable of feeling badly that we even had to use force in the first place, you are ideologically lost to the right.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n While insisting \u201d\u0153this show is not a megaphone,\u201d\u009d Stewart took pride in his bipartisan posture. Stewart said his comedy came \u201d\u0153from feeling displaced from society because you’re in the center. We’re the group of fairness, common sense, and moderation.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Despite the venom, some political scientists described a working American consensus on abortion, gay rights and other hot issues, in addition to Americans’ common commitments to capitalism, democracy, equality and consumerism. As the 2006 midterm elections loomed, Democrats wisely shelved their ideological conflicts.<\/p>\n Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a Bill Clinton prot\u00e9\u0081g\u00e9\u0081, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York sought electable candidates. Most Senate winners were moderate, \u201d\u0153blue dog\u201d\u009d Democrats tacking right. Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey was pro-life and anti-gun-control. Virginia’s James Webb had been Ronald Reagan’s undersecretary of the navy. Missouri’s Claire McCaskill defined \u201d\u0153being a Democrat\u201d\u009d as \u201d\u0153being moderate and truthful and strong.\u201d\u009d Calling herself a \u201d\u0153Harry Truman Democrat,\u201d\u009d McCaskill wanted leaders \u201d\u0153strong enough to take on foreign enemies when they needed to, but…strong enough to know when not to fight.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n The star of the 2006 Democratic campaign, Barack Obama, embod- ied this centrist spirit. Obama’s national debut in 2004 electrified the Democratic Convention with a charis- matic keynote speech urging unity. Rejecting \u201d\u0153the spin masters, the nega- tive ad peddlers who embrace the pol- itics of \u201d\u02dcanything goes,’\u201d\u009d Obama mocked \u201d\u0153the pundits\u201d\u009d who \u201d\u0153like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States.\u201d\u009d He declared:<\/p>\n We worship an \u201d\u0153awesome God\u201d\u009d in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledg- ing allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Two years later, Obama cleverly timed a book tour to coincide with the midterm campaign. This gangly, youth- ful looking 45-year-old charmed America. Oprah Winfrey, the high priest- ess of American popular culture, begged him to run for president. Larry King called Obama \u201d\u0153the man with more buzz than anyone in politics right now.\u201d\u009d His book, The Audacity of Hope<\/em>, identified the \u201d\u0153common values and common ideals that we all believe in as Americans, whether we’re Republican or Democrat or Independents.\u201d\u009d Obama blamed the unproductive polarization on \u201d\u0153Baby Boomer politics.\u201d\u009d Obama’s new genera- tion of leaders promised to heal, build- ing a more idealistic and gentler America with these common building blocks.<\/p>\n Joe Klein, the columnist of Time<\/em> magazine, said the freshman senator’s \u201d\u0153relentless efforts to understand and reconcile opposing views\u201d\u009d bordered on becoming \u201d\u0153an obsessive-compulsive tic.\u201d\u009d Klein counted \u201d\u0153no fewer than 50 instances of excruciatingly judicious on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand- edness.\u201d\u009d This critique overlooked Americans’ excitement at seeing a politician who tried to reconcile with opponents rather than renouncing them. Americans wanted leaders till- ing common ground rather than sow- ing seeds of division.<\/p>\n To a nation still reeling from the shock of September 11, trauma- tized by the Iraq war, seeking solutions to the Islamist threat, worried about the economy, unnerved by a coarsen- ing culture, craving community in an increasingly polychromatic, multicul- tural nation and frustrated with many politicians’ shortsightedness, the Stewart-Obama message resonated. Americans wanted unity. They yearned for some calm and clarity.<\/p>\n On Election Day in 2006, many voted against Republicans to punish Bush for his partisanship. The Democrats regained the House and the Senate. \u201d\u0153The Vital Center Prevails,\u201d\u009d rejoiced a post-election press release from the Democratic Leadership Council. \u201d\u0153America is a pragmatic nation, not a radical one,\u201d\u009d Newsweek’s<\/em> Anna Quindlen lectured President Bush as she branded the election a blow against \u201d\u0153overreaching\u201d\u009d and for \u201d\u0153moderation.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Bush’s perceived rigidity and fail- ure guaranteed that the 2008 cam- paign would trigger a mad dash to find or reconstitute the centre. A quarter of a century into the \u201d\u0153Reagan revolu- tion,\u201d\u009d nearly four decades after the heyday of the sixties movement, the country has been \u201d\u0153Reaganized.\u201d\u009d A con- sensus is re-emerging, bringing back traditional values with a makeover. As the baby boomers age, their rediscov- ery during the 1990s of enduring ideals and ethics has become ever more relevant, all leavened with a most welcome tolerance. The sixties kids relearned some of the lessons their elders accepted automatically, about the importance of families, the need for a moral centre, the desirabili- ty of balancing rights with responsibil- ities. Filtered through what the political scientist Alan Wolfe calls modern Americans’ \u201d\u0153eleventh com- mandment\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d thou shalt not judge thy neighbour \u201d\u201d many liberals and conservatives are realizing they can find common ground.<\/p>\n Thus, amid the media circus, the political firefight and the cultural toxicity, calls for centrism grew louder, especially after the 2006 campaign. As the 2008 presidential contest loomed, the middle increasingly appeared the place to be. \u201d\u0153I grew up in a middle- class family in the middle of America,\u201d\u009d Senator Hillary Clinton said when she launched her presidential exploratory committee in January 2007, suggesting she was born to be bal- anced. Just two weeks earli- er, launching his second term, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said voters were \u201d\u0153hungry for a new kind of politics, a politics that looks beyond the old labels, the old ways, the old arguments.\u201d\u009d The Governor wanted \u201d\u0153to move past partisanship, past bipartisanship to postpartisanship,\u201d\u009d which he defined as \u201d\u0153Republicans and Democrats actively giving birth to new ideas together.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Both Senator Clinton and Governor Schwarzenegger were process-oriented centrists. Like President Clinton, they triangulated, balancing off liberal and conservative ideologues. Some centrists emphasized particular building blocks. The New Republic<\/em>‘s Peter Beinart began with the Islamist terrorist challenge. Beinart wanted to galvanize Americans with a multilateral antiterror strategy, echo- ing liberals’ \u201d\u0153good fight\u201d\u009d for freedom during the Cold War. David Callahan said centrist Democrats advocated reconstituting a \u201d\u0153moral centre.\u201d\u009d Liberals and conservatives would unite against American culture’s selfishness, materialism, and excessive sensuality. \u201d\u0153In an era of extreme self-interest, the left focuses on collective responsibility as our path to salvation, while the right dwells on personal responsibili- ty,\u201d\u009d Callahan wrote. \u201d\u0153Most ordinary Americans know we need to have both to advance the common good.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Like Callahan, yet unlike many other liberals, Barack Obama acknowl- edged \u201d\u0153the power of culture to deter- mine both individual success and social cohesion.\u201d\u009d Unlike many conser- vatives, Obama also believed \u201d\u0153our gov- ernment can play a role in shaping that culture for the better.\u201d\u009d This ten- sion and his calls for a constructive, respectful dialogue defined the Illinois senator as a centrist, despite an over- whelmingly liberal voting record.<\/p>\n The Democratic Netroot activists were particularly appalled by both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s perpetual political calculations. When Hillary Clinton unveiled her cautious, main- stream, middle-class agenda, perhaps the Democrats’ most influential blog- ger, Markos Moulitsas Zu\u00cc\u0081niga of the Daily Kos<\/em> declared her domestic plan \u201d\u0153dead on arrival.\u201d\u009d Using the colourful language so characteristic of his medi- um, Zuniga exclaimed: \u201d\u0153It’s truly dis- appointing that this is the crap Hillary has signed on to.\u201d\u009d Zuniga labelled it \u201d\u0153more of the failed corporatist bullshit that has cost our party so dearly the last decade and a half.\u201d\u009d Still, again and again, Hillary Clinton made it clear that, as her campaign buttons pro- claimed, she was \u201d\u0153in it to win it.\u201d\u009d Purity was secondary.<\/p>\n Historically, Democrats demon- strated a flair for doctrinal division, sometimes constructively, often self- destructively. In the Bush years Republicans squabbled about foreign policy, immigration, separation of church and state, but these clashes rarely generated broad strategic visions. Advocating \u201d\u0153centrism\u201d\u009d or alternative visions risked appearing disloyal to the administration’s con- servative agenda. Ultimately, George W. Bush represented both poles in the Republican debate over centrism. His 2000 campaign championed a more moderate, compassionate conser- vatism. Bush souped up his father’s \u201d\u0153kinder, gentler\u201d\u009d approach with more vision and more government involve- ment in a call for a \u201d\u0153compassionate conservatism.\u201d\u009d By 2006, the Bush presidency represented a more rigid conservatism than Ronald Reagan’s. Filling the vacuum, as party grum- bling mounted about Karl Rove’s play to the base, David Brooks articulated a post-Bush conservative centrism. The New York Times<\/em> columnist stressed cul- ture’s role in shaping individuals, the need for strong ethics, the imperative to defeat Islamist terrorism and his own version of \u201d\u0153common good\u201d\u009d Americanism.<\/p>\n Politics is the art of compromise. Constructive democratic politics needs to be as broad and as welcoming as possible to encourage social peace and political legitimacy. Conviction politi- cians risk being imprisoned by ideolo- gy, handcuffed to the world they wish to see rather than adjusting to the world as it is. Particularly in 2006, George W. Bush’s administration seemed to have foundered on the shoals of his rigidity.<\/p>\n In recent decades, primary battles have tended to bring out the partisan- ship in candidates, while the general election fosters broader, centre-seek- ing statesmanship. Before any caucus- es meet, before any votes are cast, it is premature to make any definitive pro- nouncements about what has occurred so far. But it is never too early to hope. This is a perilous age, menaced by Islamist terrorists who have declared war on the West \u201d\u201d whether we like to notice it or not \u201d\u201d challenged by an overheated economy that often underproduces for the poor. America’s leaders must try building bridges, forging consensus, playing to the centre, not to the base. At the same time, citizens, especially today, need a renewed appreciation of what binds them as Americans, while notic- ing the many positive things going on in the country, despite the challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So far, the 2008 American presidential campaign does not make sense. Since 2000, reporters have been warning about the growing polarization between \u201d\u0153red\u201d\u009d and \u201d\u0153blue\u201d\u009d America. After the 2004 election, a map darted around the Internet, showing North America divided into two countries: cosmopolitan \u201d\u0153blue\u201d\u009d America, constitut- ing the Northeast, the West Coast and Canada, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[9356],"tags":[],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-217897","issues","type-issues","status-publish","hentry","category-non-classifiee"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n