Inconsequential centrists

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Inconsequential centrists				June 24, 2009

I am not a big fan of Creigh Deeds, though I find his victory in the last Democratic primary of no little political interest.

Why, after voting overwhelmingly for an alleged progressive in the presidential election would Virginia Democrats pick the most conservative of the three primary gubernatorial candidates to face Republican Bob McDonnell? While carpetbaggery may well have nixed the chances of the rambunctious Terry McAuliffe, why would voters overlook the Obama-like progressivism of Brian Moran and bubble in the rural conservatism of Deeds?

A comparison of their policies relative to issues such as jobs, education, energy and the environment shows but slight differences between McDonnell and Deeds. Both will make job creation their priority, though how this will be accomplished on the state level is about as opaque in terms of practicality as it is in the national agenda.

Greater participation in higher education seems to be the answer for both, as does an improvement in the modus operandi of public schools. There, teachers’ salaries loom large as do questions about educational efficacy and the development of more charter schools.

In terms of energy, both support alternate sources, such as wind and nuclear power. The far-fetched notion of clean coal likewise seems attractive to both, as does off-shore drilling, though McDonnell favors drilling for both oil and natural gas, while Deeds supports only the latter.

Both agree that gay marriage is anathema, and both are heavily supportive of ubiquity when it comes to carting around concealed weapons. NRA-caressing Deeds was a co-sponsor of the defeated bill to allow concealed weapons in bars and restaurants.

The point of all this seems to be that the center has become the political locus du jour, as both candidates move to where, we are told, most Virginians reside. But where is that?

After the French Revolution, that country’s legislature was physically set up so that those who sat on the left side were clearly distinguished politically from those on the right. In the center sat what we might call the Speaker, or moderator between the two. So carefully defined were the two sides that there were no representatives in the center and hence no centrists.

The problem today, of course, is that, while the right has managed to purge what were formerly known as moderate Republicans from their ranks and hence preserve their conservative profiles, the Democrats tend to be an indefinable conglomerate mishmash running the gamut from right to left. Their philosophical pot cooks just about any ingredients they want to toss into it.

And while both parties believe that most Americans are somewhere in the nebulous center and hence profess centrism, the Republicans, aided by the meek acquiescence of Democrats, find moderation easily disavowed once in office. If elected, McDonnell and his centrism will undoubtedly wriggle their way back to the ideological sanctuary of Pat Robertson more quickly than George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism was forever deposited in Dick Cheney’s bunker after his election.

As for the Democrats, so great is their fear of the almighty center and so misplaced is their erotic quest for bipartisanship that whatever leftist principles they might have avowed are eschewed for the sake of right wing reciprocity.

Following some aberrant Hegelian notion that after repetitive conflicts and revolutions a paradisiacal parity might be reached through moderation, they devolve into one compromising situation after another. Whatever plans they had for health care, gun control, education, immigration or inclusive diversity become metamorphosed for the sake of centrism and bipartisanship into a meaningless, jellified mass of inconsequence.

In a recent New York Times poll, 70% of those questioned said they preferred a government-run health plan. Yet Democratic centrists in the Senate have joined with Republicans to derail the Obama proposal for just such a health care construct.

On Monday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman summarized the situation well when he noted that “If the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are way out in right field.”

It would seem that the so-called center is shifting, depending on the issue involved. Unfortunately, many of these shifts that favor what should be solid Democratic causes go unanswered.

Or they are answered by worried Democrats voting to elect someone like the politically non-descript Deeds, who, were he in that post-revolutionary French legislature, would be clamoring for a seat on the right nearest the moderator.

I have no idea what type of leadership the November election will bring to Virginia. What I do know is that there will be no intellectual perfumery from the progressive left wafting out the windows of the governor’s mansion. We’re all centrists now.