On the centrist fringe

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
On the centrist fringe				November 23, 2005

As was to be expected, post mortems on the recent election have taken on ad nauseam proportions. We all supposedly now know why Tim Kaine won and Jerry Kilgore lost.

Frankly, I have no idea why Kaine won, though I must say that I’m delighted that a majority of those who voted preferred him to the reincarnation of Barney Fife that the Republicans were running.

Most Democrats will tell you that Kaine won because, like his joined-at-the-hip predecessor Mark Warner, he’s a centrist.

Any attempt to define centrism precisely leads into the murky area of political lexicology, since the term seems to apply only to Democrats. You rarely hear of a centrist Republican. Republicans who don’t hoe the row for the now-potent extreme right are generally referred to pejoratively as moderates.

The conjugality of Democrats and centrism seems to have occurred back in the 90s with the dubiously named Democratic Leadership Council and their poster boy, Bill Clinton. In a recent seminar held at Hofstra University, the Clinton years were discussed by several panels. All of them seemed to agree that centrism was the key to whatever success Clinton had. One panelist went so far as to say that if Clinton were running again today, “He would do exactly what Mrs. Clinton is doing, and run to the center.”

Not quite so sanguine about Clinton’s centrism is Hofstra political science professor and avowed liberal, David Green, who declared that Clinton’s presidency “was a fifth-column move to undermine the ideas that I hold dear.”

Further complicating the issue was a statement issued last week by Gov. Mark Warner in response to questions about his plans for the future. Claiming that he wanted to be part of the debate about the persona of the Democratic Party, Warner postulated that what the party had to do was “recapture that sensible center.”

What he means by recapturing the sensible center is open to question. The Republicans haven’t been anywhere near the center, sensible or otherwise, for years, so what’s to recapture?

Nor is it clear that Warner’s concept of sensibility can be trusted. While he might have made it to the Senate had he decided to run against Sen. George Allen, Warner has instead dunked his head into a bucket of honeyed hubris and will hold out for the presidency. Forgetting the futility of Doug Wilder’s candidacy, Warner will foolishly face the juggernauts of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and a host of others in the Democratic major league. He will likely be ground into the dust along with other governors of small states who similarly intend to commit hara-kiri.

But Virginia, thanks to Warner’s Platonic reflection, Tim Kaine, will have a governor in the sensible center and the middle of the road.

The problem with the middle of the road is that you can’t drive in it. It’s frequently denoted by a median strip, a safety zone away from the traffic that’s zooming along on the left or the right. It’s the area in which it’s safe to talk about education, transportation and the budget, but don’t you dare mention abortion, civil rights, gay rights, universal health care, affirmative action or the war in Iraq. That wouldn’t be sensible. That wouldn’t be safe.

As a result, while the right lane is streaming with traffic headed for a Nirvana where resides the most diabolically destructive political agenda this country has seen in decades, the left lane veers off to nowhere. What’s left of its traffic pulls off the road and into some rest area in the middle. There it sits and diddles while women, gays, seniors, the poor and the sick get pummeled by the crazed drivers on the right.

You have to wonder what position centrists like Warner and Kaine would have taken relative to the great civil rights issues facing the South in the ‘60s and ‘70s. In all probability, the sensible centrist’s approach in Virginia would have been to take no position at all. Hang out in the middle where it’s safe.

Clouding the question even more is the fact that Kaine’s centrism is inextricably conflated with his highly publicized religious values. While he’ll hang to the left and oppose the death penalty, he has no qualms about setting women adrift on the issue of abortion and will gladly toss gays to the lions on the right in his eagerness to sign on to a constitutional amendment banning civil unions.

According to Democratic pundits, only a centrist Democrat can win in Virginia. Well, maybe. As more moderate Republicans from the North stream into the state to retire, and as the sprawl from Northern Virginia works its way south, it might just be that centrism and its weak-kneed waffling on social issues will become passé.

In the recent election, lieutenant governor candidate Leslie Byrne made no bones about her progressivism, nor, unlike Kaine, did she shun the tough issues that the left has dealt with for years. While she lost, she did garner 49% of the vote in what is constantly described as an ultra-conservative state.

It’s time for Virginia Democrats to get off the median strip and back on the highway. Perhaps it won’t be too long before progressive Democratic candidates may claim that their Republican opponents are too conservative for Virginia.