Tag Archives: political communication

An Excellent Reminder

A recent column by one of my “go to” pundits, Jennifer Rubin, reminded me once again why political communication is so difficult. Terms like “liberal” and “progressive” have been redefined by ideologues to facilitate their use as labels, rather than as explanatory terms. Perhaps the saddest example is misuse of the word “conservative,” which the media continues to apply to MAGA politicians, despite the fact that they embrace positions and arguments that are far–far–from traditional conservatism.

Rubin has tackled yet another term that is widely misunderstood: centrism. As she writes,

Centrism isn’t a mushy tendency to compromise. It isn’t a brain-dead fondness for style over substance. Above all, it is not to be confused with “moderation” — the futile and frankly foolish attempt to carve out a space halfway between the extremes of MAGA authoritarianism on the right and rabid nihilism from the left.

If climate change is a fact, to take one example, then splitting the difference with climate deniers is nonsensical. And if the MAGA movement assaults truth, then telling half of the truth or telling the truth half the time isn’t centrism. It’s absurdism, and a sure path to meaninglessness and nihilism.

Centrism, rather, is a mind-set. It’s more than humility, tolerance and restraint, although all of those are necessary elements. Above all, it’s an approach to governance, and not a list of specific policy prescriptions. It can be bold, pragmatic and popular.

Rubin defines centrism as a willingness to admit that all wisdom does not reside on one side of the political or ideological  spectrum. It “recognizes that capitalism and regulation, individual merit and social justice, and diversity and cohesion not only can coexist but must operate in tandem within a healthy, balanced society. Centrism, in short, stands for the proposition that ideological tensions are best resolved when we incorporate elements from conflicting perspectives.”

The essay proceeds to show how Biden’s immensely successful Presidency has benefitted from a (properly understood) centrist approach to undeniably progressive goals, and how centrism (again, properly understood) has won elections around the globe. As Rubin reminds us, centrism rejects Manichaeism, and respects coequal branches of government. As she also observes, ideologically extreme courts that abandon that measured, centrist approach lose legitimacy. (Someone should tell John Roberts…)

As she concludes:

We can attribute democracy’s woes around the world to failure to spread economic prosperity, demographic change and the decline of civics education, as well as religious fundamentalism, information bubbles and globalism. Some combination of these factors inevitably leads to support for strongmen who vow to fix intractable problems that “messy” democracy cannot solve. But we are looking in the wrong places for our answers.

We can address all those challenges provided the spirit of centrism prevails. Centrism can accommodate diversity, secure democratic norms, and preserve a credible and independent judiciary, all essential and foundational to liberal democracy.

I agree with all of the points Rubin makes, especially her definition of centrism. But that definition prompts another observation. Centrism–understood as Rubin defines it–looks an awful lot like another quality in short supply in our political class: maturity.

Mature individuals are reflective. They exhibit self-awareness. They embrace civility. Maturity includes the ability to consider all sides of a debate, the ability to embrace persuasive elements from different perspectives. If there is any evidence that any segment of the MAGA movement is mature, I’ve missed it.

It isn’t simply the childish and increasingly nasty response to Kamala Harris’ candidacy. Trump’s entire vocabulary (which apparently stopped expanding in third grade) is that of a playground bully. He doesn’t try to communicate–he merely spews insults. (He is guilty of many things, but civility is certainly not one of them.) His MAGA supporters happily emulate his crude and childish behavior. The trolls that occasionally post here underscore that observation–they simply insult, evidently unable to make anything remotely like rational arguments for considered positions.

Rational arguments. Considered positions. Those are markers for Rubin’s “centrism” and for what I define as maturity–and far too many of our contemporary political figures lack both. The GOP is currently the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green, and it would be hard to find more immature, unreflective (or more embarrassingly ignorant) standard-bearers.

I applaud Rubin’s effort at actual communication, but that effort fails to take into account the fact that today’s MAGA Republicans aren’t just incapable of actual communication, but disinterested in it. They remind me most of monkeys in the zoo throwing feces.

We need to start electing people who display a modicum of self-awareness, and are actually interested in communicating and governing. That apparently excludes MAGA.

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Defining Moderation

Remember our prior discussions of the Overton Window?The Overton window is the name given to the range of policies that are considered politically acceptable by the mainstream population at a particular time. It’s named (duh!) for someone named Overton, who noted that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within that range.

The rightward movement of the Overton Window over the past few decades explains why the hand-wringing of the “chattering classes” over the disappearance of “moderation” is so misplaced.

I have noted previously that in 1980, when I ran for Congress as a Republican, I was frequently accused of being much too conservative. My political philosophy hasn’t changed (although my position on a couple of issues has, shall we say, “matured” as I became more informed about those issues)–and now I am routinely accused of being a pinko/socialist/commie.

My experience is anything but unique. I basically stood still; the Overton Window moved. Significantly.

As the GOP moved from center-right to radical right to semi-fascist, the definition of “moderation” moved with it. America has never had a true leftwing party of the type typical in Europe, but today, anything “left” of insane is labeled either moderate or “librul.” That makes these tiresome screeds about the lack of moderation dangerously misleading.

As Peter Dreir recently wrote at Talking Points Memo,(behind the TPM paywall),

Here’s how the Los Angeles Times described how the infrastructure bill was passed: “After months of negotiation among President Biden, Democrats and a group of moderate Republicans to forge a compromise, the Senate voted 69 to 30 in favor of the legislation.”

The Times then listed the “ten centrist senators” — five Republicans and five Democrats — who worked to craft the bill: Republicans Rob Portman (OH), Bill Cassidy (LA), Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Mitt Romney (UT) and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen (NH) Jon Tester (MT), Joe Manchin (WV), Mark Warner (VA), and Sinema.

But by what stretch of the imagination are Cassidy, Portman, Romney, Collins and Murkowski “moderate” or “centrist” Republicans? None of them are even close to the “center” of America’s ideological spectrum. They all have opposed raising taxes on the wealthy, toughening environmental standards, expanding voting rights, adopting background checks for gun sales and limiting the sale of military-style assault weapons, and other measures that, according to polls, are overwhelmingly popular with the American public.

As the essay points out, there is no longer any overlap between America’s two major parties. There may be some overlap among voters, but not among elected officials.

What we have experienced is what political scientists call “asymmetrical polarization.” Over the past decades, as the scholarly literature and survey research make abundantly clear, Republicans have moved far, far to the right, while Democrats have moved slightly to the left.

Finding a center point between the far right and the center-left may be “splitting the difference,” but only in an alternate universe can it be considered “moderation.”

When I became politically active, people like Michael Gerson were considered quite conservative. But Gerson stopped well short of crazy, and he has been a clear-eyed critic of the GOP’s descent into suicidal politics.  Gerson recently considered the spectacle of DeSantis and Abbot, who have been playing to the populist base of today’s Republican Party.

These governors are attempting, of course, to take refuge in principle — the traditional right not to have cloth next to your face, or the sacred right to spread nasty infections to your neighbors. But such “rights” talk is misapplied in this context. The duty to protect public health during a pandemic is, by nature, an aggregate commitment. Success or failure is measured only in a total sum. Incompetence in this area is a fundamental miscarriage of governing. Knowingly taking actions that undermine public health is properly called sabotage, as surely as putting anthrax in the water supply….

The problem for the Republican Party is that one of the central demands of a key interest group is now an act of sociopathic insanity. Some of the most basic measures of public health have suddenly become the political equivalent of gun confiscation. It’s as if the activist wing of the GOP decided that municipal trash pickup is a dangerous socialist experiment. Or chlorine in public pools is an antifa plot. There can be no absolute political right to undermine the health and safety of your community. Or else community has no meaning.

If “moderation” means finding middle ground between sociopathic insanity and common sense, language has lost any ability to inform or communicate. When presumably serious commentators misuse such terminology, it just makes it more difficult to cure–or even understand– our manifest political dysfunctions.

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