The Shallowness of Centrism

Marshall Wittman, in a long meditation on whether bloggers are necessary, makes some obvious points, some important points, and a couple very strange points. Of the obvious ones, of course bloggers aren't necessary, this country somehow survived in the years before Markos Moulitsas (otherwise known as The Dark Days). The real question is whether bloggers are a force for good, and here he tries to offer an answer, but again gets mired in his traditional swamp of reflexive anti-partisanship. And this is what I find so infuriating about Wittman: an obvious bright guy with a keen ear for the quick phrase, his ideology is a strange, reflexive beast, blindly groping through the grooves between Republicans and Democrats with no clear conception of where it actually wants to go:

The Moose's fixation is the creation of a "third force' in politics that transcends the petty partisan divide. That is why he is enamored with a wide range of leaders who follow in the footsteps of his favorite posthumous pol - T.R.
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Fortunately, there is a growing group of bloggers from the vital center - or "immoderate centrists" is the label the Moose prefers. The Moose gives credit to Joe Gandelman over at the Moderate Voice and the folks at Centerfield for promoting centrist voices in the blogosphere.

I like Teddy too, but for his environmentalism, his antitrust work, his populism, his empiricism, his distaste for racism and belief in the universal potential for improvement. And, in some respects, I don't like Teddy, namely for his glorification of belligerent masculinity and the unnecessarily aggressive foreign policy he followed. But Teddy's carefree willingness to bash through party walls and form new alliances was little more than a sideshow -- who cares? The Republicans are still around, the Bull Moosers aren't.

What frustrates me about Wittman is that he's infatuated with centrism for the sake of centrism. He doesn't offer an ideology with greater coherence than the splintered philosophies pushed by the major parties. You'll occasionally watch him justify some international aggressiveness or domestic spending on the basis of its assumed popularity, but never on its merit as policy. He wants a third way, but so far as I can tell, all he's interested in is the building of the road, not where it goes. It's a hollowness that lends itself to bizarre posts like this:

A confrontation with Saddam was inevitable in the aftermath of 9/11. No President would have tolerated the behavior of a madman who had initiated two wars, possessed WMD and was the primary source of instability in the region which was the home of Jihadism.

Say what? That's like arguing no one would tolerate an influx of roaches in an apartment building brimming with malnutrition. Saddam's form of belligerence was a Cold War-relic, it was the opposite of Jihadism. That's why the actual Jihadists routinely advocated his overthrow. As for the sources of regional instability, look towards Jerusalem, not Mesopotamia for that. We could calm that corner by shipping the Jews off to Idaho, but Jihadism, and not instability, is the enemy, and so we shouldn't be taking out its avowed enemies.

But if Wittman's post is incoherent as policy argument, it's a perfect example of his brand of meta-speak. What's important there is his insistence that both parties are equally to blame, that partisanship, not ideology, created the chasm ("No President..."), and his display of tough-minded, martialistic patriotism. Which then leads to this:

The Third Camp stands between the Administration "stay the course" and the "withdrawal now" forces. It includes both supporters of the decision to go to war and critics. Its leaders include John McCain, Joe Biden and Wes Clark.

While they have different victory strategies, all of these men believe that it would be a disaster to leave Iraq in chaos.This camp is highly critical of the President's failures in the post-war period and argues for a new strategy. This force believes that the White House is losing the moral high ground by failing to take a strong stand against torture and the inhumane treatment of prisoners.

However, the Third Camp is united in the belief that America can only leave when Iraq is relatively stable and a government is in place that can defend itself against the terrorist forces. Some favor more troops, at least temporarily. Others believe that current levels are adequate. Most of all, the Third Camp seeks a bi-partisan national unity that rejects the increasingly bitter polarization over the war.

The Third Camp, apparently, has nothing in common save Wittman's affection for them. They're in different parties, vote for different agendas, and offer wildly differing worldviews. On Iraq, they don't agree on strategy, nor cause, nor outcome. They're really only united by a sort of high-polling, sensibly-stated taste for the occupation's continuation, dreams of winning the presidency, and a reliance on the incompetence dodge. And that's the Third Way? The vaunted middle road between the brain dead parties is more enthusiasm for yesterday's failed policies?

And to ensure you don't think I'm quoting unfairly, here's an article Wittman wrote on what was powerful about McCain -- see if anything in there is better described as a policy suggestion than a personality trait. Here's another piece where he lauds Gingrich's emphasis on ideas -- and apologizes for agreeing with Newt when he was ascendant -- without offering any of his own. He promotes ideas in the way he promotes centrism, as a conceptual vessel that can be turned into a campaign tone and filled with anything the speaker wishes. That's some principle.

The problem with Wittman, and politics more generally, is that we've not defined our terms. Partisan isn't a necessarily bad label, the question is whether it's followed by "hack". I've nothing but respect for idea-driven partisans who believe in, and fight for, their ideologies. I've no respect for hackish partisans who sacrifice their ideologies -- when they have them -- on the altar of party loyalty. Wittman is a strange variant of that species, partisan for a certain position -- the middle one -- on the ideological spectrum no matter the ideas of the leaders and organizations occupying it. Why splitting the difference between two sets of bad ideas creates better ones is, of course, anyone's guess.

In my article on Hackett, I argued that the blogosphere valued pugilistic litmus tests above ideological ones. Wittman, in fact, is exactly like all those bloggers he thinks himself antidote to, uninterested in policies but obsessed with positioning. The difference is that where most bloggers demand their favorites throw punches across the aisle, Wittman asks them to knock out both sides. But moderation offers no inherent good, new ideas no intrinsic worth. The left may be wrong and the right wronger, but the third way is only laudable if it does better. Wittman's tried to convince us that, by definition and through distinction, it does. But he's never told us on what. Worse, I'm not sure he's even noticed the omission.