Only The Centrists Can Save Us

Over at the Daily Beast, John Avlon argues that Obama should be listening to the Blue Dogs and the Sensible Senate Centrists, not attacking them. This makes much more sense when you realize John Avlon is Rudy Guiliani's former speechwriter (how hard can that job be, a noun, a verb and 9/11, repeat) and is the Centrist's Centrist. It's a useful article if only to demonstrate how pernicious and dishonest the middle-of-the-road argument is on health care.

Attacked as villains by liberals and accused of slowing down the legislation’s passage, they are the unsung heroes of health-care reform. They are not trying to kill Obama’s initiative; they are trying to save it.

Barack Obama’s 2008 victory was not a liberal ideological mandate but a vote against the Bush era’s polarizing play-to-the-base politics. Congressional centrists are trying to help the president follow through on his rhetoric about a new era of bipartisan consultation and cooperation. They are doing the heavy lifting of trying to forge the broadest possible coalition of support, while liberal leaders encourage a narrow play-to-the-base party-line vote. In the process, congressional centrists are pragmatically looking out for President Obama’s interests in the larger electorate.

No one should know this better than Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who recruited many of these centrist Blue Dogs as congressional candidates in 2006. Their selection led directly to the Democrats’ recapture of Congress after the conservatives’ ideological over-reach.

The pendulum swing of politics has a funny way of self-perpetuating. Emanuel remembers the way that Bill Clinton’s unified-Democratric control of Congress evaporated after perceptions of a left-wing lurch amid the last Democratic attempt at health-care reform. The Blue Dogs are the emissaries of this received wisdom; they are Barack Obama’s best friends on Capitol Hill right now.

The Blue Dogs are 40 or so Democrats, largely from swing districts in the South and Midwest, led by Tennessee’s Jim Cooper and Arkansas’ Mike Ross. In the Senate, centrist efforts are being led by a bipartisan group chaired by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Republican ranking member Chuck Grassley. Together, across the divisions of Congress, these two groups are consistent in their commitment to fiscal responsibility at a time of unprecedented spending.

Do you notice something about this bipartisan argument? Specifically, how it's virtually identical to the Republican one? Let's count the conservative talking points in just that section:

• Obama and the Democrats do not have a mandate, despite the vote.
  
• Obama promised to bring a new era of bipartisanship, he must make all the compromises.
  
• Liberals are the only partisans, not conservatives.
• Centrists are the only wise people in Washington.
• Clinton tried the same thing and failed, always heed the lesson of Clinton.
  
• Fiscal conservatism is the only thing that matters.

Most of all, it's the same argument from 12 months ago: conservatism can never fail, only people who call themselves conservatives can. People didn't vote against Republicans, they voted against false conservatism...so they installed Democrats into office. (yeah, that makes perfect sense.)

In other words, this is the same mealy-mouthed centrist garbage spouted time after time. Democrats should strive to be more like Republicans, the argument goes. Republicans should strive to be more like Republicans too.

As I've said before, John Avlon's view of bipartisanship is "Democrats give Republicans 99% of what they want, then claim victory over the remaining 1%." Republicans on the other hand want that 1% just to prove a point.

Despite the will of the American people, Republicans should always be in charge. But here's the thrust of Avlon's article:

But perhaps the most significant contribution of this centrist coalition to the health-care debate might be the replacement of the controversial “public option” with a nonprofit private cooperative plan, based on American models that have existed at the community level for decades. This simple switch would single-handedly defang conservative fear-mongering about the national socialization of health care. It would likewise achieve many of the practical goals of the public option, without acquiescing to the larger ideological goal advanced by liberals. This should be considered a clear win-win proposition.

Really, this guy deserves an award for that paragraph alone. At the very least, I'm taking him with me should I need to trade in my clunker for cash and see what kind of deal I can get (maybe I can get a RV or a nuclear sub or a new pyramid out of the deal.) Check the proposition here on killing the public option: It makes conservatives happy, and liberals unhappy and to him that's a win-win deal.

This is almost boilerplate Broderism, with an extra helping of disdain for liberals and an almost fanatical devotion to bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake, not to actually do anything like "fix health care."

Why is it that Sensible Centrism means "help out corporate America as much as possible" anyway? One of the Potomac's great mysteries, I suppose.