Curse of the Centrist

[jducoeur]

Y'know, perhaps the most annoying part of the whole economic crisis for me is the near-certainty of how severely I'm going to be Silverwinging about it in the coming years. I mean, I'm quite sure that short-term government intervention was necessary here, and that the regulatory framework needs beefing up -- the Republican extremists have torn things down rather too far in their free-market zeal. But I'm pretty confident that things are going to swing too far the other way now, and that within a year or two they'll have over-done the regulations, and we'll spend years peeling them back again.

Truth to tell, I'm not so worried about Obama: for all his supposed liberality, his main characteristic seems to be caution, and he's fond of well-measured plans. But I have faith that the congressional Democrats, given a chance to mess in the markets, will overdo it. Not that I want the Republicans in power at this point, either -- the fact that so many of them responded to this crisis with the usual empty mantra "lower taxes!", as if that had much of anything to do with the problem, shows how far they've diverged from reality. Indeed, I'm appalled at the refusal of so many of them to even admit that careless deregulation was complicit in this mess.

What I want is careful technocrats doing the minimal necessary tinkering. But even granting that Obama himself tends to that style, I don't think he's going to do much to rein in the likely tide of regulation...

Comments

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

A great deal is going to depend on who Obama chooses for his cabinet, if/when.

I have a couple favorites for certain positions, but those deal mostly with foreign policy, defense, and FEMA. Not so much the economy directly.

(I want Lt. Gen. Honore for FEMA. Or Homeland Security, even.)

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

That's the second time in two days I've heard that used as a verb. :)

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

But even granting that Obama himself tends to that style, I don't think he's going to do much to rein in the likely tide of regulation...

Indeed. One of the general criticisms of Obama's record is that he's pretty much a doctrinal Democrat. He doesn't have any history of standing against his party -- his message of "Change!" is primarily supported by the fact that he's not a Republican.

It doesn't help that half of the party voted for Hillary Clinton. I have no clue how that dynamic is going to play out, but I can't see it ending well. (See Bill Clinton's defense (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122282635048992995.html) of the deregulation that happened under his watch.)

Also: are you really a Centrist? Check here (http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html). (I only bring this up because you might be influenced by your neighbors. Being in California, I tend to think I'm conservative -- but then I check the quiz and remind myself that I'm really only to the right of San Francisco.)

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

Though, I've just done a re-test, and I'm apparently feeling much more Libertarian and Right-wing than I normally do. I still come out a Centrist, but I'm over in a corner I don't normally find myself in.

[jducoeur]

Well, obviously it depends on definitions -- and my definitions tend to be fairly European. Mostly, I consider myself a "liberal" in The Economist's sense of the word, which bears no resemblance to the American definition, but isn't really what America calls "conservative" either.

But to the point: yeah, Centrist is pretty apt. I hang out mostly with Democrats, but spend a fair amount of time pointing out to my friends that we live in The Massachusetts Reality Warp, and that things are Different most everywhere else.

I vote almost exclusively Democratic, but that's mostly because I consider the Democrats merely moderately irresponsible fiscally -- by contrast, I consider the modern Republicans *wildly* irresponsible, not to mention downright dangerous on foreign affairs and civil rights. I dislike the Democrats' tendencies towards protectionism, but not nearly as much as I despise the Republicans' fascism. I want the Republican Party Burned, Crushed and Destroyed, but mostly in the hope that they might afterwards wind up a party I could consider voting for again. (Deep in my heart, I think of myself as a Weld Republican.)

And most practically: my favorite President in my adult life was Bill Clinton, who was generally defined as "Centrist". So the shoe seems to fit...

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

I don't live in Massachusetts, so will accept your vision of the parties there.

The problem in California is that both parties are hide-bound and doctrinal. Generally speaking, they're either looking to increase social services, or cut taxes. It's no wonder we're $18 billion in the hole.

(I keep thinking that Republicans can take this state away from the Democrats, and then they go chasing off after some damn fool Lost Cause.)

In contrast, Texas Republicans tend to be tremendously pragmatic, and Texas Democrats tend to have screws loose. (Texas Democrats seemed to have performed particularly poorly during and after Ike.)

It wasn't always that way -- the problem is, the generation of Democrats that I voted for were the Old Guard; some of them had been in office since JFK. They're all gone now, either retired or switched parties.

(Yeah, I know. W. Bush is a "Texas Republican". The odd thing is that he was a decent governor -- you can see the echoes of that if you look at his efforts in Africa -- but he was a lousy choice to finish off Saddam Hussein.)

Interestingly, the disappearance of the Republican Party might be a good thing -- at this point, the Democratic Party is just the Party of Opposition. If the Republicans disappeared, the Democrats would probably fracture into the two or three pieces that are held together by their distaste for Bush.

My favorite President (of my adulthood)? Probably H.W. Bush, though Reagan was flashier. Bush is the one President in my lifetime who rigorously followed a policy of restraint in office.

I think my only serious criticism of him is that, in remembering the lesson of Vietnam in Gulf War I, he forgot the lesson of the Second Punic War: that if you don't walk away, you're going to come back.

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

[jducoeur]

Interesting. It sounds like the Texas Republicans are rather like Massachusetts Democrats, and for much the same reason: when you're that dominant, you can't afford to be doctrinal. It's one thing when there's real opposition, but when one party is mostly in power (as is essentially true in MA), it has to be pragmatic or things will totally run off the rails.

Mind, it's all still quite liberal here. But it's a rather sensibly libertarian-tinged brand of liberalism, and the loonies mostly get exiled to the political fringes.

(BTW, I did eventually try out that silly little political quiz. I think it's rather over-simplified, but well-done for its simplicity. It labeled me as Liberal, but the actual chart comes out squarely Left-Libertarian, which is more accurate: I'm ferociously pro-civil-liberties, but a fiscal centrist.)

If the Republicans disappeared, the Democrats would probably fracture into the two or three pieces that are held together by their distaste for Bush.

Could be -- certainly, nature abhors a political vacuum, and the US almost always has *some* sort of opposition in government. That said, I never quite understood what held the Republicans together when they held nearly untrammeled power: the religious right, neo-cons and libertarians always seemed like an insanely fractious mix. (In practice, what held them together seems to have been pork and corruption, which is a pretty common endgame for such scenarios.)

My guess is that the Republicans won't be *completely* wiped out, although this election will be pretty awful for them. If Obama wins, the Democrats will be more or less completely in control (although probably without the magic 60-vote majority in the Senate), which will make the fringes of the party more unruly. In practice, this probably means that the Blue Dog Coalition will become the power-brokers, able to make or break legislation: I'd bet that they will see themselves as the necessary check on the excesses of the party, and will really quite enjoy that role...

[meiczyslaw.livejournal.com]

The quiz actually has a lot of effort behind it -- it takes a lot of work to make something as complicated as politics that simple. Especially since they stay away from the hot-button issues that confuse people.

The original version of this quiz was produced by the Libertarian Party about ten years ago, if I remember correctly. The test and its ownership has changed since then, but the basic idea is still there.

In fact, the Gallup organization has changed their approach to political viewpoints because of the test. They switched to the "plane" version of the political spectrum over the "left-right line" that most of us talk about. (Though Gallup uses the word "Populist" instead of "Statist". After all, Libertarians really don't like the folks opposite them, so are OK with the pejorative.)

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

Silverwinging? Is that a verb?

(As an Anglophile, there's a real temptation here to put in something about Silverwhinging, but I'm resisting . . . )

[jducoeur]

Silverwinging? Is that a verb?

Oh, sure -- has been for many years now. "Silverwing, v.i.: To argue all sides of a point vehemently, mostly to make sure that no point is left unmade concerning it."

It's essentially what I apprenticed to Steffan in: debates between us can get downright comical, concluding only when we realize that we accidentally swapped sides somewhere in the middle...

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

I suspect you're overestimating the liberal inclinations of the Democrats in Congress, and you'll probably be happier with the results than I will. An awful lot of the Democratic caucus is still comprised of people who spent many years believing that they needed to pretend to be almost-Republicans to get elected, and a bunch more who would have actually been Republicans if the modern GOP hadn't started driving out more and more moderates.

[jducoeur]

Well, I can only hope that you are correct...