No Center, No Centrists
By George Lakoff
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Wednesday 15 August 2007
"Centrism" is the creation of an inaccurate, self-serving metaphor,
and it is time to bury it.
There is no left-to-right linear spectrum in the American political life. There
are two systems of values and modes of thought - call them progressive and conservative
(or nurturant and strict, as I have). There are total progressives, who use
a progressive mode of thought on all issues. And total conservatives. And there
are lots of folks who are what I've called "biconceptuals": progressive
on certain issue areas and conservative on others. But they don't form a linear
scale. They are all over the place: progressive on domestic policy, conservative
on foreign policy; conservative on economic policy, progressive on foreign policy
and social issues; conservative on religion, but progressive on social issues
and foreign policy, and on and on. No linear scale. No single set of values
defining a "center." Indeed, many such folks are not moderate in their
views; they can be quite passionate about both their progressive and conservative
views.
Barack Obama has it right: Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left
and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas - the ideas
on which this country was founded and which carry forth that spirit. Progressives
care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on
that care.
The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two
aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military,
police and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection,
environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; Social Security
and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself,
and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights and so on.
Empowerments include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed
communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking
system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the
court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government
makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without progressive
empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely,
or even mainly, on the state - about the "national interest" defined
as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual
people's interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees,
education, women's and children's issues, public health and so on.
These are simply American values. The progressive movement is a patriotic American
movement. People who call themselves "centrists" share progressive
views on important issue areas, but have conservative views on other major issue
areas. The areas vary from person to person. There is no single moral perspective,
no single set of agreed-upon issues.
The very idea that there is a "center" marginalizes progressives
and sees them as extremists, when they simply share fundamental American values.
The term "center" suggests there is a "mainstream" where
most people are and that there is a single set of views held by that mainstream.
That is false.
The fallacy matters in terms of Democratic electoral strategy. The Democratic
base consists of people who are mostly or totally progressive, just as the Republican
base consists of people who are mostly or totally conservative. How does the
Democratic Party as a whole, and Democratic candidates in particular, speak
to those who are biconceptual?
I am a cognitive scientist, and I believe that people's brains play a significant
role in elections. From the perspective of brain science, the answer is a no-brainer.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist!) You speak to biconceptuals the same way you speak
to your base: you discuss progressive values, and if you are talking to folks
with both progressive and conservative values, you mainly talk about the issues
where they share progressive values. What that does is evoke and strengthen
the progressive values already there in the minds of biconceptuals.
And, of course, you don't negate or argue against the other on their framing
turf - remember "Don't Think of an Elephant!"
That was the winning strategy of Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Brown is a thoroughgoing
progressive who never moved one inch to the right. He talked about the issues
where he agreed with his Ohio audiences - and legitimately spoke for them.
Think about Barack Obama going to Rick Warren's megachurch and getting a standing
ovation from evangelicals because he talked about the places where he agreed
with them, he activated his values in them (values they already had), he came
across as a man of principle, and he didn't get in their face about where he
disagreed.
The losing strategy is to move to the right, to assume with Republicans that
American values are mainly conservative and that the Democratic Party has to
move away from its base and adopt conservative values. When you do that, you
help activate conservative values in people's brains (thus helping the other
side), you offend your base (thus hurting yourself), and you give the impression
that you are expressing no consistent set of values, which is true! Why should
the American people trust somebody who does not have clear values, and who may
be trying to deceive them about the values he and his party's base hold?
Harold Ford is a perfect example. He just wasn't believable as a good ole boy
Tennesseean when he took conservative positions. He just didn't seem real. The
"not a real Tennesseean" ad pointed up the discomfort that Ford's
overt appeal to the right aroused in Tennessee. It was perceived as sleazy,
and the "Harold" ad pointed to it as well. The ads were racist in
part, but they were more than just racist. It would be hard to imagine such
ads directed at Barack Obama.
Which brings me to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which Harold Ford
now heads.
My colleague, Glenn W. Smith, has pointed to the DLC strategy of getting
as many "swing voters" as possible and the minimum number of base
voters needed to win. That is why the DLC and Rahm Emanuel argued against Howard
Dean's 50-state strategy and for a swing-state alone strategy.
The DLC has concentrated on policy wonkishness (see their 100 new policy ideas
on their web site), rather than values. Their concentration on laundry lists
of policies rather than vision, values and passion has not helped Democrats
electorally.
The reason the DLC has been attacking progressives, Smith argues, is that DLC
members have major conservative values and are threatened by the progressive
base. Some of those values are financial: Wall Street, the HMOs and drug companies,
agribusiness, developers, the oil companies, and international corporations
that benefit from trade agreements, outsourcing, cheap labor abroad, and practices
that harm indigenous populations but bring profits. A powerful motivation for
the party has been that, if they take such positions, they, like the Republicans,
can get big money contributions from Wall Street.
But there is more involved here than money. The DLC seems also to share the
foreign policy idea that we should be maximizing our "national interest"
- our military strength, economic wealth (measured by gross domestic product,
or GDP), and global political clout (presumably coming from economic and military
clout). This is opposed to a foreign policy that maximizes the well-being of
people, both at home and abroad.
But worst of all, the DLC has been cowed by the conservatives. They have drunk
the conservative Kool-Aid. As Harold Ford intimated in his debate with Markos
Moulitsas: To win you have be a hawk on foreign policy, a social conservative
on abortion and gay marriage, and not raise taxes. Nonsense.
Even worse, Ford is suggesting that those in the party who don't hold those
views say that they do. There's a name for someone who goes against his principles
to pander for votes. It's not a nice name.
In all the commentary about that debate, an important aspect has gone without
comment. Markos certainly bested Ford. But to do so, he also had to best the
moderator, David Gregory, who insisted on using the conservative-tainted word
"liberal." Over and over, Markos resisted Gregory's frames. Gregory
was not using Markos's frames, and Markos insisted on his own.
It is important to stand up to the DLC, and to the idea that there is a unitary
mainstream center, that they are it, and that progressives are extremists and
deserve to be marginalized.
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George Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley. He previously taught at Harvard University
and the University of Michigan. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Dr. Lakoff has published a multitude
of articles in major scholarly journals and edited volumes. He is the author
of the influential book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think,
Second Edition, (2002). He is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.
Matt Renner is an assistant editor and Washington reporter for Truthout.
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