Constipated Newsweek pundit warns Obama, win or lose, US is by nature a 'center-right' country

so even if he wins, he'll have to move right to hold onto power. The US is "instinctively" more conservative than liberal, self-appointed wiseman and heir to Dean Broder John Meacham says.

As if the US is a single simple person with a static ideology, rather than a dynamic, multifaceted, polymorphously complex nation, subject to multiple simultaneous historical currents and political movements. You'd almost think Meacham was afraid of something... :eyes:


http://www.newsweek.com/id/164656


CAMPAIGN 2008
It’s Not Easy Bein’ Blue

America remains a center-right nation—a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril.

By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 18, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008


It was a grand evening. On Thursday, Dec. 5, 1985, at the Plaza Hotel, William F. Buckley Jr. rose to toast the president of the United States on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of National Review. Charlton Heston was the master of ceremonies; the audience included William J. Casey, Nancy Kissinger, Roy Cohn and Tom Selleck. Thirteen months earlier Ronald Reagan had been re-elected, carrying every state in the Union except Walter Mondale's Minnesota. "As an individual you incarnate American ideals at many levels," Buckley said to the president. "As the final responsible authority, in any hour of great challenge, we depend on you." Buckley was 19 when America dropped the bomb at Hiroshima, he said, and he had just turned 60. "During the interval I have lived a free man in a free and sovereign country, and this only because we have husbanded a nuclear deterrent, and made clear our disposition to use it if necessary. I pray that my son, when he is 60, and your son, when he is 60 … will live in a world from which the great ugliness that has scarred our century has passed. Enjoying their freedoms, they will be grateful that, at the threatened nightfall, the blood of their fathers ran strong."

You can almost hear the trumpets. The scene from the Plaza, in a ballroom resplendent with flowers, full of guests cheered by wine, is glittery, and emblematic of the days of the Age of Reagan. Buckley's cold-war remarks were primal, reflecting the ancient human urge to protect one's own from gathering dangers.

A month before, in November 1985, Al From, the former staff director of the House Democratic Caucus, had been in North Carolina, flying from Raleigh to Greensboro, on a trip to talk wavering Democrats into staying in the fold after Mondale. "The common charge we heard from voters was that 'we didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left us'," says From, whose organization, the Democratic Leadership Council, was trying to move the party rightward toward the center. Dick Gephardt, Joe Biden, Sam Nunn and Lawton Chiles were among those flying with From, and things were not going well. "It was a miserable day, and our trip was about to be aborted," From says. There was congressional business in Washington, and From had already canceled the last leg of the journey, an event in Charlotte. Landing in Greensboro in the rain, the group made its gloomy way to an airport hotel for a fundraiser. "We were sure no one would show up," From says. "But when we got there we saw people lined up out the door." As he recalls it, the message of the occasion was straightforward: "We were trying to reconnect the Democratic Party with mainstream America."

In these two moments from a now distant year—the dinner at the Plaza and the gathering in Greensboro—lie the roots of our politics. It is easy—for some, even tempting—to detect the dawn of a new progressive era in the autumn of Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency. Eight years of Republican rule have produced two seemingly endless wars, an economy in recession, a giant federal intervention in the financial sector and a nearly universal feeling of unease in the country (86 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with how things are going, and 73 percent disapprove of the president's performance). Obama—a man who has yet to complete his fourth year in the United States Senate—is leading John McCain, and Democrats may gain seats on Capitol Hill. In 2007, the Pew Research Center published a 112-page report subtitled "Political Landscape More Favorable to Democrats," and the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 55 percent believe Obama's views are neither too liberal nor too conservative but are "about right."

But history, as John Adams once said of facts, is a stubborn thing, and it tells us that Democratic presidents from FDR to JFK to LBJ to Carter to Clinton usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would, or they pay for their continued liberalism at the polls. Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal—a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril. A party founded by Andrew Jackson on the principle that "the majority is to govern" has long found itself flummoxed by the failure of that majority to see the virtues of the Democrats and the vices of the Republicans.

....

poll after poll finds we're mostly

1. pro choice http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
2. pro gay civil unions http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4496265 /
3. pro universal health care http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/opinion/polls...


that center-right talking point is a lie.

Meacham doesn't seem to be able to see that Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes were all forced to move left, too.

Only one president was so popular he won four elections in a row, and he wasn't center-right. Does anymore need to be added to that?

have a rebuttal article by Jonathan Alter to one in which he makes the case that the country is actually shifting to the left.

center left country.:)

Instead of how he wishes they were.

I never read so much pompous bullshit crammed into such a small space.

Poll after pole after pole show that Americans favor liberal policies by a large margin. Also, Meecham never defines what the center is. The piece is a waste of newsprint.

why wouldn't he?

If anything, it's center-left or left.

in 1985.... Since then the sheeple have started to stir and wake up. I pray we are a conservative country no longer...

..so he shouldn't be upset when we ignore the "right" part.

"... His party ignored the "center" part so he shouldn't be upset when we ignore the "right" part..."

:rofl:

It's congress.

Whether Obama wins by 1 EV or 50+, the Dems are going to proclaim some massive "mandate" and proceed to entirely alienate the majority of americans.

:rofl:

Sorry... but that's the truth.

Obama needs to remain focused on the center, on the middle class, on the core principles that gets him elected. He cannot get caught up pandering to every fantasy of the Left and has to think about an EIGHT YEAR agenda that isn't divisive.

Of those listed in the last paragraph, only Clinton swung to the right, dealing with a solid right majority in congress.

FDR and JFK and LBJ all went farther left than their previous careers projected. Carter just stayed Carter.

Is this guy just ignorant, or a liar?

On the issues the country is firmly center-left, but in national elections we tend to be a center-right country. The reasons for which are explained in tons of posts on this board (or just look at a picture of the "moran" guy again).

Despite Meacham's assertions, modern conservatism is nothing about preserving what was once there. "Right" in this country has become expensive corporatism, drunken spending to support a belligerent foreign policy, and extreme anti-privacy social conservatism. They are both for and against states rights, depending on the issue. They are for and against and activist government and courts, depending on the issue. There is nothing "center right" about any of these tenets of the modern Republican platform.

We're not center-right, or center-left, or anything other than self-absorbed. Americans don't care anymore about political idealogy; they care about who' going to do more for them, whether it is healthcare, or lowering gas prices, or pillaging other countries and taking their stuff.

it starts by voting in Obama and a democratic congress.

That is a lie. If this were a "center right" country the right wing propagandists would not need such a massive effort and billions of dollars driving the country to the right.

On cultural issues, which do not even belong in politics and were inserted into the mix through a well-funded and orchestrated decades-long effort by right wing think thanks, the public is moderate, yes. If they can be persuaded that there is a "gay agenda" or a "gun grabbing" or "pro abortion" movement, then they will back away from that. That does not mean they are "center right," it does not even mean that they oppose the liberal cultural issues. Those propaganda efforts work in large part because there is no string opposition, no clear alternative presented and communicated by the Democrats to the public. Taking the opposite position to the absurd and illogical right wing so-called positions, and thereby giving them legitimacy is not a program, it is a dance with the right wingers at their beckoning and on their terms, and that means a battle we will always lose.

But on all true political issues of power and economics, 70-80% of the people are very left wing, more so than either party by far, and more so than most people in the activist and politically aware community. Were we promoting left wing economic positions we would have overwhelming public support, and within that context all of the social causes would be advanced much more easily.

"as they always have. and theres no way to stop it.. were so screwed!!"

Eight years of necon rule have turned America to the left - the pendulum swings again... Welcome to the new and improved center left middle class!

anything to the left of the national zeitgeist is to the left, and to the right the right.

To argue otherwise is to create an artificial construct of a "fixed" and easily defineable center. No such thing exists.

Ergo the nation cannot be center-left or center-right. However, the nation can move in either direction, which becomes the new center.

What's true is that the elite ruling class and it's power structures are to the right while the people are comparatively to the left, as proven poll after poll on direct policy questions. However, people often might identify themselves as more conservative than they are because of the effective framing of the labels over the last 30 years.

But to say this is a "center right" country is just absurd and begs the question "as compared to what"?

The other thing is that left-right axes vary depending on the issue and sometimes you can be so far right you meet the far left extremists almost eye to eye.

And even then, these models always break down and fail to explain what is really at hand.

anything to anybody here? And then came 1968, 1972!, 1976, 1980!, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 - all won by Center-right or RIGHT of Center candidates.

by the national parties. Not necessarily a reflection of how the electorate voted. RFK, you'll recall, was killed in 1968 before the Dems had picked their nominee. McGovern was the Dem nominee in 1972, and maybe CREEP had something to do with the way that election turned out? And do we even need to go into 2000 and 2004 to challenge your assertion that the right-wing candidate "won" those elections?

:thumbsup:

He will wake up to that in November.