It’s Lonely in the Center
July 21st, 2008 . by economistmomI’m fascinated by the ideological chart that Brad DeLong features in this post. Brad’s point is that Barack Obama is not very liberal relative to other Democrats, and insignificantly more liberal than Hillary Clinton. But what fascinates me, besides the relatively huge difference between Bush and McCain in how conservative they are, is how far apart the Democrats and Republicans are–that is, the tiny, tiny fraction of Democrats and Republicans who overlap on the ideological spectrum, in the center.
No wonder why we’re having such a hard time with “bipartisanship” and working together with our common concerns and priorities to come up with consensus policy solutions. There’s not much there in common after all.
I always thought politicians had the incentive to move toward the center when it comes to winning elections, but maybe that model doesn’t work in practice. I suppose the most vocal participants in the political process tend to come from the extremes and try to lure the politicians and policymakers toward those extremes, not toward the center. And if you’re someone who tries to stay in the center, well, maybe you’re not exactly in the “middle” of lots of friends.
This polarization of opinions seems especially apparent in the blogosphere. I noticed that in today’s Washington Post article about Netroots Nation, the liberal bloggers convention which took place this past weekend, Obama is made to sound ”not liberal enough.”
Of course, we at the Concord Coalition are used to being lonely and unpopular in staying in the center of fiscal policy, pointing out that getting the fiscal outlook in order will require everything to be on the table–both revenue increases and spending restraint. We get conservative, supply-siders who accuse us of wanting to close the fiscal gap entirely through raising taxes and who say we don’t care about crippling the economy for the sake of deficit reduction. And we get liberal champions of Social Security accusing us of laying all the blame on entitlement spending and wanting to destroy the programs. Honestly, we are at neither extreme because neither extreme would produce a realistic, thoughtful strategy to reduce the budget deficit. Only a centrist approach can get us there.
It seems to me that until we get more of our politicians willing to come to the middle, there’s not going to be any common ground from which to work. And until ordinary people (the voters) encourage politicians to come toward the middle, the politicians will be more inclined to listen to those loudest voices who are trying to pull them toward the extremes.
mom
i think you may be fooling yourself a bit about the center.
i have the same position about Social Security as Eisenhower and Roosevelt.
There is a position that actually understands the program and the numbers. It is not clear to me that Concord understands either.
But, yes, I find myself arguing with people who don’t know what they are talking about on the left as well as on the right.
I don’t know, I always thought the Hotelling model of two-party competition worked for the United States. Just look at the huge shift in policy both candidates have had since the ending of party primaries.
I think you need to take a step back. McCain and Obama are aiming for the center, but it’s a subtle process. All you have to do is focus on what they don’t mention- they won’t touch party extremes. Then you have to focus on what they do mention, and both want to “fix” the same thing- though their methods might be different at times.
Honestly, I’m surprised that you’re surprised. I’m increasingly of the opinion that we’ve managed to turn US politics into an absurd theater with little real value for anyone but those gaming the system. Elections are about getting elected and once in office the goal is to keep getting re-elected. Anything else that may happen is an interesting, but irrelevant, externality.
Here’s another interesting graphic illustrating the political picture in the Senate in more detail.
Click on the expanded versions to see every Senator in relation to every other.
(Guess which two peas nestled most closely together in their pod by this measure.)
At the same site to which Mr. Glass refers, there is an extremely large and detailed history of the position of each Senator–giving a very good idea of the degree to which parties are now polarized.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/07/the-monkey-cage.html
As shown by the new graph, there are a ton of voters in the center. There is a peak at what I’d call center-left, a valley in the middle and another peak center-right. Both peaks are inside (to the center) of the peaks for the politicians.
I don’t find this surprising.
Not everything naturally resolves itself in the center. And it is far from clear to me that Concord is in any world historical sense centric at all. For example a visit to the issues page:
http://www.concordcoalition.org/issues/
shows a pretty narrow focus on entitlements. For example under ‘Federal Budget’ you see no suggestion that maybe military spending might be out of balance with actual national security needs, no everything is attributed to ‘retirement of the baby boomers’. And the only two government programs called out by name are you guessed it ‘Social Security’ and ‘Medicare’. And when I click on ‘Congressional Scorecard’ what are the criteria I find?
“The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization advocating fiscal responsibility and reform of entitlement programs to ensure their viability and fairness for all generations. The opportunity for coming generations to enjoy the prosperity and economic growth that previous generations have taken for granted depends heavily on whether our political leaders have the courage to make the tough choices necessary to balance the budget and put entitlement programs on a sustainable long-term track.”
Okay an overall appeal to a balanced budget but only entitlements get called out for special attention.
Or we can examine the June 26th press release about Bixby’s testimony to the Senate. Four bullet points but only one which draws attention to specific programs, what do you know Social Security and Medicare. And if I click through to his actual prepared statement I find this description of Concord’s role:
“Since its inception, The Concord Coalition has strongly supported efforts to better inform the public about the huge unfunded obligations that this generation is leaving to future generations ? primarily as the result of projected cost growth in Medicare and Social Security.”
What is the header on the Budget brief from March?
‘Will the first Boomer budget be a bust?’
How does it lead off?
“The first baby boomers have already begun to receive Social Security retirement benefits. During the next presidential term, they will qualify for Medicare. Given this context, our nation’s long- term fiscal challenge should be at the heart of the budget debate on Capitol Hill. ”
Perhaps the reason it is lonely in the center is that Concord seemingly defines center as “No tax increases even to pay for medical care for grandma”
This might seem a little unfair to Concord. On the other hand I wasn’t the person who drafted all the copy that shows up on the website, copy whose content always seems to start and mostly ends up blaming all budget woes on Social Security and Medicare. Why would “liberal champions of Social Security accusing (Concord) of laying all the blame on entitlement spending and wanting to destroy the programs.”? Maybe because that is the message your website is delivering clear and loud. Visit it and look at it from the viewpoint of a defender of Social Security and you will see what I mean. As a last example take Bob Bixby’s
http://www.concordcoalition.org/events/fiscal-wake-up/fiscal-wake-up-call.htm What is his conclusion?
“The real choices require scaling back future health care and retirement benefit promises, raising revenues to pay for them, or most likely some combination of both.”
Peterson and Bixby are establishing the framing here, it’s not paranoia if you have real enemies. If Concord really believes that everything is on the table why does every thing it releases starts by emphasizing entitlements? Because Bixby kind of gives away the store here:
“What may seem like waste to some from farm subsidies to transportation projects to community development programs can seem like vital government services to those who directly benefit from them.”
Oddly enough my Mom regards Medicare as a ‘vital government service’. That Bixby implicitly takes everything else off the table (and doesn’t mention defense or interest on the public debt largely due to past defense spending) leaving only entitlements behind suggests an agenda not entirely shaped by simple fiscal responsibility.
i guess i don’t find it interesting.
there are issues about which even informed people might have differences of opinion. but the “right” and the “left” are entirely artificial constructs created by essentially advertising experts trying to create, manipulate, and appeal to, uniformed people on the basis of sound bites and emotional hits.
or, as the famous line in the movie said, “Truth? You can’t HANDLE the truth!” Hell, you can’t even understand it.
Bruce
crossed in the mail.
i find your observations quite interesting. i tried to point out much the same about Walker’s fiscal wake up tour. But i was too late. All those City Clubbers had heard about their baby girl having to get a paper route to pay her share of the national debt… and no, Defense has nothing to do with the national debt… were in no mood to listen to me. Clearly I was the one saddling their baby with all that debt.
Bruce
and the crying shame is that even Medicare is not, or need not be, a “government service” except that the government provides the framework for you to pay for your own medical insurance.
we need to get the people to grow up (a Peterson phrase) enough to understand that there is no magic fount at the heart of government that provides health care… or that sucks up their money.
what we need people to understand is that if they are going to have health care, ultimately they are going to pay for it, and it is better for them if they can see the transaction, than if it is hidden in mysterious meaningless misleading words about “government spending” or even “tax the rich”.
what the people need may be enough money in their paychecks to pay for their medical insurance, rather than laundering the money through a tax on the rich and a gift from government as a right…
but i am way outside the prevailing paradigm here
and somehow offensive to both the right and the left.
Concord Coalition is evidence that a hundred highly educated people can generate a million words without ever knowing what they are talking about.
I think you’re wrong about the Netroots Conference making Obama sound not liberal enough. Probably the biggest communal difference with him is on FISA and privacy issues where they are more libertarian than Obama. This isn’t a left/right division in any economic or policy sense.
Other main critiques are over style and lack of agressiveness, not policy.
Probably the only common economically left-wing critique of Obama is over health care where he’s clearly to the right of people like Paul Krugman. How strong the netroots pull to the left on this issue is unclear.
Coberly, I about fell off my chair when I read your comment “what the people need may be enough money in their paychecks to pay for their medical insurance, rather than laundering the money through a tax on the rich and a gift from government as a right…”
Can you elaborate?
From my perspective, the debate on taxes and spending (and specifically the hot-button issue of entitlements) is a reflection of individuals’ underlying values and philosophy on life.
But the aggregate will of the people at any given time isn’t the only factor. What is also interesting is the dynamic between the constitutional foundation of our country (supposedly we have fundamental rights that we hold sacred–ultimately interpreted by the Supreme Court) and the way in which our democratic process of government enables those individual rights to be altered through majority action short of amending the constitution.
As an example, read this excerpt from FDR’s March 9, 1937 fireside chat effectively justifying his court packing plan [my own comments inserted via brackets]:
“How then could we proceed to perform the mandate given us [the voters’ mandate for New Deal programs for social and economic justice]? It was said in last year’s Democratic platform, “If these problems cannot be effectively solved within the Constitution, we shall seek such clarifying [Constitutional] amendment as will assure the power to enact those laws, adequately to regulate commerce, protect public health and safety, and safeguard economic security.” In other words, we said we would seek an amendment only if every other possible means by legislation were to fail.
When I commenced to review the situation with the problem squarely before me, I came by a process of elimination to the conclusion that, short of amendments, the only method which was clearly constitutional, and would at the same time carry out other much needed reforms, was to infuse new blood into all our Courts [new blood that would provide a constitutional interpretation that supported FDR and the New Deal]. We must have men worthy and equipped to carry out impartial justice [in who’s judgement?]. But, at the same time, we must have Judges who will bring to the Courts a present-day sense of the Constitution - Judges who will retain in the Courts the judicial functions of a court, and reject the legislative powers which the courts have today assumed.” [This sounds familiar!]
Gilleland
perhaps you shouldn’t be drinking in that chair.
what is your point?
my point was one you should have embraced:
i was saying that rather than pay for medical care by taxing the rich, it would be better for the people to insist upon getting paid enough to be able to pay for their own medical care (insurance).
what the government can do for those people is provide a single “payer” who takes over the role of the “employer” in the current dominant paradigm. this would provide the bargaining power, and the oversight resources, to have a chance of holding costs down.
you might note that the Courts found that Social Security is constitutional. They seem to have found the same of Medicare.
And if they had not done so, it might have been necessary to amend the Constitution. All of which can be done…Constitutionally… that is, without ripping up the basic design of our government. FDR got into trouble over court packing not so much because it was unconstitutional as that even his friends saw it as too much of a power grab.
but again, aside from learning that you can’t sit and drink at the same time, i have no idea what point you were trying to make.
Coberly,
I’m honestly excited that we seem to have some common ground – it would be better if people had enough in the paychecks to pay for their own healthcare insurance.
What I don’t understand is what you believe is preventing people from accomplishing that.
From what I can tell in this country we have an open and flexible labor market (lightly regulated) – demand for jobs and supply of qualified workers largely determines the compensation (price) for those jobs. I don’t see how any given worker “insisting” on higher pay changing the economics of a free labor market.
The last time I checked Monster.com for jobs in moderate to high paying professions in any major city, there was plenty of opportunity.
My extended family lives in the furniture and textile manufacturing region of North Carolina – I’ve seen first hand how the increased global supply of lower skilled workers have affected and continue to affect my own family members. But, I don’t think they are entitled to any special protection just as I don’t think I’m entitled to any special protection in what I do for a living. They have no basis to “insist” on a higher wage for what they do or even to insist that they remain employed in their current job–even though they are very good at what they do. [I don’t like this but it is reality.]
We live in an increasingly interconnected, global economy with relatively free flow of information, capital, labor, goods, and services – and thank goodness we do. It has lifted millions of people out of severe poverty around the world (arguably at the unintended expense of the lower skilled in developed nations) and there are a number of other significant benefits. Is a global economy a panacea without problems (that ultimately free markets with some degree of government regulation are motivated to solve) – no. Is isolationism, socialism/communism, and/or any other alternative better? – not that I can tell.
Post script – I apologize for my earlier post not being more coherent; I got sidetracked on two different ideas not related to my reaction to your comment. I’m trying to understand how this on-going debate regarding the tough choices our country is going to have to make regarding taxes, spending, borrowing, and economic growth / risk (embedded within this is the likely affect on future generations) is going to play out. I’m obviously over thinking it – I think I will start drinking in my chair now!
Gilleland
i suppose i don’t quite believe there is any such thing as free markets. what you have is gross discrepencies in political power and that determines basic wage rates.
similarly the international free trade enables those with the power (money) to move jobs to take advantage of lower wages… themselves reflecting lower “costs of living”… result in lower wage workers in this country who have to pay the same rents as higher wage workers competing with lower wage workers in other countries who have lower rents and other “advantages”… it simply is not a “level playing field.”
my idea is that if corporations find it advantageous to employ american workers… or sell in american markets (though this is a different issue)… it is perfectly reasonable to require them to pay a wage that translates to a minimum acceptible standard of living. and we can count access to medical care as part of the minimum living wage.
the same logic would apply to small employers… if they can run a business in America they can find a way to pay a living wage. This would not make them uncompetetive, unless, of course they are planning to hire immigrants, as their competition would be facing the same wage levels.
i am not altogether happy with gummint interference myself, but i also note that i don’t like trash building up in the streets, and government trash collection seems to be the simplest way to deal with that problem, without unduly destroying my fffreedoms under democracy.
as for “signigicant benefits” the Founder of American capitalism, and the Republican Party for the last haslf of the nineteenth century understood the benefits of limiting free trade..
so all i would ask is that you try to think through what you belive and at least identify what is unsupported econo-religious faith, and how much is a reasonably accurate modelling of reality, including economic well being as well as meaningful political freedom.
sorry this has rambled… summary: supply and demand for labor is not like supply and demand for widgets. when your “free markets” result in widespread misery (or even quite local misery) it is time to look for remedies. and not rule out the obvious remedies because you see a boogeyman behind every action that could in principle mean less money for the rich.
i’d be glad to take up the other issues if there was any chance of making progress and not falling into a war of soundbites.
Gilleland
try again:
the question was paying for medical care. if we assume the care is needed and worth the price.
the question then becomes can people afford it.
the question then becomes should people who can’t afford it do without it, or vote to have their government “tax the rich” to pay for the medical care of “the poor.”
or find a way to increase their own income so they can afford to pay for their own.
i think that “economically” it doesn’t make any difference whether you tax the rich, or raise the pay of the poor.
but psychologically it makes a huge difference. it is better for the poor to think of themselves as earning their money and not relying on the charity of the rich, or the power of government to give them “unearned” benefits.
unless the rich are prepared to live in a world in which the poor die young from lack of medical care, or they are forced by the government to pay taxes to pay for the poor, they will need to contemplate the means by which they can raise the pay of their own employees… and dedicate that raise to health insurance as opposed to big screen TV’s.
we can see that “free markets” will not solve this problem. we can be fairly sure that “enlightened self interest” could.
personally i am very dismayed by the “health care plan” solutions i am seeing everywhere. they appear to be the worst combination of government interference, charity, taxes,…
if we agree that health care for all is a public good, it would be a lot simpler to create a central bargaining and oversight entity (government, or perhaps an independent entity like the Federal Reserve), it would have to be tax supported… but could be a near flat tax so that everyone got exactly the benefits he paid for, but this would reqire a massive program to educate the people to understand what they were paying for…
instead we get half witted sound bites on both “sides”… the rich who are terrified of being made to pay for it, and the poor who are terrified of not being able to afford it.