The New Center-Right
David Sanger for The New York Times:
Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury – suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party.
Honestly, I’d like to see some more hard-core liberals in the cabinet — and maybe we’ll get ‘em at Energy, Interior, etc. But in some respects this is the genius of picking a relatively moderate cabinet. We’ve got Rahm Emannuel promising to “throw long and deep” on health care and energy, Tom Daschle spearheading the charge for universal health care, the president-elect talking about hundreds of billions in new stimulus spending, and endless reiteration of the idea that there will be no retreat from the campaign’s ambitious goals on carbon curbs. Putting reassuring faces on an agenda of ambitious policy change strikes me as dramatically preferable to appointing a lot of liberals whose job is to sell the progressive base on the need to trim and abandon campaign commitments.
Jockeying for jobs is a very important part of life for DC insiders, and I would never deny that I’d strongly prefer to see my various friends and acquaintances get choice positions than see the reverse happen, but in the real world its the policies that matter. If universal health care, a clean energy economy, withdrawal of troops from Iraq, an end to torture, and massive new infrastructure investments are a “center-right” agenda because Tim Geithner is Secretary of Treausry then I’ll take it. The crux of the matter is to keep pressing for the agenda.
45 Responses to “The New Center-Right”
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November 22nd, 2008 at 11:49 am
Politics is that art of the do-able.
I’ve seen a lot of labeling the set of cabinet appointees for their work 10 or 15 years ago. The do-able of today is very different from the 1990s or the bush years.
Obama has appointed a left-leaning set. But also a group who has experience and the know-how to get things done. I see no evidence that anyone he has appointed is any center or center-right ideologues. Perhaps no ideologues at all.
The key figure is Obama and the course he sets. The set of appointments is not a course, it is a team.
Let’s see what happens.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:49 am
“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign policy.”
I do love the violin.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 am
NIGGER
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Governing from the middle, experience, blah blah blah
I’m still pissed about Clinton being SOS.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 am
We should all send David Sirota a buck every time center-right is used.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
You hit the nail on the head, Matt. A progressive agenda proposed by a moderate, experienced White House staff stands a better chance of success than the same progressive agenda would have if proposed by a more liberal, less-experienced team.
Barack is still thinking like a Senator – building coalitions, doing what he needs to do to insure his projects gain support down the road. I think we progressives will be well served to stand back and let him everything in place before we start fretting over stuff like appointments. No matter who winds up working for him, Barack will still be the guy calling the shots.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Rumor has it that Obama may nominate Rep. Raul Grijalva for Sec.of Interior. He is Hispanic. Even better he is the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
And yet, for all that soi-disant liberals have been complaining about the “center-right” narrative, all of Obama’s picks so far have been… center-right ones. You keep bringing up Rahm Emanuel talking about “throwing long and deep,” but you don’t seem to mention that Rahm Emanuel is an economically conservative hedge fund manager and former member of the IDF.
This notion of living in a center-right country isn’t coming just from Fox News, it’s coming from Obama. He’s the one putting Clinton at State and Geithner at Treasury and who’s promised to give a major cabinet position to a Republican. If you don’t like it, do something about it. The person to complain to isn’t David Sanger, it’s Barack Obama.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Mudge is correct. This piece is a clear case of an attempt to reclaim the narrative away from the idea that the country is moving left.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
All these “progressive” initiatives are not actually progressive until they are paid for with redistribution. Social Security and Medicare did not end inequality. Workers, for an example, who have to pay for their own healthcare with a new VAT tax are less empowered and socially mobile than before.
Master Pullman has opened a company store? Henry Ford opened a new subdivision? They offer easy credit? Labor is not thereby liberated.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Exactly.
I was going to post something along the lines when you were bemoaning the Clinton SOS appointment. Clinton is not going to direct foreign policy; Obama is. Clinton, Jones, etc., are there to give Obama a different perspective, yes, but they also give him political cover to do some major things.
Obama is nothing if not pragmatic. To me, this whole thing (incl. his attempts to coopt Lieberman & McCain) reads like he’s not playing to the base or center, he’s not looking at window dressing, he’s actually trying to get things done.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Clinton is not going to direct foreign policy; Obama is.
And a major indication of how Obama plans to direct his foreign policy is the fact that he picked Hillary Clinton to lead it.
Remember back in the primaries, when Clintonites kept moaning about Mark Penn, and about how if only Clinton would stop listening to people like him? Yglesias correctly pointed out that the cossacks work for the czar – that the reason Clinton picked Penn is that she likes the way Penn thinks. Well, the reason Obama picked Clinton is that he apparently likes the way she thinks.
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Any time from now all the way back to 2007, when asked about his priorities, Obama has given the same answer:
1) get out of Iraq
2) energy/climate
3) health care
(Sometimes he throws in education).
All of those are major progressive goals. Ask yourself, how do Republicans feel about those goals? They’re against all of them! So it’s not even a bipartisan agenda. It’s a solidly progressive agenda. When he uses a bunch of moderate sell-outs to advance this he’s turning them into solid progressives.
After the long, long campaign it’s obvious that Obama is not soft and he’s not dumb. He is not getting rolled.
For anyone who is worried that the Secretary of State will drive policy: remember Colin Powell. The big decisions are made in the White House.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Re: And a major indication of how Obama plans to direct his foreign policy is the fact that he picked Hillary Clinton to lead it.
Presidents, epsecially incoming ones, have been known to pick Secretaries of State who are not their ideological clones. George W Bush and Colin Powell come to mind. Or even Ronald Reagan and George Schultz.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Presidents, epsecially incoming ones, have been known to pick Secretaries of State who are not their ideological clones. George W Bush and Colin Powell come to mind.
Colin Powell was surrounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a small army of neocons. Alongside Clinton, however, we’re getting Emanuel, Biden, Geithner, Summers (said to still be playing a “major” role in Obama’s economic policy and possibly up for Fed Chairman), Richardson, Rubin, Holbrooke, etc. All of these people are right-of-center on economics and/or hawkish on foreign policy. This isn’t a Colin Powell pick. We’re getting an army of Clintons.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Colin Powell was surrounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a small army of neocons. Alongside Clinton, however, we’re getting Emanuel, Biden, Geithner, Summers (said to still be playing a “major” role in Obama’s economic policy and possibly up for Fed Chairman), Richardson, Rubin, Holbrooke, etc. All of these people are right-of-center on economics and/or hawkish on foreign policy. This isn’t a Colin Powell pick. We’re getting an army of Clintons.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Matt will never be a true Washingtonian insider if he wants his friends to do well (”get choice positions”) unless it has some direct benefit for him.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Are you kidding me? Obama was elected on a torrent of ressentiment, and moved steadily rightward over the general election in style and sometimes substance, all to the serious, nodding approval of left-leaning blogs. What in the world did you think was going to happen? Of course he’s going to govern from the center-right: he was elected to the highest office of one of the most conservative countries in the developed world. Perhaps you missed the utter non-viability of socialist politics? Or the top-to-bottom free marketeering? Or maybe more obvious things, like the last Democratic president governing from… the center-right! 30 years of this shit, and you’re holding out that it’s just the Republicans who are on the right? Get real.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
If we are a center-right nation, why is voter suppression one of the pillars of GOP electoral strategy? The GOP wants as few Americans to vote as possible, and they want as few of the votes that are actually cast to count as possible. Seems like they would want as many Americans to vote as possible if this were truly a “center-right” nation.
The Bible Belt and the Corn Belt are center-right states. The rest of the country — you know, where most Americans live — is decidedly center-left.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
If we are a center-right nation, why is voter suppression one of the pillars of GOP electoral strategy? The GOP wants as few Americans to vote as possible, and they want as few of the votes that are actually cast to count as possible. Seems like they would want as many Americans to vote as possible if this were truly a “center-right” nation.
Because the GOP is hard-right, not center. The last eight years ought to have made that clear to you.
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Nixon, China, eh. Maybe.
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 am
Re: Workers, for an example, who have to pay for their own healthcare with a new VAT tax are less empowered and socially mobile than before.
How so? Any publicly funded healthcare, whether by VAT (a consumption tax) or otherwise, frees workers from relying on an employer for that benefit.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:39 am
I note that in the quoted story the line is “govern from the center right of his party.” But “center-right” of the left-wing party would be “slightly to the left,” wouldn’t it?
Of course “center-right” doesn’t mean much of anything except “slightly more sensible than those other people whom I consider to be goofy.” It’s the new “moderate.”
And our Governing Elite is obsessed with seeming
“moderate.” Apparently they need to call lefty ideas like universal healthcare, pulling out of Iraq and action on climate change “center-right” to sooth their cognitive dissonance. If it helps get stuff done, fine by me. Consider it an offering to the Church of High Broderism.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
But “center-right” of the left-wing party would be “slightly to the left,” wouldn’t it?
Not really.
No one would dispute that the Democrats from 1932 to 1964/5 were a left wing party. But they contained a very powerful wing that was center-right at best (because of Dixie’s attraction to government largesse) and hard-right at worst.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I propose a moratorium on phrases like “governing from the center” and “center-right country” until we give them some content. Just what part of Obama’s stated agenda, specifically, is he to jettison in the name of “gftc” or a “CRC”? Will we have a significant military presence in Iraq by the mid-term elections? Will we start a war with Iran? Will we not have a big stimulus plan? Will there not be work going on concerning health care and education reform? Will the Bush tax cuts on the rich not be allowed to lapse? If this is governing from the center, I’m all for it, but I don’t think that is what the people pushing these phrases mean.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Let’s see here: “the center-right of his party” (ie, the Democratic Party).
Let’s say the center of the party is the left, and the right of the party is the center; that leaves the center-right of his party as the center-left.
But why be so generous? If the right of his party is, in fact, the center-left, that would put the center-right of his party would be to the left of the center-left; sort of the left-center-left.
In any case, it’s well to the left of center, perhaps bordering of leftish.
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