The price we pay for not consistently keeping our focus on how Congress actually works is that we get into dumb arguments about things like the proper definition and relative merits of “centrism.” I don’t really disagree with Ed Kilgore’s point about the wisdom of keeping centrism in the Democratic column and defining Republicans out of it. Rather than allowing fools like David Brooks to keep the name all to themselves, we ought to point out that he’s defending a budget plan that would upend eighty years of New Deal legislation. And Krugman shouldn’t yell at centrists. He should yell at people who are trying to shred the New Deal and call them radicals.
But this is all a distraction. What matters is the composition of Congress, the ideological overlap between the parties, and the rules of Congress. We’ve come to a point in our politics where those three factors have combined to make it almost impossible for Congress to do anything, including keeping its own doors open and paying our debts.
It hasn’t been this way for a long, long time. We used to have enough overlap in party ideology that members were free to wheel and deal. Maybe I ran for Congress, in part, to increase funding for mental health care. I might not like the Republicans’ budget for the NIH, but I’d trade my vote for a little money to study bipolar disorder or something. Or maybe I could get a bridge fixed in my district, or funding for a new spur that would reduce commuter congestion. Nowadays, you can forget about it. The GOP can’t offer me any earmarks, their budget is so radical that I can’t support any of it, and my party would freak out if I crossed the aisle anyway. Who knows, I might wind up getting primaried. And the problem is a hundred times worse on the Republican side of the aisle, where I’d probably lose my most cherished committee seat and watch the leadership actively campaign for and fund my primary opponent.
There’s no consensus anymore on what government is supposed to do. And Democratic Party members who are willing to consider the ideas of the other side are really not the type of people who believe in anything. It’s not a matter of contributing something decent to improve a lousy outcome. The House Republicans are offering a completely radical program that no elected Democrat should support or even take seriously.
Yet, because of the rules of Congress which currently require 60 senators to do anything, and the composition of Congress which is split between a GOP House and an inadequate 53-member Democratic Senate, it is simply not possible to do anything without meeting in the middle and doing whatever it takes to get the congressional Republicans to go along. The only outcomes are bad outcomes. Inaction, wherever possible, is preferable to action. Simply stated, no good law can be made.
Who is to blame for this? Not progressives. Not Democrats. Not centrists. The blame falls on conservatives. And only on conservatives. And there is no such thing as a centrist conservative. Not anymore. David Brooks is a party of one.
As for the president, like any other president, his legislative record is going to be exactly as centrist as the composition of Congress over his term(s) in office. Give him the House and 60 nominal Democrats in the Senate and he’ll give you a major health care bill. Give him 57-59 Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans and he will give you an avalanche of progressive legislation. Take away the House, most of the moderate Republicans, and reduce his Senate majority to 53? He’ll give you practically nothing. He’ll be lucky to keep our national parks open or avoid our country losing its credit rating.
But, yeah, please call him a centrist. We don’t want Mitt Romney seizing that label, that’s for sure.
