Last Monday, I shared my optimism that in Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” and Michael Bloomberg’s funding of moderate candidates, there was reason to hope that the center might hold after all, and maybe even become vital.
Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education Brainstorm blog, Laurie Essig had a very different take. Where I see a vital center, she sees a “muddled middle” that is “in fact continuing to represent the interests of corporations and corporate-controlled media against the interests of the majority of Americans.”
It’s worth spending a few minutes with Essig’s deconstruction of the so-called muddled middle, because it reflects a certain unfortunate way of thinking about the political center. It also offers an opportunity to defend what’s vital about the vital center.
Essig argues that: “The first thing that is clear is that the Muddled Middle wishes to merge the Left and the Right as ‘the same’”
I’m not quite sure where Professor Essig finds this clarity. I cannot think of a single political moderate who sees or even wishes to see the Left and the Right as being “the same.” They clearly represent very different political ideologies. This much is obvious to anyone with even half a brain.
But they do share one troubling similarity: they both view the world in black and white terms, and both equate any form of compromise with surrender.
In Essig’s view, and the view of many on the political far left, “the world’s greediest corporations continue to highjack our democracy.” Anybody (i.e. the moderates) who does not believe we are locked in an existential good-versus-evil struggle on the behalf of poor working class folks against the powerful interests is therefore complicit with the political right. If only the world were so black and white, it might be comforting to be sure that one was on the side of righteousness. But nothing is every that simple.
In my mind, the wisdom of the vital center is the ability to recognize two big things. First, that while the far Left and the far Right are fundamentally different in what they believe, a politics that forces everybody to choose one extreme or the other is a politics of stalled gridlock, brutal warfare, or both. We have a country to govern, and that country is quite divided, but also largely moderate. And if there is a true American tradition, it is pragmatism.
Second, the world is a complex place, and it rarely fits neatly into pure black and white. Individuals, corporations, and governments are all capable of both good and evil, of both brilliance and stupidity, of both innovation and inefficiency – often at the same time. To me, a sign of wisdom is being willing to accept this complexity, and to be humble about it. It is to be open to the possibility that one has not, in fact, figured it all out, and to be willing to experiment.
To borrow from Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Problems will always torment us, because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.” (The Vital Center, p. 254)
So sign me up for Jon Stewart’s Million Moderate March. I’ll be there, with an open mind, eager to hear what everyone has to say.
photo credit: Dale Basler
