Or perhaps we do:
Everything you need to know about the new political group No Labels is contained in its slogan: “Not Left. Not Right. Forward.” It’s smug. It sounds like an Obama campaign catchphrase. And it ignores the whole reason politics exists, which is that not everyone agrees on what “Forward” is. …
The group’s mission statement is filled with the bland pablum of political campaigns. It’s the kind of stuff that’s so obvious, no one would ever disagree. “Americans are entitled to a government and a political system that works—driven by shared purpose and common sense.” Unlike all those groups that prefer a political system that doesn’t work. “Americans want a government that empowers people with the tools for success … provided that it does so in a fiscally prudent way.” Me, I’m for spending wads of money on failure. “America must be strong and safe, ready and able to protect itself in a world of multiple dangers and uncertainties.” That is going to upset their rival group, Americans Against Strength, Safety, Readiness, and Ability To Protect Ourselves.
Heh. More:
No Labels sounds noble in theory. But the group misunderstands what bipartisanship is. It’s not two parties deciding to be nice to each other. It’s a moment when their self-interests happen to align—moments that are increasingly rare. Washington does not have a “civility problem.” It has a polarization problem. Politicians aren’t any meaner now than they were 30 years ago. It’s just that over the last few decades, the two parties have become more ideologically coherent. Back in the 1950s, some Southern Democrats opposed racial integration, and some Republicans in the North favored a robust social safety net. Opposition to abortion was a bipartisan affair. There was a Christian right, but there was a Christian left as well. (The first Catholic president was a Democrat, after all.)
All of that changed in the ’60s and ’70s. Small-government libertarians aligned themselves with social conservatives under the Republican umbrella. Social liberals and economic interventionists joined the Democrats. In the 1980s, there was still enough overlap between the parties to beget phrases like “Reagan Democrats.” But every year the parties drift further apart. In a conversation with NPR about “No Labels,” Charlie Crist trotted out the old saw about Ronald Reagan and Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill. Those men “probably didn’t agree on a whole lot of things … yet were able to get along and at the end of the day, go out and have a cold one and understand that it’s important for them to be civil.” Sure. But by today’s partisan standards, O’Neill and Reagan had a lot in common. What stops Barack Obama and John Boehner from taking smoking breaks together isn’t that they’re jerks. It’s that they don’t agree on as much.
That’s just Washington, says No Labels. “The rest of the country is not hyperpartisan,” McKinnon told the Washington Post. “They say: ‘There’s MoveOn on the left, the tea party on the right and nothing in the middle for me.’ We’re trying to become a microphone for those voices, to create a system that rewards and gives a shout-out for good behavior.” One audience member echoed this point on Monday, arguing that “independents don’t care about labels.” Wrong. Independents pretend not to care about labels. In fact, the vast majority of so-called independents lean toward one party or another. The number of true independents who switch from party to party is 5 percent to 10 percent of the electorate.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of No Labels is to show why labels exist in the first place. They’re so busy talking about what they’re not—not Republican, not Independent, not conservative, not liberal—you never get a handle on what they are. Labels are a useful shortcut for voters who want to know what a group is all about. The lack of a positive mission beyond bipartisanship and civility (which both Republicans and Democrats also call for) makes it hard to know what they really want.
I don’t think no labels “wants” anything in particular in the general sense used in politics. That being the problem for the more traditional polticos… It’s the same problem people had understanding what the Stewart Colbert Rally was about. It’s not really about anything, and that’s what it’s about. (And tautologies are tautological).
What it really is about is, more or less, nostalgia; for a time of statesmen and Union saving compromise. Of course those times were mired in vicious partisan fighting too. The press was fiercely partisan in the past, to a degree that would make even UK papers of today blush. There was the fear of partisan “Factions” at the same time those voicing those fears were building parties. So in a sense, No labels wants something to be simple that is not, never has been, and (in all likelihood) never will be.
What does one make of an organization whose goals are, ostensibly, a nostalgic pipe dream? Realize that, more or less, what the organization really intends is highlighting and helping moderates?
At least I think that’s what the supposed point of all this is. So the theory goes of principled moderates coming to the rescue of an endangered Union. That’s what the Stewart Rally was also about too, as far as I can tell. Given the polarized hyper partisan nature of present politics, getting the silent majority of moderates in the country to come out and say, you know what, actually we like moderate things.
Trouble is, we also are living in a time of big problems, that need serious solutions. And people willing to take up the lead on getting us there.
And of course we have politicians on both sides un willing to make tough decisions that are out there telling people they can have cake and cookies all before dinner. Adults know things don’t work out that well like that for long. But people as a group, don’t really act like adults.
So I suppose the idea is that the moderates will come in and tell us, nope we all really have to eat our brussels sprouts and broccoli, even if you don’t want to. A thing that is both true, and unlikely to happen.
Good article. These folks remind me of those on the Religious Right for whom the 1950s were a constant theme of nostalgia, as if everything was good and wholesome and pure in America before the Hippies and the Warren Court came along and ruined everything.
God-damn Hippies, ruining everything.