No Labels, many opinions

With former Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) making the media rounds as the new co-chairs of No Labels, it’s time to reflect on the present and future of an organization I have supported with enthusiasm ever since its inception. Unfortunately, the present still contains the No Labels theme song; even I can admit that its very existence is embarrassing, to say nothing of the execution. It’s the elevator music on each conference call I’ve joined and it never gets better. Please scrap it.

But there are more important criticisms to address as well. Salon.com’s Alex Pareene is back, gleeful that No Labels took his advice and is shifting its focus to procedural reforms. But he’s not happy with the “No Budget, No Pay” proposal – he thinks the priority should be a good budget, not any budget at all, and he doesn’t want to hurt members of Congress who aren’t as rich as others. My guess is, if he were a member of Congress, he would have a very hard time letting go of his favorite things long enough to implement actual spending changes.

He also thinks mandatory bipartisan seating at joint sessions of Congress is “incredibly silly.” Had he said making this seating mandatory takes away the choice to demonstrate one’s bipartisan bona fides, or that it would lead to a different kind of cliquishness, I might have agreed with him. But the “gimmick” he treats with such scorn has been known to improve relations among members of Congress. See Rep. Scott Rigell’s (R-VA) comment here for an example.

The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin is unhappy with Huntsman’s presence; she thinks someone as brashly critical of the Republican Party as he has been will do No Labels no favors. She would rather see NL “repeal campaign finance reform,” “improve the mainstream media” and “get some constitutional perspective.” She’s not impressed with the focus on procedural reform. But she forgets the multitude of other think tanks focusing on all three. Why wouldn’t No Labels want its own niche?

Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Monthly, was more generous than Pareene or Rubin. He sees the value in the procedural focus, despite his distaste for No Labels branding. (And, honestly, I would have hoped for them to find a new name by now.) He acknowledges that it is a “start,” but a good one. Of things like bipartisan seating, he asks “Why not?” Exactly.

Should No Labels achieve its procedural goals, it could eventually move on to identifying and funding candidates who suit their message, and perhaps even putting together a real policy shop, drafting and lobbying for the most mutually beneficial solutions for various legislative issues. The options for growth are endless. The leadership is talented and, whether Rubin likes it or not, recognizable and respected. A few tweaks to the user interface and No Labels could become a real Beltway force.

How centrists can plug the apathy drain

A few months before I started this blog – I believe it was mid-November 2008 – and was still doing campus radio at the University of Winnipeg, I warned my listeners that if President Obama failed to live up to his own hype, we could hold him responsible for an entire generation of young and new voters becoming and staying apathetic. If this article is to be believed, that’s already happening. Obviously you can’t expect any incumbent president to duplicate the enthusiasm of their base for a second term. But this could run much deeper than simply getting used to the guy.

The article notes that, according to a recent Gallup poll, the percentage of Americans in the 18-29 age bracket who plan to vote this cycle has dropped by 16 points since this time in 2008. The other evidence in the article is anecdotal: campus organizers who have far fewer people to organize, an absence of election posters, a general tone of disenchantment. I want to point to a particular quote from Ethan Weber from Miami University:

Lots of people thought President Obama could go in and break gridlock and that didn’t happen. That’s the scariest thing to a lot of young people — that nothing is going to happen.

Sure, that’s what Obama promised to do. But when you think about it, how effective can most presidents be at breaking gridlock when they have a misbehaving Congress to deal with? If any president has been able to rise above this, what did they have that Obama doesn’t, and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) hasn’t proven himself to have?

The need to answer that question highlights a ripe opportunity for the voices of nonpartisanship and pragmatism in American politics. Young voters, especially disaffected ex-Obamans, are among the first to ask why these idiots aren’t buckling down to serious business. If No Labels and similar state-based groups can capture their attention before they say “Eff this ess” to politics, we can create a truly worthwhile student movement. These voters are perhaps the most fearful of high debt and a weak job market; thousands of them have their own experience with both and don’t know when it will end, or when politicians will start speeding up the ending process.

The good that can come out of the end to Obama-mania is the chance to get apathetic students to stop looking for celebrity candidates and start looking for statesmen. As for the party hacks, most of them give up on hackery after graduation; the sooner they’re introduced to a healthy next step in political thinking, the better. The worst centrists can do is focus exclusively on middle-aged voters. If we can’t make old politicians want to be centrists, we can make young people want to be centrist politicians.

Don’t hate us because you can’t label us

Michelle Cottle may find it odd that I’m filing my response to her latest Daily Beast column under “Centrist Studies.” After all, she’s not attacking centrists, just swing voters:

. . . the vast majority of people still waffling aren’t . . . “independent” or “thoughtful” or centrist so much as . . . utterly clueless.

Already we have fallacy #1: People with ideological labels, “centrist” included, know more about the issues than everyone else. Therefore, they are not worth the candidates’ time, which is the crux of her entire argument. Unfortunately, she offers no evidence supporting the idea that swing voters are less informed than wingers, only the assumption that this is true because they haven’t picked a candidate. There is over a month to go, and there are many things President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) can do to make their ideas and records more appetizing in that month.

Fallacy #2: “5 or 10 percent” is a “wafer-thin” number of voters. That’s a pretty thick wafer. In the latest polls, Obama and Romney are separated by anywhere from zero to seven points. Does Cottle expect a 10-point-plus difference every time, or believe the candidates realistically expect a difference above that? Obama won by seven in 2008. Five or 10 points is the difference between a squeaker and a mandate. It’s enough to appeal to millions of voters outside your base. It’s the exact opposite of wafer-thin.

Fallacy #3: She ignores the guy she quoted who points out the role of swing voters’ economic circumstances. While gleefully posting quotes that make her argument look better, Cottle doesn’t address this point from pollster Jefrey Pollock: The daily political back-and-forth is repellent to people who worry how to keep their households afloat. Will Romney releasing his tax returns, or Obama holding a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, make them feel more optimistic about who can make their lives easier?

Fallacy #4: Not only do swing voters know nothing, they believe nothing. She does offer evidence suggesting that most independents trend left or right. Those who do not are not “thoughtful” – a word she repeats with such scorn that you could replace it with “menacing,” as she did in her headline for some reason – just lacking in conviction. This won’t be the last time someone accuses true independents of this, simply because they can’t be pigeonholed.

Fallacy #5: These voters “don’t really give a damn.” Then why are they voting?

If you want a realistic and academic examination of swing voters that is actually worth the column inches, pick up Linda Killian’s The Swing Vote. I’ll be disappointed if five of you don’t mail copies of it to Cottle.

The kid WAS all right

The last time I wrote about author/Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speaker Jonathan Krohn, I asserted, though not in so many words, that his debating and critical thinking skills left something to be desired – which was largely attributable to his age – and that a little more experience and study would get him to move away from doctrinaire conservatism. He was 14 years old at the time. Now he’s 17, and my prediction has come true (results!). How do I know? He says so himself. And it’s awesome.

In an interview with POLITICO, Krohn revealed that he was no longer a conservative, but not a liberal either, as any ideological label is now distasteful to him. The article’s writer, Patrick Gavin, took great pains to point out that Krohn is now pro-gay marriage and even pro-Obamacare. He would likely vote for President Obama in November, if he were going to be 18 by then. He’s even planning to attend New York University, of all places. It’s a pretty big shift for a guy who once named Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) as a political hero of his.

Why the change? Krohn chalks it up to his personal studies in classical, non-political philosophy, which helped him realize this:

. . . a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn’t meaningful. It wasn’t me thinking. It was just me saying things I had heard so long from people I thought were interesting and just came to believe for some reason, without really understanding it. I understood it enough to talk about it but not really enough to have a conversation about it.

There is so much right with this passage that I might not have room for it all. First: Exposing yourself to little but one ideology renders you nigh incapable of critical thought. Second: When you translate that non-critical thought into speech, it will come out sounding like copy for political bumper stickers. Third: Chances are, you know not of what you speak.

So why am I filing this column in the Centrist Studies category without calling Krohn a centrist? It’s not just the fact that I respect his desire to avoid being labeled (though I do think he meets the criteria for centrism). It’s the fact that this is a process a hell of a lot of us centrists went through, though not as early as Krohn. I stopped calling myself a left-winger when I realized I wasn’t thinking about anything I discussed and just copied what other lefties said. That, evidently, happened to Krohn.

It’s a shame that, according to him, people aren’t interested in hearing about his political evolution. This is no surprise, since we’re talking about the right-wing establishment. I’m interested, kid! Call me, maybe!

Accepting the sex factor

The last couple of times a centrist candidate who I liked came in third or worse in an important election, I tried to look beyond them for reasons why. The voting system, maybe? The influence of special interests? The pandering? Yes, one or more were there in varying degrees. But the usual response I got from other centrists came down to one factor: retail politics. Or, more accurately, the lack of the candidate’s ability to use it.

Now, generally, I prefer to keep promotional efforts to a minimum and let a product, service or candidate attract customers, users and voters on its own merits. Sadly, this has yet to work in an election. The “If you build it, they will come” mentality is simply impractical in today’s politics. In the age of the rapid-fire media, they have to know it’s there. And if they already know it’s there, they have to know it’s capable of staying there. So perhaps it was inevitable that I’m finally devoting a post to this thesis statement: Centrism isn’t sexy enough.

True, sexiness in a candidate or de facto spokesperson has never been a high priority for me. But I have indeed noticed that the typical token centrist – experienced, highly educated, wonkish, mature – has a hard time distilling his high-minded policy ideas into clear, simple words. He comes off as if he’s constantly lecturing you, which, I have theorized, is why he turns off voters outside of a faithful few. This way, he could be concise and have the intellectual heft to back it up when asked by intellectuals.

There’s also a distinct lack of pathos among centrist politicians. This is my least favorite of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion – yes, I studied rhetoric – but you can’t deny that it works. The most successful movements have spawned from the ability to combine emotions and ideas into political values. It demonstrates a deeper level of understanding than nuts and bolts. We need bring it down to “We’re all mad as hell – now let’s do something about it!”

Finally, centrism needs an identifiable figure. It needs to be humanized. It needs someone who is smart, funny, patriotic, plainspoken, unapologetic (unless the situation genuinely merits an apology) and capable of being the adult in the room. And, for purely aesthetic reasons, someone who is all of these plus young and attractive would be the best choice. Participants in the emerging centrist infrastructure need to find such a person and put them out front.

Once we make up for our marketing deficit, everyone else’s attention deficit has a much better chance of being filled in. We know we can beat wingers at the policy game. But for the non-policy crowd, it’s time to start kicking their asses at the politics game.

The legacy of Lugar

As I write this, NBC has just projected that Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) has lost the Republican nomination for his own seat to some Tea Party asshole who I can’t be bothered to name. (OK, his name is Richard Mourdock, but you may know him as STPAWICBBTN.) Unlike other GOP veterans who retired before they could be ousted by other STPAWICBBTNs in their own states, Lugar stuck it out; this would have been his seventh term. Sadly, in the next few days, you’ll see many Tea Party-type Republicans slapping each other on the back for a successful RINO (Republican In Name Only) hunt.

Honestly, what more could they ask for in a senator? Aside from being the chamber’s expert on nuclear proliferation and its longest-serving Republican, he has executive experience (mayor of Indianapolis from 1968-1976) and business experience (currently manages a 604-acre family farm and worked in the family food machinery business before entering politics); he was an Eagle Scout; he’s been married for nearly 56 years; and he’s never not been a Republican. There’s only one reason to discount him: He works nicely with Democrats. GASP.

I could take this moment to repeat the same old talking points about how irrelevant that is when your other option is a genuine statesman. Seeing as this is Indiana, home of the centrist Bayhs (the last of whom, former Sen. Evan Bayh [D-IN], could charitably be described as the Democratic Lugar), you’d think they would have continued a strategy that was working perfectly well for them. Lugar lent the party some much-needed credibility and maturity. And his constituents knew it. Until now, apparently.

But STPAWICCBTN? What does he have to offer that every other Tea Party candidate in the country doesn’t? (He is a geologist by trade, which is pretty rare in politics, but so what?) Actually, his biggest offer is to the Indiana Democrats. They may actually run a candidate for that seat this time. And if voters start missing someone like Bayh in the absence of Lugar, that candidate might win.

It’s been proven many times for the past four years that Republicans, more so than Democrats, don’t like candidates who independents and centrists approve of. Perhaps this is because the biggest political fad of that time (the Tea Party) has favored them exclusively. But it will pass. Those same voters will ask where the people they elected have gotten them. Fads fade away, but wisdom and ability are forever.

If the worst thing you can say about Lugar is that he’s been in the Senate for six terms, or that he’s a insufficiently right-wing, he’s a much better member of Congress than most.

YEA on the Make Congress Work Act

You know that wonderful moment when people in positions of authority finally do something you’ve been recommending for a while? And then that considerably less wonderful moment when you realize they’re only doing a super-condensed version of it for the sake of some other end that you don’t really care about? That, I imagine, was the feeling experienced by No Labels yesterday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced a deal.

That may seem like good news all on its own, but celebrating agreement for its own sake is a sign that things are very, very not good. The two have agreed to move forward a jobs-related bill (McConnell’s baby) in exchange for avoiding cloture on judicial nominations (Reid’s baby). In short, they have broken a stalemate to make way for . . . more debating. Nobody likes debating more than I do, but my debates don’t directly impact over 300 million citizens.

I bring up No Labels because of the second of the 12 recommendations in their Make Congress Work! action plan: requiring up-or-down votes on presidential appointments, including those for the judiciary, within 90 days, including floor and committee debate. Reid and McConnell’s “deal” does not make any such fundamental changes to Senate procedure. They may be touting this as a way to make the nomination vote come faster, but how many layers of more gridlock will need to be broken before it actually happens?

That’s not the only reason to be disappointed. If you read the No Labels report (summarized version here), you’ll find other completely sensible ideas for congressional reform: uniform scheduling for members; bipartisan overrides of a leader or chair’s refusal to put forward a bill; and revocation of congressional pay for not passing a budget on time. It’s a centrist’s wet dream. Yet in an atmosphere in which a solitary moment for celebration is seen as success, how much hope does it all have?

The plan presents an excellent opportunity for moderates in Congress, especially outgoing ones. This should be the year of the “Make Congress Work Act”: a bill that would implement all of No Labels’ suggestions. The inevitable misbehavior as it’s debated will create a firestorm of citizen demand. And what grounds does anyone have for opposing most of it? (I worry about Question Period, as the Canadian kind sucks.)

If I were to pick two senators to move on this, they’d be Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Jim Webb (D-VA). A bipartisan ticket of moderates with senatorial fatigue, with the chance for a real legacy.

The Snowe finally melted

She might not have spearheaded many life-changing bills or led many committee crusades, but it will be difficult for any Beltway observer of my generation to see a Congress without Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). As of this November, she will have served 18 years, and there is no sign that she would have faced a serious challenger from either party, despite rumors of more conservative Republicans who wanted to try. Nonetheless, she’s retiring.

Here’s her quote:

What I have had to consider is how productive an additional term would be. I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term. At this stage of my tenure in public service, I have concluded that I am not prepared to commit myself to an additional six years in the Senate.

And here’s The Onion‘s quote: “Senator Snowe Will Not Seek Reelection, Extinction Of Moderate Republicans Imminent.” There’s about 90 percent less irony in that headline than their usual turnout. Snowe, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), was one of a fantastic double act: two Maine ladies who ran as Republicans and voted with their colleagues on a regular basis, but felt no trepidation in going the other way when they saw fit. There must be something in the water in Maine that inclines voters toward political behavior that is becoming increasingly rare and subject to scorn.

Snowe is 65, younger by Washington standards than by normal ones, and in excellent health. We have heard no scandal about her when it comes to her personal life. All we are left with is her explanation: that the Senate is too partisan and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Of course, the Senate is a garden party compared to the House, but this is not the first time it’s driven moderate senators away. Remember when former Sen. Evan Bayh (R-IN) did it?

I could do the usual centrist blogger thing and castigate Congress for their entrenchment and animosity. But, let’s face it, any one of you could write that for me. In reality, my disappointment lies with Snowe. Maybe partisanship was wearing her out, but moderates can’t hope to change that if they retire before the wingers do. If I were her, or any other moderate lawmaker or candidate who ever gave way to a bunch of partisan idiots, I’d fight to the death. Even if you don’t win the first three times, you can make people pay attention.

The stakes are clearly too high when someone like former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) even has a chance to win a presidential primary. Moderates can’t quit. We need to stifle the wingers back.

For those times you wish you were affiliated

With every new error committed by a less electable candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, my toleration for excuses not to support former Gov./Ambassador Jon Huntsman (R-UT) shrinks. Ask anyone, even his hardest-core supporters, and they’ll tell you it’s his propensity for moderate rhetoric and red meat-free policy proposals that are holding him back. “Retail politics” is the game, and nobody thinks he can play it.

OK. So he at times has been excessively blunt in his criticisms of his own party. As if that’s never been done before; how often does Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) tout herself as the savior of “constitutional conservatism?” (The same Constitution that says nothing about people’s sex lives? Right.) Compared to his record as a whole, that’s pretty petty, isn’t it? Nonetheless he has to contend with primary voters who would rather have an ideologically pure candidate win with 51 percent than a moderate candidate win with 70 percent. Priorities, people.

So where does that leave independent voters who might have to choose between two sides of the same nutcased coin? We’ve talked about open primaries. We’ve talked about putting together a third-party ticket online. Given a choice, I’ll take the latter, assuming candidates on party ballots are eligible. But it might not have to be that complicated. Here’s something I’d like to see: the National Independent Straw Poll (NISP).

Every now and then, some media outlet or think tank or other will commission its own straw poll, focusing on one voter demographic or another, mostly along party and ideological lines, and usually within one state at a time. The NISP would apply only to voters who are registered as Independent or declined-to-state. It would be held about six to eight weeks before the major state primaries, and as you can tell from the name, it would be national. No Labels would run it, since I wouldn’t trust anyone else. And all the major- and third-party candidates would be on the ballot.

I defy any of the candidates on the Republican stage to tell me that independents are a voting bloc they can do without. Remember that we represent 24 percent of the voting population. Capturing that 24 percent would be enough to crush one’s opponent in the general election. But, if one candidate is too busy with their base to bother trying to win, well, they’ll suffer the consequences. It’s not our problem.

If the NISP were held today, based on the sentiments of my fellow centrist/moderate/independent bloggers, Huntsman could easily sweep it. And if only he saw the value in that, so much the better . . . for us.

BREAKING: Members of Congress DO something!

Remember when President Obama agreed to accept Congress voting on individual elements of the American Jobs Act, instead of the whole damn thing? Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Coons (D-DE) had a better idea. They compiled all the elements of the bill that both parties could agree on and made it into a new one: the American Growth, Recovery, Employment and Entrepreneurship Act, or the AGREE Act. Awesome.

The bill would include:

• extended tax relief for small businesses
• extension of research and development tax credits, in particular for domestic manufacturers
• tax incentives for veterans who want to open franchises (which I still don’t recommend doing)
• regulatory relief for small businesses
• reforms to the immigration process for high-skilled legal immigrants
• new powers for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to enforce intellectual property protections

I’m particularly happy about the note about high-skilled legal immigrants, as I intend to be an immigrant (legally) and, for the record, people actually hire me to do stuff. The renewed small business relief isn’t completely unlike previous Obama-crafted legislation, so I’m a bit skeptical about how many jobs a redux would be capable of yielding. But the emphasis on special treatment for domestic manufacturing is most welcome, as is that for veterans. And it’s refreshing to see a jobs bill that doesn’t play favorites with sectors.

But most refreshing of all is the fact that this bill happened. Sure, Congress as a whole is still mired in an eternal game of partisan chicken. That hasn’t changed much. Thanks partly to Rubio and Coons, that may be improved slightly. It makes infinite amounts of sense to get the things you both like out of the way, if only to give the appearance of productivity and civility. Before this, it looked like nobody was even trying to do that.

In fact, we should find a way to ensure that this sort of behavior becomes status quo in Congress. Every time they find themselves contending with legislation the size of their egos, members of two related committees, one from each party, should be tasked with finding the points of consensus. They put together a new, smaller bill and everyone votes. Watch their collective approval rating make it back into the double digits!

Honestly, if No Labels had made this story up, it wouldn’t be half as good as the real-life version. Congratulations, Marco and Chris. In addition to the high-five you’ve probably already gotten from them, you get The Future American Seal of Approval from me.