MAKING A MUDDLE OF THE MIDDLE

Sam Smith

Few candidates have fallen so fast from sainthood to run of the mill unreliable and untrustworthy political hack as Barack Obama. The decanonization has only taken a few weeks and has been almost entirely due to what the media politely calls Obama's shift to the middle. In fact, as Jim Hightower has noted, the middle of the road is filled largely with yellow stripes and dead armadillos. But that's okay, because Obama isn't really moving to the middle but to the right, like some tail-wagging puppy dog trying to crawl under the conservative fence.

The results have been awkward and even embarrassing, as when Obama had to hold a second news conference on the same day in order to renuance his Iraq position he had initially nuanced only a few hours earlier.

What we are seeing is another example of the overwhelming desire of leading Democrats to be someone else, like a tone dead dude doing an air guitar imitation of Ronald Reagan, cheered by major campaign donors and others who run the game, but leaving the voters annoyed, apathetic, uncertain or cynical.

It's not a disaster, and Obama remains far better than McCain, but neither is it anything to applaud. In the trade it's considered clever, sophisticated and practical. Occasionally it even helps a candidate win. But any clever, sophisticated and practical technique that diminishes a candidate's image as rapidly as has occurred in Obama's case at least deserves reconsideration.

A good place to start would be for candidates to be themselves, exuding what the pros call authenticity. Obama is beginning to sound like a walking Gallup poll analysis. You can imagine him walking down a crowded street changing his verbal emphasis as the hand shaking demographic alters. It wasn't exactly the image he had at the start. From the audacity of hope to the timidity of focus groups in just a few days.

Besides, it creates an odd image of an Obama presidency - lines of pregnant women at the White House gates waiting for him to determine whether their pain is sufficiently physical for a late term abortion or asking NSA to black out pornographic remarks in the results of warrantless wiretaps it submits to him.

But what about the voters who aren't black, young and wowed, or old reliable liberals? Don't you have to prove you're tough on abortions, gays and terrorists (in no particular order) in order to win back America?

Not really. For one thing, if you play that game you're admitting defeat because there's no way you're going to outdo the pathological right on such matters. For another, as Obama has discovered, trying can get you into trouble.

The best approach is to show some enthusiasm for one's own major causes - broadly missing among national Democrats, perhaps because they haven't found them - and then looking for other issues that are not even necessarily on the media list of approved ways for liberals to cave in.

There's nothing wrong with thinking about the other guy's concerns. You just do it from a progressive perspective. I call it crossover politics, those issues where there is a constituency on both sides. One can push these issues with integrity and authenticity without seeming a liberal wannaplay wimp.

But here's the secret people like Obama won't tell you. Their campaign contributors won't like them if they take such positions. Besides some of these subjects are new and those in politics and the media don't like stuff that is new because it is not supported by sufficient cliches they can repeat about it. And some ideas are just too upsetting to core fans.

Notwithstanding all that, here is one list of crossover policies a progressive candidate could support without embarrassment and with good effect:

The Second Amendment: This is at the top only because it's at the top of the news at the moment. Support of the Supreme Court decision on gun control would be an easy way for a progressive to stir the political pot. Excessive gun control, as in DC, has been broadly ineffective and has become an easy symbol of liberal puritanism, not to mention the fact that it violates the Constitution. Liberals commonly become derisive at any suggestion that widespread gun ownership might be useful in restraining a growingly dictatorial government, but that's because they haven't learned much from Vietnam or Iraq, where America's massive military might proved stunningly ineffective against personal weaponry.

The Tenth Amendment: This is the amendment that gives to states and the people those rights not specified under the Constitution. No amendment has been so routinely ignored, often through the caprice of greenmail, i.e. giving away federal money with all sorts of stipulations that end local control. The heavy liberal bias against state and local decisions is unfounded. In 1992, for example, the one hundred largest localities in America pursued an estimated 1,700 environmental crime prosecutions, more than twice the number of such cases brought by the federal government in the previous decade. Similarly, as Washington was vainly struggling to get a handle on the tobacco industry, 750 communities passed indoor no-smoking laws. The 10th Amendment has strong supporters on both left and right.

Devolution - The devolutionary - or localized - principles of the Tenth Amendment also work as part of a general political philosophy, again one that liberals often denigrate for no good reason. For example, there are several federal agencies that work on such principles - the Coast Guard, National Park Service and US Attorneys. In each case the local representatives of the US government have broad discretion and in each case, we have a rare federal agency that is generally admired. Or consider how local schools are being eviscerated by both parties and the size of the constituency that doesn't like it. Again, there are devolutionists on both the left and the right.

Worker issues - Every issue that directly improves the lot of the ordinary worker cuts into power of rightwing scare tactics. Compared to New Deal and Great Society Democrats, present day members of the party are pathetic on such matters and are paying the electoral price.

Election reform - Real reforms like instant runoff voting are classic crossover issues. There is also no particular ideology involved in counting the votes right and honestly, but neither major party is dealing with the matter.

Civil liberties - While the test cases may vary with the ideology, both left and right have strong defenders of civil liberties who are among the most useful and honorable inhabitants of the political environment.

Corruption - Again, the sides pick their own examples, but the principle crosses over. From the Project on Government Oversight to Judicial Watch there's plenty for everyone. The exit polls, for example, suggest that Al Gore would have done significantly better if he had had the courage to publicly dump a corrupt Bill Clinton during the 2000 campaign.

The War on Drugs - The most costly and most disastrous domestic policy of recent decades. Again, neither major party takes it on, conventional liberals have been terrible on the issue, but there are certainly a large number waiting for it to come to the fore.

Usury - The incredible interest rates charged by credit cards would be one of the easiest issues for a progressive to adopt, providing banks weren't subsidizing the campaign.

Jury rights - The right of a jury to judge both the law and the fact is commonly ridiculed by liberals, but there is a strong two pole constituency for juries to be treated with more respect.

Housing - Simple programs such as a joint equity program in which the government became a partner with certain classes of home buyers (getting its share of the equity back upon sale) would be popular across the spectrum. Only the bankers wouldn't like it.

Reciprocal liberty - One of the reasons such issues as gay marriage are so important is because liberal puritans have pressed acceptance over tolerance. Human nature tells us that the latter comes first. The message should be you can't be free if I can't be free. You don't have to like what I do, but you do have to tolerate me doing it as long as it doesn't harm others. Reciprocal liberty is a principal all Americans should find to their liking because it is a very American idea.

If these were the issues in a Democratic presidential campaign, think how different the debates and the electoral count would be. And the funny thing is, by adopting such crossover issues, the Democratic candidate would not only be more successful, but considerably more progressive, than the one we've got now.