THE CENTRIST AESTHETIC. Does David Ignatius remember the 90's? Because I do (indeed, they're about the only decade I can say that for). In his latest Post column, Ignatius warns that "there's a larger, overarching battle this year between two visions of America: testing whether it's a country defined by its political center or one defined by its political extremes." The first is Bill Clinton's "synthesizer" style, which "holds that Americans for the most part, with the exception of irate groups at the edges, are less interested in ideology than in practical solutions to basic problems." The second is the base mobilization strategy Bush and Rove. But Clinton proves the point: This yearning for polite centrism is a hollow farce. Clinton, as I recall, was the coke-smuggling sexual assault artist who murdered Vince Foster before breakfast and sold off the White House by lunch. Whether his third-way policy ideas were smart approaches, his decidedly bipartisan approach to governance was rewarded with screaming witch hunts and media revilement. Nothing about the 90s was centrist, as you can't have respectful, bipartisan governance if one side won't play. The Republicans didn't. And the media didn't call them on it. What Ignatius yearns for is the centrist aesthetic. "People from the Old Media, like me, instinctively prefer a centrist style of civilized debate," he writes. Which is fine. Except that "centrism" has a political meaning that connects to various policy positions, which Ignatius, while praising Clinton, Tester, Ford, and Talent, makes no attempt to defend or even distinguish. If Ignatius is just writing unclearly, and doesn't mean to signal a preference for any policy positions at all, that's okay too. But it's time to stop pretending that the death of civilized debate doesn't have suspects. The media may yearn for civilized debate of another age, but it was Ignatius's employers at The Post who leapt on every blue dress, trumped up land deal, and sexual titillation The American Spectator would "report." If folks want to talk health care, PAYGO, and unipolarity till the cows come home, I'm sure Democrats would happily oblige. But I don't think they're going to enter the knife fight unarmed again anytime soon. If Ignatius is detecting a return of civilization to the political discourse, maybe it's because Republicans have been so silenced by their own failures and scandals that only Democrats are being heard. And when they don't have to shreik to be heard by Mr. Ignatius and his colleagues, it sounds pretty good. Update: Digby has some characteristically more eloquent, developed, and sophisticated thoughts along the same lines.
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Ezra Klein
