Watching this dreadful Presidential campaign confirms to my mind how much we would've benefited from the presence of a serious, centrist third-party challenger to our centrist Democratic President and his unserious right-wing opponent. It would have been so edifying to have an independent voice like Olympia Snowe calling out Mitt Romney for his dishonest right-wing unseriousness. And it would have been equally clarifying to have an Even Bayh calling out Obama for failing to put a credible economic plan on the table---even though, in fact, he has---but relying instead on appeals to his Democratic constituencies. Which is a polite way of saying: gays, Mexicans, and everyone else but wealthy and privileged centrists like me.
Alas, there will be no Buddy Romer in this race, so the only hope is getting Obama to raise his game. Which is a polite way of saying: Remembering the position that wealthy and privileged centrists like me occupy in our merit-based society. To do that, the president needs to recognize just how badly he misused Warren Buffett---using him to traffic in divisive wedge issues. Which is a polite way of saying: For suggesting that privileged and wealthy centrists like me are obscenely undertaxed, which, while needlessly partisan, is historically accurate.
What an unserious lack of centrism.
What the President should do is follow the advice of the centrist economist Alan Blinder, laying out a “three-step rehab program for our nation’s fiscal policy.” Call it the Obama Plan---which, amazingly, very much resembles the plan favored by wealthy and privileged centrists like me. It should combine stimulus spending on job-creating infrastructure, a phase-in of “something that resembles the 10-year Simpson-Bowles austerity deficit-reduction plan” and a specific plan to “bend the health care cost-curve downward.” President Obama has pretty much offered up all of these ideas already, but has obviously not done so in the spirit of serious centrism since he has failed to gain bipartisan support for them. What a waste.
Obama needs the help of independents who could determine this election, even though independent voters are largely a mythical construct of the chattering classes who don't exist anymore. To attract them will require a serious, centrist plan that gets voters to react this way: “That plan seems fair: the rich lose their Lear jet deduction, but the poor lose their Medicaid. Everybody sacrifices. That’s seriousness. That's centrism. I’m an Obama man now.”
Obama loyalists often say: “Those Republicans are awful. They’ve blocked us at every turn.” Yes, the GOP has tried to bring down Obama; it’s been very destructive. But the people who keep saying that don’t have an answer for the next question: Why have they gotten away with it? Often, they'll simply reply with an accusatory wag of the finger in my direction, an ad hominem attack I find puzzling from people who pledged to put an end to divisive politics.
When the Grand Bargain talks with John Boehner fell apart, Obama retreated to his base when he should have rallied the center by laying out the Grand Bargain the country needs. Even though he did try rallying the center, and the center didn't rally because few Americans support centrist politics. But it would have forced Romney to speak about his plan---the Paul Ryan plan---and reveal its true nature: an unserious and non-centrist plan that few Americans would embrace if they understood it. Naturally, I could help them understand it better, but we haven't the space in this column for that.
Then people would see a real choice: a tough-but-centrist plan with real bipartisan support versus the radical Republican plan. Even though, again, Republicans have ruled out bipartisanship and the President has already proposed as much as $2 trillion in future budget cuts and infuriated his progressive base in the process.
When that happens---when the President rolls out a serious, centrist plan that can never be passed and which the public loathes---he can ride the winds of goodwill all the way to victory in November having achieved the ultimate serious centrist's policy goal: Solving nonexistent problems to please voters who don't exist.