Obama vs Romney: Why We Need a Centrist Party

This presidential election offers America two possible paths: the road to serfdom or the road to plutocracy.

That at least is the fear that Obama and Romney spark in their opponents... and yes, the risk really is there.

For Obama, it is a textbook case: the path he is on -- bigger government programs, bigger government debt -- are possibly the early stages of the sort of statism that was described by von Hayek in The Road to Serfdom.  His policies certainly seem to lead to widespread unemployment, government dependency and European style economic anemia.

For Romney, the government-by-and-for-the-rich suspicion is warranted by the candidate's famous inconsistency, by his lack of the common touch and by the huge amounts of money he has raised from extremely wealthy individuals... which leads to a suspicion that his real core principle is to say whatever gets him elected, and that he has a class interest in protecting and expanding the power and privilege of the extremely rich.

Not a great choice for the apprehensive centrist.

Personally I keep hoping for a better choice, for a centrist candidate and party that manages to blend concerns for liberty, humanity, the environment and fiscal responsibility better than either candidate or party are doing now.  I believe there are a huge number of Americans who would support a party that was fiscally conservative but socially liberal, that addressed problems like the environment and health care with better more efficient solutions that work well, take care of everyone's needs, but keep government small and local, and do not bust the bank.

That third party may not presently exist.  But it should.

I don't want to vote for Obama or Romney.  I want a better choice.

Centrists Worth Supporting!

John Avalon has a great article about centrist candidates worth supporting.

But let's put our finger on the crux of the problem, the real reason why centrists are better for the country than conservatives or liberals: between them, right and left, Republicans and Democrats, have ripped the Declaration of Independence in half.  The right has grabbed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as its rallying cry, the left has grabbed the appeal to justice, fairness and equality.  The two party system creates a standoff: it's liberty vs. humanity.  

But America needs ALL these founding values if it is to thrive and survive as the founders intended.  Only Centrists care about these values equally. They put humpty-dumpty back together again.

All these guys really should get together and form the American Centrist Party, and expose Republicans and Democrats for the unbalanced extremists they are.

Also, while reading up on centrism, David Brooks has a great article about what it takes to lead and make laws that win support across party lines .

CNN iReporters describe why they call themselves "independent."

How About a NYC CleanUp Marathon?

Instead of just canceling the NYC Marathon as he just did this afternoon amidst a growing chorus of criticism, Mayor Bloomberg should seize the opportunity to declare a "New York City CleanUp Marathon."

All the Marathoners have made plans to come here anyway.  And now they suddenly have a free Sunday on their hands.  So why not just host a huge Clean Up Party on Sunday instead?

Heck, we have 35,000 superfit runner jocks hanging around doing nothing, plus 12,000 well-organized volunteers, and another 2 million spectators.  Add on to two-thousand overtime police offices assigned to the Marathon. Why not repurpose that whole efforts to aiding the folks in Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn and other stricken communities?

What our hurricane victims really need is a thousands or millions of fit, well-organized, disciplined folks, with a combined life experience of some 50 million years, coming to their destroyed homes and saying: "How can we help?  What can we do?  Clear that debris?  No problem.  Let's go, guys, heave-ho!"

That's how it is done.  I know.  Because I was a 9/11 guerilla volunteer, and that is how we did it.  Helping is not rocket science.  You just need to find out what is needed, and get the job done.

9/11 and Katrina proved that guerrilla volunteers fix problems fast, and and get in where help is needed most, while rule-bound organizations like the Red Cross and FEMA are generally slow to fix immediate problems, and too rule-bound to be flexible.  That is why guerilla volunteers were among the  most important first responders on 9/11, and why their help is needed now.

Ever since 10,000 Athenian private citizens defeated and army of well over 100,000 invaders, the name Marathon has been synonymous with heroes, and volunteer heroes, at that.  We need those heroes now.  And thank God, we have them here, right now, when we need them.

All the Mayor needs to do is give them a clear invitation to help, and make sure the police help, and do not hinder, the efforts of hordes of private volunteers.

Bullseye! Obama & the Equal Freedom to Marry

Yesterday, for the first time, President Obama announced that he now fully supports same-sex marriage, moving beyond his previous partial support limited to same-sex civil unions.  

Some analysts see this as a move to the left, playing to his Democratic base.

In fact, this is a move to the American center.  Just consider the core values at issue here: liberty, claimed by the right as their most cherished principle, and equality and social justice so dear to the left. At the end of the day, we are talking about the freedom of two consenting adults to enjoy the same equal rights as everyone else to marry and use the word "marriage" legally, regardless of their minority group.  So liberty and equality are both at issue.  

Religious taboos and prejudices aside, in terms of political values, this falls smack in the middle.

In this respect, same-sex marriage is much like the more severe issues of slavery and civil rights, in that, what was at stake at the heart of those issue too, were the core American values of both liberty and equality.  

Now, obviously slavery and the wide-spread suppression of civil rights for a large minority appear far more violent and heinous abuses, harming far more people in a more bloody and pervasively damaging manner, than the denial of just one set of rights – marriage equality – to a small minority.  But the principles and dynamics are similar.

Like same-sex marriage, slavery and civil rights were both highly contentious issues at the time they came to a head (1860's and 1960's respectively).  In each case, Christians were vocal leaders on both sides, with the distinction that reforms were opposed by traditionalists who looked to the Bible and past social traditions of inequality to support slavery and bigotry, while reformers similarly looked to the Bible, but also, most importantly, to the message of freedom and equality in the Declaration of Independence to support their cause.  

Despite the violent controversy, within just a few years after each crisis, the center of American opinion had entirely shifted to a new consensus on these issues.  The center shifted so quickly for one simple reason: the new consensus in each case (anti-slavery and pro civil rights) was indeed entirely in line with the basic values of the Declaration of Independence: freedom, equality, humanity, justice.

Same-sex marriage is also entirely in line with these basic values from the Declaration of Independence, the ur-text proclaiming core American principles.  Christians are on both sides of this issue as well.  Again, it is also opposed by the same kind of traditionalists, who look mainly only to the Bible and social traditions to support the notion that some folks are inferior, and do not deserve equal rights.  Here too, the reformers look both to the Bible and the Declaration of Independence in support of the equal freedom to marry.

The outcome, predictably, will be the same as in the struggles over slavery and civil rights, because the values behind the equal freedom to marry are core, central, American values.  Year by year, support for marriage equality is steadily growing for the simple reason that it is already well centered in the core American values of liberty and equality.  Therefor, it will see growing support, year by year, from courageous, clear minded people, not just on the left, but crucially, on the right, too.

By taking a stand for FULL freedom of marriage equality for same-sex couples, not just the neo-equality of civil unions, Obama has just stepped away completely from the forces that oppose freedom and equality for minorities, and placed himself squarely in line with the founding fathers, Lincoln and Martin Luther King in advocating the extension of freedom and equality even to small, historically despised minorities.  That is right at the center of American values.

Further, he has done so in nuanced way that fully respects the principles of Federalism and religious liberty.  In an email yesterday, he fleshed out his new position a bit more:

"I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them."

So Obama is not proposing a federal law creating federal gay marriage, which would be an overreach, but merely respecting the rights of states to decide the issue without being overridden by the federal government.  That is, in fact, a more moderate, federalist position – clearly more in line with the wishes of the founding fathers – than the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" which rides roughshod over states rights.  

Reader's of this blog will know am a certainly no member of team Obama, and quite willing to take him to task for fake centrism and bad policy.   But let's give the man his due: he just hit the bullseye on this one, dead center.  

[Pause here for a moment of appreciation.]  

Too bad however, he does not do this, for real, more often.  Too often Obama's policies do not balance American core values, but rather push equality, humanity and social justice at the expense of liberty.  Republicans often do the exact opposite.  Both would do well to craft new policy options (such as Green Energy Tax Cuts or Pro Bono Health Care Reform) that balance and promote liberty, humanity and equality all at once, without sacrificing one for the other.  

During its short history, the United States has faced four major political showdowns over the question of individual rights where liberty and equality were both at stake: the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Suffragette and the Civil Rights movements.  In each of these cases, forces that favored traditions opposed the logical extension of core American values were soundly trounced, shown the door and ultimately rejected as essentially un-American.  This next showdown, over the equal freedom to marry, tho' on a smaller, less violent scale, is not going to be any different.

Fake Centrism: The Buffet Rule

I know no one who considers CNN a right-wing network, and many would say it is perhaps slightly to the left of center.  So kudos to CNN for producing a balanced FAQ on Obama's Buffett Rule legislation that exposes it for the partisan political theater that it is.

Don't get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with the principle behind the Buffett Rule: the idea that the wealthy should pay at least as much in taxes, as a percentage of income, as the less wealthy.  Even Ronald Reagan supported that proposition, as the White House is quick to point out.

The problem is, the legislation Obama supports to embody the Buffett Rule is simply bad legislation.  Here is what CNN has to say:

The Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax legislation, has estimated that the "Paying a Fair Share Act" would raise $47 billion over 10 years, or an average of less than $5 billion a year, assuming the Bush tax cuts expire.

That wouldn't do much to help reduce federal deficits. In recent years, annual deficits have ranged from several hundred billion dollars to more than $1 trillion.

And if the rule were to serve as a replacement for the AMT, as Obama has proposed, it wouldn't come close to making up for the $1 trillion-plus in revenue that the AMT is expected to generate over 10 years.

What do independent tax experts think of the Buffett Rule? Tuning out the partisan rhetoric on both sides, tax experts say the Buffett Rule would further complicate an already complex tax code by adding a new minimum tax on top of the old AMT.

What's more, the evidence that the Buffett Rule is correcting a big disparity in the tax code is not so clear cut.

For example, even without a Buffett Rule, most millionaires already pay more in taxes as a percentage of their income than those in the middle class, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. Not always as much as 30%, but a higher percentage of their income than the vast majority of the middle class.

And the Congressional Research Service notes that today's tax code doesn't violate the Buffett rule as egregiously as Warren Buffett and others have asserted. Using 2006 data, the CRS found the average tax rate among millionaires is almost 30% -- with about a tenth of them paying a rate higher than 35% and another tenth paying a rate below 24%.

Lastly, tax reform done right shouldn't create a need for a Buffett Rule, an AMT or any other accessory to the tax code, Williams said.  The only reason policymakers call for such measures is when they don't like the outcomes of the system they've got. Tax reform is their chance to design a better system. And if one goal is to tax the rich more, they can do that in a simpler, more effective way than the Buffett Rule.

 So, bottom line, Obama is promoting bad tax legislation that complicates the code further, raises little revenue and possibly increases deficits, to address a problem that does not generally exist, except for a few statistical outliers.  And if anyone does not support this bad legislation, Obama and his supporters are quick to denounce them as extremists.

So this is fake centrism, ginning up a fake issue in an election year, because it could make Obama appear a reasonable centrist and his Republican opponents appear extremist.  While there could be, in my view, far more principled centrism from both sides, there is no extremism in opposition to bad legislation such as the "Paying a Fair Share Act."

What is especially disingenuous here is invoking Ronald Reagan in support of legislation he would almost certainly oppose.  Reagan's support of the principle behind the Buffett Rule came in the context of a campaign for tax reform, code simplification and tax cuts for all, and definitely not in support of efforts to complexify the code and raise tax rates on only a few.

If Obama were truly centrist, he would not deceptively quote Reagan in support of policies Reagan would never actually support.  He might rather consider following Reagan's example: promote overall tax code reform and simplification, with an eye to fairly reducing the burden of taxation on the economy and on all Americans.  That would be legitimate centrism and good policy, not just political theater.

Why Don't Liberals Understand Themselves?

Interesting article by Nicholas Kristof.  About a study on "The Moral Stereotypes of Liberals and Conservatives" that shows liberals understand conservatives worse than moderates or conservatives understand them, and explains why.  I won't repeat Kristof here, so check out his article.

What is even more curious to me, if you read the study abstract itself, it shows that not only are liberals most inaccurate about conservatives, they are most inaccurate about typical liberal views!  In other words, they overestimate the liberalism of typical liberals, as well as the conservatism of conservatives.  Typical liberals also probably view themselves as more moderate than "typical" liberals, when they are in fact not.... it is just that typical liberals are less extreme than most liberals think.

Odd, that conservatives and moderates are better at predicting "typical" liberal responses than liberals themselves!  The study does not explain why this is so.  I don't have a good answer off the top of my head, but it sure is curious.  Anybody have any ideas?

The study is better at explaining why liberals don't get conservatives:  again, look at the article.

Funny.  I have long felt that I understood liberal concerns and positions far better than most liberals could understand conservative (or libertarian or my own centrist) views. The study shows that this is in fact so, and sheds some light on the matter.

However, I think the study may be a bit flawed in that it ignores libertarians, and also the large numbers of folks who may be fiscally conservative but socially liberal or libertarian.  For these groups, who are somehow bundled into the rest of the data, I would think they might value loyalty highly, but would have more nuanced views about authority and sanctity than typical social conservatives. 

The fact that this group is hidden in the data probably means that it was harder to predict what a "typical" conservative thinks, because the study probably misidentifies a lot of folks as conservatives who are not quite pure conservatives.

Mario Vargas Llosa: A Neo 21stCentrist?

I have just discovered that I feel perhaps a smidgeon smarter when a Nobel Prize winner says things that sound like me.

A little over a month ago, Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa gave a brave and perhaps unexpected speech, especially considering his audience.  He was asked deliver the keynote address at The Freedom Dinner, an event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to spreading free market and classical liberal ideas around the globe.

Most attendees probably expected a celebration of Atlas and the liberty movement it promotes so well.  But while he did that, he did more than just that.

Vargas Llosa served up an insightful and surprising critique of today's capitalism-in-practice, a warning that slammed leading capitalists for excessive greed, for lack of moral conscience, and for damaging the foundations of democratic capitalism itself.  He even went so far as to suggest that the liberty movement should spend more time defending social justice, and find ways to make liberty and social justice work together.  Keep in mind he was addressing an audience, some of whom at least, following Ayn Rand, think greed is a virtue, altruism a vice, and social justice the deceptive rallying cry of the enemy. Some attendees I spoke with went so far as to opine that - not just the welfare state - but even charitable tax deductions should be eliminated.

So for at least some of this crowd, his arguments, I'd think, might be a tough sell.

But I keep thinking, jeez, this guy sounds like me.  Not exactly, not the style, but rather the ideas, especially the parts in bold.  Consider these excerpts:

The crisis striking Western Europe and the United States ... has done the most harm to morality. It has revealed, at its core, an essential lack of ethical values and a egocentric spirit in which the fervor for profit has blinded esteemed executives and business owners, bankers and financiers, to the point to which they act with a complete lack of vision and scruples, to make decisions that hurt their clients and the very system to which they owe their power and fortunes. ...[I]f the origin of the moral decline in the system of free enterprise and open markets that this crisis revealed is not corrected, the damage will keep corrupting it from within, undermining its sources of support and depriving it of that favorable consensus –the trust and solidarity of the majority of citizens– without which no institution can survive in the long run.

The altruistic, philanthropic concept of capitalism of the American forefathers does not correspond to the spectacle that this system has offered the world in recent times...  [C]apitalism develops an appetite for material goods –consumerism– and for accumulating wealth which, within the confines of a respectable and respected legal system, is not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, as long as they do not go beyond the law, these are excellent incentives to keep the system functioning since they encourage invention and creation of new products, boost competition and create models and paradigms which the young will... emulate. 

However, there is a certain limit, which is hard to pinpoint, where virtue becomes vice, and the legitimate yearning for success and benefits at work turns to greed, hunger for profits, a passion so exclusive that it blinds whomever it dominates, driving them beyond the limits of decency and law, to act in a way that harms others and the system itself.  Our culture has become tolerant of those who, driven by a wild desire for profit, break the law and, instead of being punished for it, remain immune and are sometimes even rewarded by a state that rescues businesses from financial ruin triggered by their excesses. This is not the capitalist system but rather a profound distortion of what it was and what it still needs to be if we are to avoid moving backwards from civilization to barbarity.

Throughout its history, the free enterprise system has shown an extraordinary capacity to renew and reinvent itself. This is the time to do so again, following the familiar path. First, a radical, constructive self-criticism of the roots of what went wrong. In this case, the complacency and tolerance of those who have overstepped the rules of the game that the law establishes for markets and free competition. These people should be tried and punished for it. Second, an ongoing demand and effort –no holds barred– to return to the system that ethical dimension which is its strongest justification. This means defending the idea that more than just a system of economic rules, capitalism is a culture inspired by values –since it is based on respect for liberty, justice and legality– which have led to progress in human life, in the domain of the material as well as in terms of dignity, compassion, opportunities, respect for others, solidarity and generosity. It has been said, and with some truth, that liberty and justice –the latter particularly in terms of its social dimension– repel each other. Throughout its history, the great accomplishment of the classical liberal doctrine has been to replace this discord with harmony between the categories, since what we call civilization depends on their reconciliation and coexistence.

This is a difficult but not impossible task. What must gear up for it with the knowledge that the system we defend, despite its imperfections, is better than all the ones that have tried to replace it, promising paradise on earth but instead turning the societies that fell under their spell into a living hell. Let us return to political democracy and economic liberty the moral conscience it had in the best moments of its history, when progress and culture reached their greatest heights.

Vargas Llosa's argument is compelling, that capitalism in practice, which historically fostered human rights and social progress, has gone astray, ignored the importance of ethics and public spirit, while leading capitalists have given them selves over to excessive, sometimes criminal greed which threatens to shame and destroy capitalism itself.

Where Vargas Llosa and I overlap in our writing is the recognition that classical 18th - 19th Century liberalism combined concerns, not just for liberty, but for moral conscience, social justice, altruism and humanity, and that capitalism and its leaders have gone off the rails because they have forgotten this.  It is somewhat revolutionary for a defender of liberty and free markets to take this position in 2011.  For at present many on the right, some of whom call themselves classical liberals, esteem only liberty and self-interest as the highest values, and social justice, altruism and conscience set them on edge, as if these were code words for enemy ideologies.

Still, I would encourage Llosa to take his analysis farther than he does. At 21stCentrist.com, I discuss this fundamental problem:  

Long story short, we have ripped the Declaration of Independence in half:  the political right now champions the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the left champions the overall call for social justice and appeal to equality. Llosa is right to point out (as we have here) that liberty and social justice were both abiding concerns of classical 18th -19th C. liberalism.  But the 20th C saw the rise of a right and left that concern themselves with liberty or humanity respectively and sometimes exclusively.  While communism and socialism have shown little respect for liberty, some 20th C. philosophers on the right, like Rand, have turned self-interest into a virtue and demonized altruism.  Both sides (but not Vargas Llosa) have forgotten the classical Aristotelian concept of virtue: moderation, a healthy balance of opposing qualities: liberty and humanity; self-interest and public spirit.  When Vargas Llosa points out that an excess of "virtue becomes vice," he is really quoting Aristotle, and reviving the old notion of virtue as moderation, without which modern politics becomes unbalanced and extremist.

Aristotle's ethics informed Classical Liberalism and informs 21st Centrist and Vargas Llosa, but has been largely lost by both right and left.  Is it any wonder then that some capitalists, raised on immoderate 20th C libertarian thought, have taken greed to criminal excess?  

Vargas Llosa calls on defenders of capitalism to portray it as a culture of values.  That is fine and true, but if it is all talk, and policies, ethics and outcomes don't improve, it amounts to eyewash.  Therefore, to avert the decline and fall of democratic capitalism, he should not stop there.  He should also call upon capitalism's defenders to put the values of liberty and humanity on an equal footing in their hearts and minds, because the failure to do so is at the heart of our present troubles.  Then, they should turn to the nuts and bolts task of creating actual policies that that embody the core values of BOTH liberty and humanity, policies that make that vision of liberty with moral conscience a reality.  Those who do so will claim the center, and help forge a new free market humanitarian consensus.

If the financially unsustainable, perpetual-deficit welfare state is to wind down happily and not end in a nightmare of chaos or tyranny, capitalism's defenders must have good solutions to the humanitarian concerns left high and dry. That is why 21st Centrist strives to incubate new ideas such as supply side tax cuts for clean, renewable energy and pro bono health care reform, in order to solve pressing humanitarian concerns while expanding and defending liberty.  By way of further example, other more well know proposals that combine the concerns of liberty and humanity would be educational choice, or tax free retirement and health savings accounts, among others.  

Now is a unique moment when such ideas can take center stage, and pull democratic capitalism out of the present quagmire of unsustainable debt and unaffordable entitlement programs.  The present humanitarian programs of the left cannot continue.  What will replace them?  Whoever has the best answer, wins.