Pitching to the Partisan Center?

In today's Times, Christie Whitman offers her take on The Vital Republican Center. Needless to say, she spends a lot of time complaining about how she was treated when she ordered the reexamination of reduced lead levels for drinking water. But her larger point is that the Republican party needs to be more centrist:

A true majority party should not be in such a potentially precarious position [where a few thousand votes or a single state can swing the balance of control in the Senate or control of the White House]. We find ourselves in this situation in part because we too often follow the advice of political consultants to appeal not to a majority of the electorate but only to the most motivated voters — those with the most zealous, ideological beliefs. Both parties now concentrate largely on turning out greater numbers of their most fervent supporters.

Well, guess what? That's the price of power. It's easy enough to pitch to your motivated extremists when you don't have control of Congress or the White House. As the Republicans have demonstrated, those motivated voters can get you into power. But when you're there, how do you expand your power base so as to keep your power?

The Democrats, for a long time, helped keep the center on their side through entitlement and social programs which, while providing significant benefit to their voter base, earned them the title "tax and spend". The Republicans have avoided that same label, particularly under G.W. Bush, through massive deficit spending - but there's a price to that form of fiscal irresponsibility. First, it offends fiscal conservatives on both sides of the political spectrum - and, despite the stereotypes, there are a lot of Democrats and independent voters who are fiscal conservatives. Second, it places the nation in a precarious position, as ultimately we will either face massive tax increases or we risk a fiscal crisis of unknown proportions.

G.W. Bush seems to believe that if you cut taxes you'll miraculously generate massive economic growth which will result in an overall increase in tax revenue. That's more or less what Reagan argued, before even he gave up and raised taxes. Clinton never bought into what G.W.'s father deemed "voodoo economics", and demonstrated quite clearly that you can increase taxes and still foster an unprecedented economic boom. (But perhaps I'm giving G.W. more credit than he deserves by suggesting this belief - after all, he has argued that tax cuts are the tool to keep a strong economy booming, that tax cuts are the tool to invigorate a faltering economy, and that tax cuts are the cure for a recession. When all you have is a hammer, every economic problem looks like a nail?)

On the whole, Whitman is wrong. G.W. has not lost track of the need to pitch to the center - he has enacted illegal trade barriers, offered gargantuan subsidies to business, launched an extraordinarily expensive new entitlement program, proposed a bizarre "guest worker" immigration reform, and offered sleight of hand tax relief (at least for the middle class, what the tax cut giveth, the "Alternative Minimum Tax" will soon take away) - all in the name of appeasing the center. That he won't also reach out to certain factions, such as environmentalists, reveals not a disinterest in the center or in building a new Republican base, but with the fact that he thinks he can get more money and more votes by catering to big business and opening up the wilderness to as much economic development as possible.

Ms. Whitman argues, "Politics that writes off large parts of the electorate is both counterproductive and short-sighted. Yet both parties seem determined to pursue that course." The fact is, you can't be both pro-life and pro-choice. You can't simultaneously protect our pristine wilderness and permit clear-cutting and strip mining in those same areas. You can't cut lead levels in drinking water and appease the companies which put the lead into the drinking water. One fault Bush doesn't have is a tendency to sit on the fence - but on virtually any significant issue, once you pick a side you will inevitably alienate some voters.

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