With the 2008 election in its final days and polls moving heavily in Barack Obama’s direction, pundits have recently moved the conversation (preemptively) to "how would Obama govern?" On that question, a false narrative has formed that has existed in this country for too long, that America is a "center-right" nation. This assertion makes several dangerous misjudgments about the American electorate.
First, that statement lives in the past. The follow up to "America is a "center-right nation" is almost always "more Americans self-identify as conservatives." But anyone who continues to conduct a poll, or even rely on a poll that ask Americans to identify as liberal or conservative is misguided. Those words have become relics in the modern era defined by a Democratic Party that is socially liberal and fiscally conservative and a Republican Party that is socially conservative and has been fiscally liberal, running the country on a credit card and piling up massive debt. It is disingenuous to continue to link Democrat with liberal and Republican with conservative. Fiscally conservative Democrats and fiscally liberal Republicans is not a minor departure from ideological orthodoxy at this point, it’s the new way. That is why the term progressive has caught on. Sure, the demeaning of the word liberal by the right-wing forced liberals to come up with a new ID, but many new ID’s loomed for America’s left, and progressive was chosen to fit the times; times when America wants progress, not the status quo. And for anyone who really believes that America is a right-leaning country, they should stand by their convictions and push to end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid...because Americans hate liberal social welfare, right?
Second, America is not an ideological nation. It is unfair to characterize America as liberal, conservative, or anything else for that matter, because it is almost never strict ideology that swings the country from one side to the other. It is leadership. Americans like leadership, and to quote The American President, "People want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, Mr. President. They're so thirsty for it, they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."
Right or wrong, the American people elect strong and confident leaders every cycle, despite ideology. George W. Bush won in 2004 despite unpopular policies because he appeared to at least know what he stood for, and stood by it. Americans like conviction, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn’t matter what convictions you stand by, so long as you stand by them.
In other ways it can be an enormous blessing that Americans so love bold leadership. It means that with a mandate and the public at their back, strong, charismatic, and bold leaders can make transformational changes in this country. And that is the story of America, not always a country making steady progress, but a country which routinely flips the between status quo, do-nothing leadership of Presidents like James Buchannan and Herbert Hoover to the bold transformational leadership provided by Presidents like Abraham Lincoln and FDR.
And for all of these reasons it is a detriment to our country for commentators to use the "center-right" narrative as a way to suggest that if Obama wins the election, he will have to govern from the center, not move too fast on anything or not propose anything that doesn’t already have overwhelming support from the American people. Often leadership means standing up and doing what is right even when the people may not agree, and bringing the people to you. That is the kind of leadership required by a climate in crisis and an economy in turmoil. Bold, transformational leadership.
We don’t know yet whether Obama will have an overwhelming mandate or whether he will even win the election. But if he does, we do know there are already people trying to undermine potential progress, the hall monitors of the world telling the "liberals with pent up anger from years out of power" not to walk too fast. But it’s they who are out of step.