Tell me if the following situation sounds familiar: A supposedly progressive party gets voted in during elections, full of promises to reverse the regression of the past decade. The election results are in, and it's a landslide, yet instead of seizing their mandate, the party drifts towards the comfortable centre whence it is harrassed on both sides by left and right. With a steadily increasing list of embarrassments, the critics get louder and the public gets more frustrated until the progressive incumbents are staring down a potential shitstorm of an election and losing out to a no-more-competent conservative party. 10 points if you guess the country I'm describing.
If you said America, have a donut, because the above narrative is all about the Land of the Roo, Australia. But it's on this website because it shows the problem faced by liberals all over, and it's one that your country has had a hand in. People are afraid of calling themselves Liberal.
There has been, for the past 15 years here and far longer in your country, a stigma attached to the progressive lable. We're seen as weak, unrealistic, out-of-touch space cadets more likely to solve a Times Crossword than the unemployment crisis. I don't need to tell you that's wrong. I don't need to tell you how effective Liberal policies can be. What I'm trying to say is that the supposedly progressive leadership, in my country and yours, is not about being liberal. It's about winning elections.
The view from the top must be very different to the one we have here. I've been trying to understand it for a while and this is what I conclude they must see: "The left already votes for us. All votes to be gained are on the right. If we shift to the centre and reach out to the right, then we will win those votes and the next election." I may be wrong but this summary is consistent with the evidence I've seen in terms of policy on healthcare, foreign policy, civil rights issues and the economy.
I don't like this because it's a poor view of people and the political process in general. This view takes the party faithful for granted. It treats the population like a political spectrum. It sacrifices good policy for good-looking politics. A mandate is sacrificed for 'reaching out'. Action and strength are sacrificed to appear bipartisan. Image does not win votes: Achievement grounded in policy wins votes. The Democrats/Australian Labor should have said, "Screw the conservatives, we will pass healthcare/fix the economy/pull out from Iraq/stop torture because this is how we believe we fix our country." Tell me, if I believe the above statement, who should I vote for?
It's not an executive problem, it's not a legislature problem. It's not even confined to any particular country. Liberal leadership does not seek liberal achievements. Obama and the Democrats ran on a platform of change, the Australian Labor Party ran on a platform of change. On some things we have seen impressive results. But far too often we have reached for the easy centre. Far too often, what we have seen is a continuation of the former, with better marketing.
This is not what my country or your country needs. We don't need politicians pushing policy they don't believe in. We don't need a party trying to govern 'for everybody' because it's frankly not possible. Rather, we need politicians, executive and otherwise, whose sole concern is the implementation of what they believe is the best policy. If they don't then they have no business in politics.