Pierce writes: "There are three kinds of people who claim to be centrists in this country today. There are embarrassed Republicans. There are lazy people. And there are liars."



Chris Christie, centrist or liar? (photo: Getty Images)

I Hate Centrism

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

esterday, on this blog, and this month in the newsstand version of this magazine, we have published a poll we did in conjunction with NBC News in which we try to define the New American Center, and the people who inhabit it. This was an entirely noble effort, and I applaud the plucky folks who embarked on this expedition into the darkest regions of the utterly banal. (Oh, and Alex Pareene? I think you can pretty much piss off now. I wouldn't wax so snotty about the editorial choices of other publications if I worked for a once-cutting-edge webzine that regularly demonstrates that it still thinks Camille fking Paglia has something worthwhile to say.) Their work has solidified something that I have believed ever since I watched the Democratic party cower in fear of the mighty power of Reagan-fu in the early 1980s.

I hate goddamn centrists.

There are three kinds of people who claim to be centrists in this country today. There are embarrassed Republicans. There are lazy people. And there are liars. There is no fourth alternative. We have seen vividly the intellectual exhaustion of self-proclaimed centrists in the laughable attempts to blame both sides for the reign of the morons. We have seen vividly the intellectual dishonesty of self-proclaimed centrists demonstrated by the No Labels and Fix The Debt scams, both of which involve little more than selling out the social safety-net. We even seen the intellectual vacuity of self-proclaimed centrists in the results of this poll, in which we see some vague mumbling about the deficit that will eat us in our beds, but a strong desire to raise taxes on the very wealthiest among us, which I guarantee you none of the people who proclaim their centrism the loudest believes is a centrist position.

Kathleen Parker reacted to our poll with a column of stunningly mendacious "centrist" flim-flam. Parker is regularly cited as a "reasonable" conservative -- as mythical a beast as an intellectually honest "centrist," truth be told -- because she once wrote some columns in which she determined that Sarah Palin might not be up to the job of being vice-president. This, of course, was a stunning insight only to the comatose and to household pets, Anyway, Parker is quite comfortable in the New American Center.

To the harder-core constituents both left and right, such people have no convictions, hence the derogative "squishy middle." But lacking the desire to participate in million-something marches, or stacking barricades in front of the White House, or waving some symbol of self-anointed righteousness does not necessarily make one squishy or uninterested. It might make one too sane for politics. It might make one too mature for rabble. It might also mean that you no longer believe you can have a positive effect on the insanity...The takeaway from this poll - and others showing that more Americans self-identify as independents than Democrats or Republicans - is that the country is not as divided as one would imagine. The challenge for the moderate middle is to create an organizing principle - all things in moderation? - and produce a centrist, non-ideological, pragmatic leader, preferably one un-indebted to billionaires or radio babbleheads.

And then we will all flap our arms and fly to Neptune. Or elect Michael Bloomberg to be emperor.

Let us be clear. If the Iraq war hadn't gone so criminally bad, Kathleen Parker would still be punching hippies for being unpatriotic. If George W. Bush hadn't been a complete and utter fk-up as a president, the Kathleen Parkers of the world would still be proudly self-identifying as conservatives. If the reign of the morons hadn't come to such a garish end, the Kathleen Parker's of the world wouldn't be praising all those wonderful non-ideologues who watch Duck Dynasty and are "too sane for politics." All of a sudden, her side started to lose, and to screw everything up, and looked possible to be going the way of the Whigs, except that it was doing so out of severe public dementia. Suddenly, people like her declare themselves to be centrists. They discover that they might be "too sane for politics." Let the dickhead Christie from New Jersey get nominated, and suddenly, these same people will explain that union-busting and reckless bullying are techniques of the center. The New American Center is the same as the old American center -- the last refuge of scoundrels who still need a gig.

Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently "Idiot America." He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.